{"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":"
<\/div>\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

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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

I went to Uganda in 2015 as part of this project called Next Level. It\u2019s basically a peace initiative: artists from the States, specifically hip-hop-based artists, can engage with the youth cultures in other countries on their projects. We also push ideas of entrepreneurship and having agency in what you do, exchanging cultural ideas on the basis of \u201cwe all love hip-hop in this room.\u201d When I came home, I was like, \u201cWhat could I play them that they would understand if I were to go there now?\u201d That\u2019s what inspired me to start [the series] ZONEZ<\/a><\/em> because I said I need to make something that is universal enough where I can play it anywhere, and have it represent me and my experience, my identity. It was an intentional thing to not include lyrics that were like verses, because I saw that as a barrier of understanding. I thought that we should just sing hooks together. How about we sing mantras together? How about we just love the beat, and instruments, let\u2019s start there. My time there helped me quickly understand how universal music is, but also what can cause us to not understand each other in music. I feel like the future of music or a future sound, they always make it so avant-garde, and I try to take down some of those barriers, because I feel like it\u2019s restrictive.<\/span><\/p>\n

How are you cultivating, or maintaining your community digitally, now that it\u2019s uncertain when we\u2019ll be able to have live shows again?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now I chat with everybody in every time zone. That\u2019s also why I don\u2019t go to sleep until very late, because some people are just getting up in the morning. One part about my practice as an artist is staying attached with people and getting the true life accounts of what\u2019s going on in different places. Whether it\u2019s the current lockdown in Uganda where I\u2019m talking to my friends, or my friends in Europe who are like, \u201cWe just got funding for all of these artists that are struggling,\u201d my music is now informed by the fact that I\u2019m talking to people all over the world about how these things are being handled, and I\u2019m home becoming outraged. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy, in this country are they taking care of it, in this country they\u2019re doing that and then here, they don\u2019t get it?\u201d A lot of times, the news articles that pop up, I know that already because I talk to people in these places. It\u2019s kind of like a delay. There is some kind of dissonance that I\u2019m experiencing, and I take it somewhat lightly.<\/p>\n

I remember you posted a Guardian<\/em> article about how Africa was containing the virus so well, and Western media wasn\u2019t talking about it, because it disrupts the narrative of Africa being a backwater, and you were like, \u201cThis goes out to all the people who told me not to move to Africa.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Totally! Every move that I\u2019ve made as an artist has been to sustain myself, because as a Black woman, especially a Black American woman in this country, I am not supposed to thrive.<\/span> The way the systems are set up it is to have a shorter life expectancy or have severe and chronic health issues from a young age. I moved to Miami from New York so I\u2019d have a better quality of living. Within the last year, I had a pondering that I could figure out how to live globally and not be always in the United States, because I feel like that will actually take years off of my life. I always think worst-case scenario. I have maybe a bias because I\u2019ve lost both of my parents, and I lost my mother before she turned 60. She never really had chronic health issues until the very end of her life, but I know the conditions and the stressful implications that this country places on Black women. I don\u2019t want to live in Europe because everybody does that. I\u2019ve been to Africa and I believe in Africa, and I see the future every time I go there.<\/p>\n

Do you view social media as a tool and a resource, or do you see it more as a necessary evil to successfully self-advocating as an artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of what I and people a little older and a couple of years younger than I did in the last 15 years was show people how they could use the internet as a tool and a resource. When I originally\u2014and how I still use\u2014the internet is like the Dewey Decimal System. When we had events and there would be an event I\u2019d want to go to but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s still going on because I\u2019m late, I\u2019d go into a search, into quotation marks, put the event, and find out if anyone is tweeting about it, and be like, \u201cIt\u2019s been 30 minutes, I think it\u2019s still going\u201d and show up. But if it\u2019s been an hour, I\u2019m not going. That\u2019s how quantitatively I used the internet. I use the internet as a library, a personal diary, a store.<\/span> I have a lot of peers that maybe didn\u2019t have the same relationship with the internet. I\u2019ve been on chat rooms and forums since I was 15. That taught me how to read through the internet and disseminate what information was credible and what wasn\u2019t. If you don\u2019t have that kind of understanding of the internet you might feel like it\u2019s very distracting, but I do feel like the internet can\u2019t win over me. I\u2019m the computer at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

What are one or two pieces of advice that you\u2019ve received that you return to again and again?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One piece of advice is to not rush. I actually hate getting that advice. I\u2019m like, \u201cI do need to rush because the time is now,\u201d<\/span> but that\u2019s me speaking as an entrepreneur and being somewhat innovative. It\u2019s reassuring to know that you don\u2019t have to rush as long as you\u2019re staying true to your process<\/span>; which brings me to another point, is quality over quantity in your creative process. It\u2019s not about me having 50 volumes of ZONEZ<\/em>, it\u2019s a good-quality four volumes that brings me more joy than if I would\u2019ve had 50, and not been able to effectively work with everyone I\u2019ve worked with so far, or done some thoughtful art that involved my upbringing. A third would be to trust the process. When you\u2019re doing things in your own way, there really is no blueprint. There is no one you can look to and say, \u201cIt\u2019s going to go exactly like this.\u201d<\/span> Even if you do think it might go exactly like this or that, it might not go that way for you, because you\u2019re someone different. You have a different story. Having that trust within yourself can bring so much clarity and assurance in times when you may otherwise want to panic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Musician, label owner, and producer Suzi Analogue on reclaiming autonomy, breaking down barriers, respecting your own story, and being a lone wolf. What does your day to day\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923,250,346,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3374,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions\/3374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}