Kohinoorgasm

Ord av Abby Fritz

Los Angeles-baserade lo-fi-popartisten Josephine Shetty, känd som kohinoorgasm, utgiven "Utmattad" Mitt i den covid-19-pandemin i sommar. Låten har varit en lång tid på att göra och är en profetisk utrop av hur utbrändhet kan hindra arbetarklassen. Droppande med mjuka vokaltoner och minimalistiska tekno -beats, Singeln resonerar djupt mitt i de senaste månaderna kaos och smärta.

26-Års-gamla Shettys starka känsla av personlig etik lyser genom detta spårproduktion och ger en uppriktig titt på hur de personligen har påverkats av lönearbete som gräsrotskonstnär.

Blanc Magazine talade med Kohinoorgasm om den gemensamma kreativiteten som finns i den underjordiska musikscenen, Hur Covid har påverkat deras kreativa uttryck, and how they remain faithful to their calling through their art, community organization, and education.

When did you start making music?

"I feel like I've been making music my whole life. I always had an affinity for music, especially for singing. It was really soothing for me as a kid and because of that I fell into doing creative activities in my school and my church. But it was always really framed as a hobby, something you can do for fun, but I never really felt like I understood my place in it as a career or life path. It wasn't until I was in college when I moved to Berkeley, and the Bay has such a strong DIY scene. It was just the right time in the right place for me being in Berkeley in 2012 through 2017. I was going out to shows, doing the things I like to do; engaging with art and the underground. And I was so amazed to see how resourceful people were, who had such a broad set of musical skills. There are people in the underground who are classically trained and there's also people in the underground who are entirely self-taught. It was really encouraging for me to feel like my affinity for music is not that kind of imposter syndrome mindset where you feel like your affinity for art is not as legitimate as someone else's. I wanted to honor that by pursuing it more, so I started producing. I really found my style when I was more exposed to different kinds of DIY electronic music production at that time. I was like, 'Okay, yes, this is how I'm gonna do it,' and it really clicked."

How do you produce your music?

"I am proud to produce all my music, that's not to say that bringing in collaborators and producers is a bad thing. I'm certainly looking forward to having the capacity and the competence to bring more people in. But I started out that way because I was also struggling with my own vulnerability in songwriting, and I really couldn't fathom showing these things to another musician. I also had a strong vision from the start, I wanted to have control over the music. After I produced my first album which was entirely produced and recorded on GarageBand, I showed it to some friends, I posted some songs on Soundcloud, and got a lot of really positive feedback from people. But I did struggle with "Oh, is this worth putting out? Is it worth all that effort?" But then at the same time, in the spirit of the underground, I feel like that's so fun. Why not, you know? it was also about having the autonomy to experience something outside of the commercial stress realm. I moved on from GarageBand to logic, and then I was really liking logic for a while, now I'm using Pro Tools. So it's been sort of like an evolution."

How has your scene impacted you as an artist?

"I am very committed to the underground and I often wonder how to articulate it because it's something that is distinctly important to my practice. It is an ethical choice, a communal choice, a creative choice, and also an honest representation of me and who I am in my art practice. I feel like there is this distinction, especially now that I'm engineering more, I feel like I've built a bridge for myself between the underground and more mainstream commercial artistry. I think a lot about how much artists are forced into this binary of you're either a highly commercial successful, paid, resourced artist or you're a self-managed underground low paid, DIY artist. The underground is truly such a model of what we would love the music world to look like, because it involves friends and community members booking each other, making spaces that are hopefully as safe as possible, that are defined on our terms. The joy is on our terms, the safety is on our terms, the artistry is on our terms, and the labor is on our terms. The underground for me has been an aspiration towards a model of collective, queer, BIPOC, utopia. But at the same time, the underground is so fraught with things that are not utopia, like abusers, racists, classists, and people who are posing like they are under-resourced. But I do really care about the underground. It is the grassroots of music culture and the grassroots are always where the real foundation of change is built."

"That's a big part of why I am the co-founding the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, so that we can form a united front of music workers. We can change the industry and address these issues that not only affect musicians and music workers but affect all workers worldwide. It is important to me that we all have the power to define our own creativity and happiness and labor conditions. I think that the underground is a space where we get to play with that."

Varför valde du Kohinoorgasmn som ditt scennamn?

"Kohinoorgasm är egentligen bara lekfull. Det är en kombination av orden kohinoor och orgasm. Jag hade svårt att välja ett scennamn när jag ursprungligen släppte min musik. Vid den tiden, Jag trodde inte att det skulle vara något som skulle hålla mig så länge, Men det har visat sig vara ett trevligt namn eftersom det är väldigt sökbart och det är unikt. Det är också roligt att jag gjorde upp mitt eget specialord. Jag ville ha något som hänvisade till avkolonial indisk historia, Men det var också riktigt lekfullt och queering några kulturella troper."

Vad försöker du ta med dig till din publik genom musik?

