{"id":3373,"date":"2020-12-22T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=142125"},"modified":"2020-12-22T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T08:00:00","slug":"musician-label-owner-and-producer-suzi-analogue-on-trusting-your-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/22\/musician-label-owner-and-producer-suzi-analogue-on-trusting-your-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Musician, label owner, and producer Suzi Analogue on trusting your process"},"content":{"rendered":"
What does your day to day look like? What time do you wake up? When do you create art, and when do you answer emails? What kind of nourishment do you take while doing all of those things?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m waking up usually at 8 a.m. EST. I\u2019m working with so many people in different time zones, and in the States I\u2019m the first one always up.<\/span> If I have to promote something on my Instagram, I hit it up and share a new flyer. I eat a bowl of cereal, and I have a glass of water before I eat, because I have to jumpstart everything. I stretch. I\u2019m working in a new artist residency at the Faena in Miami Beach, so I usually come here before 10 a.m. and I start to do my emails from there. I talk to who I need to talk to, schedule where I need to schedule, then around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m., I eat lunch. Every day I eat the same time except for dinner because everything starts to spiral from the morning, and it\u2019s like, \u201cOh wow, It\u2019s 9:00 and I\u2019m still here at the space talking to somebody about some random releases in Africa.\u201d I usually go to bed by 2:00 a.m. and then I start again.<\/span><\/p>\n It seems like you\u2019re always doing the most: doing, or creating, or planning to do those things. When do you find the time for self care, and what do you do for self care?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m newly in this artist residency space and I told myself I\u2019m going to come in every day from the morning into the evening like it\u2019s my job and create from here. My first week trying it out in full, I said, \u201cI need a Thursday off.\u201d Since COVID has hit, I think everyone is redefining what they want their workloads to be. The five-day work week is<\/em> a little toxic. It doesn\u2019t make sense to put everything you need to do in your life to Saturday or Sunday. Monday through Wednesday, I can hit it hard, then Thursday will be a recharge day, and then I\u2019m going to come back and figure out any solutions on Friday, and then I\u2019ll chill again Saturday and Sunday.<\/span> This is new for me because coming from a gig economy culture of me playing sets, it doesn\u2019t matter if there\u2019s one day I want to be off; if somebody has a booking for me, I\u2019m on. This is one of the first times in recent history that I\u2019ve had any autonomy over my schedule. I think we all have a Disney World complex. We just think we can enter the gates and everything is going to be great, but there is no Mickey Mouse that\u2019s going to wave the magic wand and say, \u201cThis can happen for us, we\u2019re allowed to do this.\u201d We have to figure out how to have our own agency.<\/span><\/p>\n In your latest EP SU CASA<\/em>, especially in \u201cPPL PWR,\u201d the lyrics contain such pain, but also such resilience, and the music is so joyful. It\u2019s something that makes your music so powerful and especially relevant now and a source of strength for so many Black artists and womxn artists that are following in your footsteps.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve always had a sense of pain in my artistic practice because of having to be such a lone wolf, not having a lot of understanding in my identity as a Black woman and for my interest in music.<\/span> Choosing to be autonomous and create a label, to find other people that might feel the same or feel like they don\u2019t have anybody to connect with, I always put in my messages but it wasn\u2019t hitting the same. I\u2019ve been sharing discourse on some of these issues for a really consistent amount of time now. Even listening back to some of my earlier releases, I\u2019m like, \u201cI was trying to tell them.\u201d I\u2019m excited about the future of my songwriting, because now I feel like I don\u2019t have to question or wonder \u201cWill I be understood?\u201d I think that I can even ramp up sharing that truth and that pain and that rawness because people now understand better where it\u2019s coming from.<\/span><\/p>\n Also, beforehand, there was an element of gaslighting, like, \u201cOh, it\u2019s not actually as bad as you say it is.\u201d When finally white people are starting to wake up and be like, \u201cOh yes, it is that bad. You were telling the truth the whole time.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s literally what is happening, and people are coming back to me from the past that didn\u2019t really support me like they could have. I never took it personally, I just saw the limitation in them understanding the levels of oppression, and I said, \u201cI hope they get it one day. I\u2019m going to move on and go this way\u201d until they did, and people are like, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry. I did not understand.\u201d It\u2019s kind of heavy but I feel more hopeful than I ever did before.<\/p>\n How do you feel receiving messages like those?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s bittersweet because I\u2019m like, \u201cMan, we were all duped.\u201d We were all believing in these systems of oppression, letting them really run our lives in a way that made us be ugly towards one another, made us not fully support people\u2019s ideas and not listen to them. People felt like they had the option to turn a blind eye to human oppression, and now we\u2019re realizing that is a costly thing to do, and artists always shine a light on that, and that we should be uplifting the artists who are shining lights on that, because who else is going to give truthful accounts of the seriousness of these actions and events that are happening in our society?<\/span> I feel glad that these people are reaching that level of understanding, but I feel sad of the path that it comes from, and then on top of that, it\u2019s just heavy. I can be like, \u201cToday I just want to watch Netflix\u201d and then someone texts me like, \u201cI am so sorry, I never understood\u2026\u201d It\u2019s so deep and it\u2019s happening so much to me that I just have to laugh. I told my friends I\u2019m getting funnier. I\u2019m going to turn into a standup comic, do a dark comedy act, because that\u2019s how I\u2019ve had to approach this.<\/p>\n I want to go back to you being a lone wolf. You\u2019ve been charting your own path and yet you\u2019re also a part of so many networks, connected to so many different people through your label Never Normal. Looking at ZONEZ V.4<\/a><\/em>, for example, you collaborated with Junglepussy and RP Boo, and you also brought on newer voices like Oyinda and Zen So Fly. How do you approach collaborations?<\/strong><\/p>\n I usually have an element of in-person interaction. I don\u2019t think there are too many people I haven\u2019t ever met that I\u2019ve collaborated with. I am the type of person to go to the laundromat with people I collaborate with. Like, \u201cDo you want to hang out?\u201d<\/span> It doesn\u2019t have to be super deep, I just try to have a level of real organic knowing each other built in so we can make something that we both feel is very special. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s missing with music, especially in this digital age, where we\u2019re like \u201cWe can send files,\u201d and I actually don\u2019t like that! I go really slow when that happens. I usually don\u2019t finish the projects when that happens. When I know that the person that I\u2019m working with is excited, and I\u2019m excited, it makes it so much better. A lot of people you hear on songs are people that I\u2019ve met touring.<\/p>\n Can you talk a little bit about how your creative process, your vision, and your worldview changed after having spent time in the places you\u2019ve toured, and East Africa?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n Musician, label owner, and producer Suzi Analogue on reclaiming autonomy, breaking down barriers, respecting your own story, and being a lone wolf.
\n <\/em><\/p>\n