A Conversation with anaiis on Doing it Right the First Time, Following Your Intuition, and Everything that Lies on the Other Side of Fear
Interview by Eva Lynch
One of my favourite albums of the past year was anaiis’ Devotion and the Black Divine.
Recorded live-to-tape, layering vulnerable vocals and ethereal harmonies, this album aches with
humanity, and is such a tender portrait of motherhood and rediscovering one’s sense of self. I
sat down to chat with her ahead of her show at Montreal’s Jazz Festival, where we talked about
her upcoming tour and how warm her reception in Montreal has been, following the premiere of
the album’s accompanying art film, Devotion and the Black Divine, at Foil Gallery the day
before.
Where is your favorite place you’ve visited?
One of my favourite places to go back to is Brazil. I wish I could live there. My first time going was for a residency. I stayed in Salvador for one month, in Bahia, and then spent two weeks in São Paulo before flying back to London.
When I came back to London, I had this song called "Toda Cor", featuring Luedji Luna. I had the song for ages, and I just didn't know how to finish it. A few years later, I discovered Sessa's music and reached out about collaborating to finish it.
We hadn’t met at this point, everything was all over FaceTime, but afterwards they invited me to come visit them in Brazil and make some more music. We had no expectations of what would happen. We spent six days in a house, living together, cooking, going to the beach, and making music. At the end of that week we had written what became anaiis & Grupo Cosmo, and the process felt so collaborative and beautiful.
I've always dreamt of being in a band, because I think being a solo artist is a little bit lonely. It's cool because you get to make all the decisions, but getting to share the decision making for this project felt so beautiful and special. It didn't feel right to just say, "this is my project,” it was ours.
Did it push you creatively in new ways, or surprise you?
Absolutely. I was also coming out of a very transformative period in my life because I had just become a mom, and it felt like everything was on the table. I didn't really have a specific direction. I made a lot of music during my pregnancy where I felt this immense pressure to be productive, because I didn't know what was gonna happen on the other side, but I hated everything I made and it was all so forced. Creating anaiis & Grupo Cosmo was the opposite of that. There was zero pressure, zero expectations. We were free to just make music and see what happens.
It gave me a new approach to making music. Even with my solo projects now, I don't put as much pressure as I did before I became a mom, and I think my music has significantly improved from being in that headspace. When you overthink things, you overwork them, and you don't trust yourself and you lose the spark. I gained a new respect for creativity, and the fact that songs and music are like a plant. They have their own life, and you can’t force them to grow in one specific way.
I came to your talk at yesterday, and loved hearing you talk about this idea that you have to let go of being a perfectionist in order to achieve a flow state, and how surprising it was for you to see what poured out when you relinquished that control, especially with this idea of recording live to tape.
Fear is the problem. Fear is on the other side of control: the fear that I'm not good enough; fear that what I've made is not good enough for other people; fear of how I'm going to be perceived. It's not connected to divinity, and it's not trusting in the forces of the universe that are much bigger than us. I'm not religious or anything, it's just obvious when you look at creation in the world, all of these things are miraculously working together for us to be able to be here and breathe this oxygen, and there's a magic that's always there.
When I started looking back at my favorite music and the artists that I loved, I realized these people weren't being so precious. I think that something happened. Maybe after Lauryn Hill made The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and it was the best thing ever, everyone started to think: ‘my first album needs to be everything’
We get so much immediate feedback nowadays. When you put something out, people tell you if they like it or hate it, but when I was looking at albums by Prince and Nina Simone—all these artists that have so many albums—I realized sometimes you have to go through the process to get to the thing that you're truly meant to make. Sometimes, you have to make a song and let it out, so that you can then make the song that you were really meant to make or the thing that you really want to create.
Absolutely, I think it's interesting too that you bring up Lauren Hill, because Miseducation is one of the best albums ever, but she went on to do MTV Unplugged which was a total freestyle performance of songs one had heard before.
What’s crazy is that Miseducation wasn't even her first album. That's the thing I think we sometimes forget, but if you read her interviews, she talks about The Fugees and being with Wyclef, and how much she learned. So by the time she even got to Miseducation, she'd already been deep in her process, it was just held in this other container of The Fugees, which was also insane. All of this is just to say, let yourself create and let yourself be free. I'm so grateful for Lauryn Hill, because she has taught everybody so much through the way that she lives her life.
In trying to be less precious, how do you capture these moments of inspiration or creativity?
You actually capture them. That's how you do it. For me, I've started recording when I'm jamming, and a lot of the songs come out of it. Honeydew, for example, was entirely a freestyle. Not the words, but every single aspect of the melody. Since we were recording it, I was able to go back and listen to it again and there was something so spirited about the melody, I just tried to put the right words to it. Before, I would spend hours sort of creating, but not actually documenting what I'm creating. Now, I start documenting early and I don't really make demos anymore, I just do it right the first time if I can.
That's really cool. I love this album, Devotion and the Black Divine is so beautiful. You’ve talked about some of your inspirations, or people you've like toured with, and that a lot of them also record live to tape, like Dijon, Nick Hakim,
Yeah, I love them, they're some of my biggest inspirations. I think there's an alignment in our respect for the sound of things. Both of those people are probably more nerdy about the gear they use than me, but I think we want to feel the same things through our music, and love rawness, authenticity, and feeling.
