We’re very happy to say we managed to chat a bit with Aish Divine! He’s an incredibly talented musician who just released his newest album The Sex Issue on December 4th (in case you somehow didn’t know that yet…).
Read on if you want to learn how Aish’s culture was a jumping-off point of his musical career or what he thinks are the ebst kind of songs. Also join me in keeping our fingers crossed that his music will be used in Queer Eye, it’s what he (and us) deserves.
And of course, you can listen to Aish’s music here, and follow him on twitter.
How did you first get into making music?
I was enthralled by hindustani classical music when I first started lessons as an 8 year old. While ragas are simply a string of notes, each raga would possess me like a spirit without warning, change how I felt, even change my body temperature. It was some sort of conjuring. So I started experimenting, making my own ragas as my earliest compositions. When my father got me an old warped beat up guitar, I started making my own chords mixing up western, blues and hindustani scales and writing lyrics made up of scientific names of plants and animals, like the Cocteau Twins on Melonella, although at the time I didn’t even know who they were.
What are your favourite genres to listen to?
My favourite music is genreless. My favourite music genre is one that flutters carelessly between acoustic, electronic, field sounds, that blurs the lines between melody, percussion and voice. With my own work and the music I listen to, I want to feel the freedom of unhurried childhood, to get lost in a place with no beginnings and ends.
Any kind of music you don’t really listen to?
I don’t listen to anything that feels like it’s trying to prove something, anything performative. I listen to anything that feels authentic, almost oblivious to the mic recording it.
How do you get inspiration for your music?
By giving myself permission to get messy. By getting lost in Redwoods of Northern California or the forests of Vermont. By the grit of New York city, by the humanity on display in the NYC subway. By the wild Pacific pouncing over cliffs of Land’s End to kiss the cypresses. By scribbling on paper until it turns into a picture of someone like David Bowie or Kate Bush.
What is your creative process? If you write your own melodies & lyrics, which is your favourite to do?
The embryo is a turn phrase I catch myself humming, born from the womb of my unconscious. It grows into the thematic idea and the key of the song. I then create a basic beat which best fits the phrasing and the emotion of the embryo. Then comes the before and after of the melody guided by the key and hum’s melody. Then I write the lyrics expanding the thematic idea, phrased to fit the beat. I love writing both lyrics and melody, in fact I can’t separate the two or it would be like dissecting an embryo for academic research which would kill the spirit. Any song that takes more than 3 major drafts gets into the “too laboured” territory and the song asks me to give them time before they’re ready to breathe earthly air.
Which three artists would you say have influenced your music the most?
I can’t give you just 3! Each artist I admire is unique and I don’t aspire to be like them. I will never be them. It’s their spirit that possesses me, those would be David Bowie, Nina Simone, Björk, ANOHNI, Asha Bhosle.
Give us a five word description of your latest/upcoming release.
Fearless, euphoric, colourful, unpredictable, raw.
If (when!) your music was to be used in movies, what sort of movies would you like to see it in? Any directors in particular?
Thought you’d never ask, lol, best interview question ever! Ok, so I’ll give you a ton to work with cuz I like to give lol, shows:
And films:
Or anything with Meryl Streep, Mahershala Ali, Tilda Swinton or anything directed by Yorgos Lanthimos or Wes Anderson.
It’s safe to say that there are more openly LGBT artists nowadays than ever before. What does seeing so much representation mean to you?
It feels cathartic, it’s wonderful, it’s liberating. But we must not forget this freedom to be self assured queers in the public eye is built on the backs of those who paved our path, especially the Indian Independence movement, the American Civil Rights movement, fearless pioneers like Ruth Bater Ginsburg, Martha P Johnson, Ma Rainey and all the martyrs of the AIDS epidemic. Now, people have come after me for saying this, but I think it points to a great leveling of identity, towards a less divisive future along identity lines, where our visual or cultural identities play a lesser and lesser role in the appreciation of our work, in what the idea is about, for example in writing lead parts in mainstream media for trans characters with it being a “trans” or “lgbtq” work. Because, while identity based representation creates access, collective power and legitimacy, it also can imprison us into performing to reductive expectations, into representing the best of our identities, into our identities vanquishing our individual selves.
Rec us some of your favourite LGBT artists
Oh gosh, too many to list! ANOHNI, Freddie Mercury, Sylvester, Ma Rainey, Cyndi Lauper (yes, as an LGBT ally from the get go), SOPHIE, MAY-A, Dua Saleh, Nakhane. I actually really love artists you and The Queer Review recommend.
What’s one piece of advice you would like to give your younger self?
You are enough.
If you could have dinner with one member of the LGBT community, dead or alive, who would it be?
This is a hard one! John Cage, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring I can’t decide!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Aish Divine is a New York based singer, writer, producer and composer. With the release of singles Promise Me and Migrant, he emerged with a signature postmodernist compositional approach comprised of intricate vocal arrangements, contemporary electronic music and chamber arrangements with strings, harp, metallophones.
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