"När jag gick på gymnasiet, Jag skulle gå till raves och jag var super i elektronisk musik och jag är fortfarande. Jag har riktigt djup respekt för dessa genrer, Särskilt nu när jag lär mig var de banbrytande av svarta musiker. Så, När jag skapade musik för första gången, Jag visste att jag ville göra något som var riktigt ärligt till vem jag är, fredlig och reflekterande men kan också vara rolig och dansbar. En sak som jag inte såg i mycket dansmusik var texter som hade potenta politiska meddelanden. Dansgolvet, klubben, Och disco har varit riktigt politiska utrymmen genom historien. Jag ville hedra det genom att få min egen typ av organisering, politisk bakgrund, och personlig bakgrund till dansmusik som också synkroniseras med mina antikapitalistiska och anarkistiska meddelanden."

Hur har din musik tjänat dig under hela din resa som musiker?

"Det är verkligen katartiskt att skapa musik, Det påminner mig om hur människor pratar om konstterapi. I feel like when I sit down, so much of my music practice is not just putting out music for Kohinoorgasm. A lot of the time I'm just trying to relax and get some thoughts out. Sometimes I'll sing in a diary style about my day, or about how I'm feeling. I'll even hum melodies that are reflective of the emotions or the moods that I'm going through. And it's a really cathartic practice."

"But there's so many things that making music has brought me. I've gotten to tour and meet a lot of great people. I feel grateful and privileged to have been able to tour the underground whenever I've toured outside of the West Coast. It's such a cool thing to see how the underground is operating in other cities and see the parallels to see some of the structural and aesthetic differences between cities."

You have chosen to incorporate Hindi into many of your songs. What prompted this decision?

"I grew up listening to a lot of Hindi pop music and I couldn't really relate to the lyrical content. I love the lyrical aesthetic of a lot of Hindi pop music, it's super poetic and romantic. But when I thought about translating my musical taste into my own practice, I wanted to create something that was really personal to me. I felt like welding all of my interests ended up turning into me reclaiming some Hindi pop aesthetics by creating a lush, Hindi, pensive, ambient. femme style."

Is performing a big part of your relationship to music? If so, how has COVID-19 changed your ability to perform?

"I think a lot of performers have a complicated relationship to performing. I do love performing, though, but I also feel like it is exhausting. There was one year that I spent almost the whole year on the road. It was the most traveling I've ever done in my life, but it's exhausting and it's hard to maintain stability. I ended up having to give up my housing to go on tour. It's destabilizing to go on tour as a grassroots artist and low-income artist. But I do love performing and I miss it a lot for sure."

"But I'm also really enjoying this moment, it's been nice to have a break from performing a little bit to just focus more on writing, because ultimately, I want to perform new songs and that means I need to sit down and write. It's interesting to perform on zoom and to perform virtually. I am not opposed to it at all and I'm looking forward to the ways that I can like innovate that medium. I've seen some people do really cool things and it's just so exciting to see how creatives get creative when a whole new circumstance is thrown at them."

"Utmattad" was released in late May, during a time of much turmoil throughout the world. Was this part of what spurred the creation of the song? If not, what did?

"I actually wrote that song years ago and have been sitting on it for a long time. The timing of the release was totally coincidental. It's just something I've been reflecting on a lot. It's a response to how draining, exploitative, och deprimerande lönearbete är. Jag tror att låten släpptes runt karantänens tid kändes relatabel eftersom många av oss hade dessa existensiella tankar om arbete. Vad betyder det att vi plötsligt arbetar hemifrån? Jag känner till att många aktivister för funktionshinder som har kämpat i flera år och nu bara för att kapabla människor behöver gå hem och arbeta, Det är lätt att gå och arbeta avlägset. Många existentiella tankar har kommit upp runt arbete, lönearbete, och regeringen stöder inte arbetarklassen."

Hur har din kreativa process påverkats av karantän och den kollektiva ilskan i stora delar av landet?

"Det har återupplivat min passion för att göra dansmusik som är infuserad med verkliga antikapitalistiska anekdoter om mitt liv som arbetande konstnär."

"Våra regeringar vill att vi ska återuppta affärer som vanligt, Även om det finns rättmätiga uppror, rättmätig kollektivt raseri, och också en livshotande pandemik. Detta påverkar mig som musikarbetare eftersom hur kan jag bara fortsätta skriva musik, Making Music, Går till skolan för musik, och undervisa musik när allt detta händer? Men jag skulle säga att det är där facket kommer in. Det är bara så viktigt om du ska göra någonting, Du bör också organisera inom det området."

Vad är några förhoppningar du har för framtiden för din musik?

"Jag kommer alltid att skapa musik. Jag hoppas att jag bara får fortsätta göra det, Även om det inte släpps. Jag hoppas att vi alla kan leva i en värld där vi trivs och inte behöver oroa dig för överlevnad så mycket som vi gör. Det är den situation som våra regeringar sätter in oss, Men jag tror att när fler människor skapar konst, Det är ett bra tecken på att människor utnyttjar sin kraft."