I don't enjoy when I hear things and you can tell it was made to please the public, or trying to recreate something. We all have influences, and I know for sure that I naturally have songs that remind people of other music, but I try to just follow my intuition, and I think those artists also do that really well.
I was watching your film yesterday, and was struck by your chapter: my mother was a freedom fighter. I was curious if that's connected to Aja Monet—who is also a part of Jazz Fest this year—and wanted to ask you about this idea of not being bound to a place, but finding home in community, and how creative community informs your process.
That is exactly what it is. Aja Monet is another one of those artists, thinkers, and creatives that I'm really inspired by. In terms of building community, I often see a lot of similarities between myself and the people that tend to come to my shows, and I get really inspired by some of the people that come and their ideas and thoughts. I feel like a lot of artists listen to me, including younger musicians, and I often connect with artists who are a bit more experimental. Who are not so clear cut and have quite a wide range of influence, but there's something somewhat political about their work, or quite intentional. I'm drawn to art that is intentional.
Thinking of art that's intentional, and also interacting with your audience. Something very cool to witness yesterday is how the audience hung on to every word you said. Not only the film, but also during your talk about making yourself feel small in this world, and how you were able to come into your power and step into intention. What has the reception been like for you, with this album but specifically with your film, where you've been able to take a new creative direction?
It's been so beautiful. I have felt so held by people in a way I didn't expect. I’ve realized that there are truths within us that are relevant for all of us, so when you’re being honest, it's bound to resonate with a lot of people. I'm not putting on a persona, I'm just speaking with openness about my experience as a human being. I feel that we are in a time right now, where young people especially are just so much more open, and they want the truth. They're done with facades. Especially with AI, people are seeking out the truth even more, because there's just so much disillusionment online. Things are not what they seem at all.
James Blake recently posted saying everything about the music industry is fake, showing how we're really getting to a point where we can't trust things. So, whenever someone is speaking truth through sound or through voice or in any way and showing up as themselves, it resonates, and gives everybody strength.
I'm getting strength from the Aja Monets and the other artists that we have talked about, including Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu. They’re bold, they’re brave, and they lead with love in their art. That's what I'm connected to, and hopefully that's why people come to see me as well.
Is that a lot of the first music that you listened to when you were getting into making music? Between Dublin, Senegal, the Bay Area, what were you listening to when you were a kid?
To be honest, I feel like I was put in front of lots of music and not all of it was good. I'm not putting the blame on my mom, it's not her fault. I think that there was just a lot of bad music.
When I think about what I was listening to as a teenager, I'm embarrassed. Sometimes I meet artists, and they’ll say, ‘oh, my parents had this amazing vinyl collection, and they had this incredible wide knowledge of music. ’ I don't feel like I had the widest knowledge of music, but there were certain things that when I heard them, they stuck. Those people were Erykah Badu and Nina Simone and D'Angelo. That music really did something to me. Jill Scott, India Arie, everybody from that neo-soul era really shaped me.
Now, I'm digging further into old 70s Brazilian music, and if you’ve ever hung out with me, I almost listen exclusively to lyric-less music. I listen to a lot of instrumental music: Ethiopian music, piano, classical. When I first started out as a musician at around seven, I was a violinist. So I've had all these different influences, and have somehow found myself through it, but it took time.
Did you learn Portuguese for this project?
I didn't learn, but I'm learning. Always learning. I've definitely done many years of Duolingo, but it's not going that well, actually, because I need to just go and spend some time there. Be on the beach, make some Brazilian music. Maybe one day I could just live there
To wrap up, your music videos have always been so beautiful. I remember when I first saw your ‘Nina’ video. Did you always know that you wanted to make an art film, and how did that come about?
Oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah, that's one of my prides. I'm proud of that song, but I'm really proud of that video and going back to Senegal. I don't tend to say I'm multidisciplinary, but I think it's such an important component of what I'm doing.
I knew I wanted to make a film because my dream is to always push things so much further, in terms of the mediums. One day, I want to be able to make a sculpture that goes with a record. I don't know when I'm gonna have time to do it, but one day.
From what you're saying, the reluctance to label yourself as multidisciplinary, or this idea that you should grow up with this vinyl collection, all connects back to this feeling of never quite belonging and always feeling like an outsider,
It's so real, I wish I had those words yesterday [at the Q&A], because it is not feeling like you belong, and I think as a musician, I can confidently consider myself an artist now, but for so long—and even now—I still tend to feel ask, where do I sit within all of this? I do still experience a sense of outsiderness. But maybe we'll always feel like that, or maybe that's just part of my story. Sometimes, I think it's more about me owning that feeling and realizing I do actually belong rather than waiting for someone to welcome me in.
Some things are always going to be a part of us. Sometimes they're quiet, sometimes they're louder, but what I do feel is that the music has found a home within lots of people, and I'm just grateful for that, for however long it lives with them, or if it helps them get through a period of time. Then I feel like I've done what I came here to do.
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Do yourself a favour and go see anaiis perform Devotion and the Black Divine, September 23rd at Le Ministère, as a part of POP Montreal. Her voice and presence are enchanting, and create a performance that is sure to leave you changed. I’ll see you there!