Shaurya Thapa spoke to the wildly real voice repping brown culture in LA about representation and the power of authenticity

“I’m not every day trying to turn up to the sound of my own oppression. You feel me? We always assume our own powerlessness but never our own power”, says Madame Gandhi dressed in neon green as a bunch of seemingly hypnotised schoolgirls watch her on a vintage TV set. “Stigma is one of the most effective forms of oppression because it denies us the vocabulary to talk comfortably and confidently about our own bodies.”

These are opening scenes from the Indian-American musicians most recent single Waiting for Me. The three minute music video, directed by Misha Ghose is Gandhi’s first visual project set in India. It starts out with cast members in school uniforms walking around a drab building in an Orwellian fashion and performing tasks at a mechanical pace with no emotion. Gandhi, on the other hand, sings a song of change in a wilder, more organic background dressed in radiant hues. Eventually, the others too get rid of their oppressive monotony as they return to nature, happier and in brighter ‘indianised’ clothes.They drum and dance under these new rays of hope—freer and fully at ease with themselves.

Beyond its aesthetics, the video much like Gandhi’s hard-hitting lyrics is an eco-feminist call to action to set oneself apart from restrictive social structures like schools and families. Such institutions not only end up deciding what’s the norm and what’s not but also limit one’s self-expression. In this regard, featuring a diverse cast of queer, trans, female and gender non-conforming individuals in this video is a strong statement in itself, one that seems like a genuine attempt at expression and representation rather than tokenism 

“Using uplifting, percussive melodies and infusing them with a meaningful message,” that’s what Gandhi cites as being deeply important to her and her work. The LA-based, queer musician of Indian origin sings, produces, and writes her own songs. While her first EP Voices released in 2016, Gandhi had already managed to carve a music aesthetic that focused on activism rooted in fourth wave feminism and eco-consciousness. 

Born as Kiran Gandhi, the 31-year-old, graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor’s in Mathematics and Gender Studies in 2011 before getting an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2015. The journey ahead was filled with a few consulting projects that helped her pay the bills, while she gave drumming lessons and learnt DJing. This side-hustle also involved an internship-turned job at Interscope Records as a digital analyst. The mathematics degree came in handy as Gandhi studied and analysed patterns in consuming content on YouTube and Spotify. She left Interscope in 2013 to pursue her MBA. 

Even before she pursued a full-time solo career as a musician, Gandhi had already started garnering buzz in the music industry. In 2012, while still at Interscope, Gandhi recorded live drums accompanying British rapper, M.I.A’s track Bad Girls. In February 2013, M.I.A invited Gandhi to tour and play drums for the album tour of Matangi, her new album at the time. Gandhi conceded and joined M.I.A on tour.The British hip-hop artist of Sri-Lankan origin has penned several verses on her socio-philosophical views, and political commentary on issues like the oppression of Sri Lankan Tamils like her own parents, as well as Palestinian populations. Her radical views have offended many and not only has the US often restricted her entry into the country but also Oprah apparently called her a ‘terrorist.’. 

However, Madame Gandhi has had a separate tryst with Oprah, as one of her recent drumming gigs has been the talk show host’s Vision Tour this year. 

In Gandhi’s individual artistry, there’s a distinct yet transient sound present in each of her songs. In her own words, she describes her brand of music as ‘electrofeminist’. She says, she chose to call herself Madame Gandhi because the word ‘Madame’ celebrates aspects of feminine leadership and that resonates with her. 

While her lyrical content mostly seems to revolve around her creative assertiveness and the pursuit for gender equality, her electronic, percussion-heavy tunes draw a variety of influences. So, if her single Moon in the Sky flows with a mellow, minimalist aura throughout, it also boasts of a hypnotic interlude filled with “South Indian Konnakol inspired vocal percussion.” Bad Habits displays shades of the Afrobeat genre, influenced by Nigerian legend Fela Kuti. The examples are endless. 

In fact, Fela Kuti has been a huge influence on Gandhi’s musical activism. The Nigerian multi-instrumentalist can widely be considered as the progenitor of Afrobeat music. He often relied on his musical work to critique his country’s government and military. “Fela Kuti is my biggest influence because he was able to seamlessly merge his activism with his lyrics and melodies. Nigeria in the 1970s was a radical place, focused on Black Power and the decolonization movement. Music is one of the most effective ways of communicating a difficult or seemingly impossible vision for the future”, says Gandhi. 

Aside from the latest single, a song that encapsulates her feminism in a truly anthemic way might be her 2016 hit, The Future is Female. All through this song, Gandhi croons on fearlessly standing and owning your voice. As her songs are heavy on samples and audio clips, The Future Is Female ends with a speech in which she says, “To me, The Future Is Female means that no longer will female qualities be subordinated to male qualities. I want to live in a world that is collaborative. A world that is emotionally intelligent. A world in which we are linked and not ranked.”

What sets Gandhi apart from the rest of the world is the fact that, despite social messages in her work and experimentation with underrepresented cultures, Gandhi isn’t trying to appropriate something just to jump on the woke wagon. Her activism has led to viral conversations around the world, including stigmatic sexism. The biggest instance of this was when she ran the London Marathon in 2015, while bleeding freely, in an attempt to address the taboos around menstruation.

Her music too incorporates personal experiences that makes it raw and authentic.Take the case of her song Waiting For Me. She says, the visual elements in the song were inspired by her time at St. Anne’s in Mumbai (1997-2000), where she wore a uniform to school everyday. “and I have performed multiple times in India with an all-female band, working with local designers to style our looks and design custom outfits. So, these are the elements that are authentically represented in my music video because these are real lived experiences that I have had.”

When asked about the drawbacks of Indian representation in Western pop culture, she says, “I think we just need to be telling our own truth when we represent images from another culture. It becomes problematic when we show a way of life that is performative or not fully authentic to our journey.”

With many more music videos produced and conceptualised by women and gender non-conforming creatives for her debut album Voices, and her sophomore effort Visions, Gandhi is working on her third album titled Vibrations. “ Vibrations is a lot closer to the sound I want to achieve. It is emotional, it is vulnerable, bold, warm, percussive and has more lyrical depth. The feminism lies in its ability to dig deeper spiritually. It has been a really rewarding process as a result, and I can’t wait until next year to share it with my audience.”

Early this year, Riz Ahmed dropped his album The Long Goodbye, a moving record that was filled with verses on his Pakistani heritage and the alienation and hatred towards immigrants in Britain. And with Madame Gandhi’s diverse discography and the upcoming album, one can garner some hope for positive, authentic representation of the brown identity overseas. 

Featured Image courtesy: Sajna Siwan