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Onah Indigo (a.k.a. noaccordion) merges trip-hop beats w/ political-punk energy in a Divine Femme-inspired social critique of the patriarchy on new single “Room To Breathe”
Oakland-based electronic producer, accordion maverick, and performance artist Onah Indigo (a.k.a. noaccordion) is adept at handcrafting eclectic EDM, hip-hop, trap, and R&B beats to take listeners on inner journeys of self-discovery, with thoughtful lyrics that deliver progressive, sex-positive, and universal messages to the consciousness and hypnotic grooves that make the body move.
The newest emanation of that signature ethos, noaccordion’s latest single “Room To Breathe” (out March 11, 2022, via Symphonic) merges a Divine Femme-inspired social critique with the raucous energy of political punk while leveling the chill of a trip-hop beat against the liberatingly dissonant poetics of spoken-word revolt — to hold a creative mirror up to the great blundering man-spread of social patriarchy.
Whether in the political, personal, or professional spheres —and whether motivated by malice or by an equally intolerable lack of male self-awareness — the masculine is all-too-often encroaching on the feminine. As a creative attempt to reclaim some sense of spatial and spiritual autonomy, “Room To Breathe” represents a kind of exorcizing incantation against unwanted penile proximity.
“This song speaks about using my voice to create those healthy boundaries in life,” Says Onah. “When speaking for myself and a lot of my female friends, we may choose not to say anything a lot of the time. It depends on many factors including location and timing. Sometimes I am more tolerant in the work environment as opposed to a public space. Too often, we just kind of take it because we don't want to be impolite or draw attention to ourselves”.
But then the pandemic happened. Says Onah, “For me, as a femme, it has actually been really nice having this six-foot distance in public spaces from a few male individuals who in the past have just gotten too close. It’s almost like there’s been a reset: whereas before we’d just think ‘okay, you're kind of gross, you kind of stink, you're kind of close, but I'm just gonna cope,’ …now we are proclaiming our right to these healthy boundaries …to say ‘actually, you're standing too close, step back a couple of feet,’ and feeling confident and okay with standing up for ourselves like that”.
Indigo’s sharp, distorted keys punch in and out of the track’s surging, repetitive rhythms, propelling listeners deeper into the heart of the matter, while her tight, meditative vocals and playful lyrics are punctuated with explosive exclamations of defiance:
We will not be silenced
We will speak our mind
We will not be broken
We respect all humankind
Those combined elements manifest as nothing short of a sonic invocation of the goddess, enacting a kind of reverse conditioning that manages, at once, to lull and shock her fellow femmes back into their own sovereign bodies — yet, now empowered to proclaim their own voices through the maelstrom and to expel the colonizing thought-streams imposed by a touchy-feely patriarchy.
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As noaccordion’s second single to drop in recent months “Room To Breathe” follows on the heels of the November release of the track “A Curious Time” featuring Ashel Seasunz (lyricist and vocalist of West African/West Oakland band Dogon Lights). Characterized by lo-fi beats, droning accordion vamps, and subversion-intoned reggae vocals, that track’s ominous lyrics conjured darkly poetic scenes of a civilization entranced by a technocratic media matrix’s masterfully spun illusions.
Taken as a whole, both “Room To Breathe” and “A Curious Time” featuring Ashel Seasunzs provide interesting examples of the consistent flow and wide range of new material that Indigo has had in the works over the past year while also foreshadowing the broad stylistic eclecticism and in-your-face subject matter that can be expected on noaccordion’s upcoming full-length album A Curious Soul, slated for release later this year.
lyrics
I need you to give me more room to breathe
If you can’t do that you will have to leave
Your thoughts and actions are hard to receive
Not sure, what your hoping to achieve
I promise you that I am not your type
Not interested in you and all your hype
I suggest you go home and smoke your pipe
Come back, when the timing is ripe
I’m here to make big changes on this earth
I’m helping humans finding their self-worth
It’s something that we all possess at birth
Go Home, expand your soul’s girth
We will not be silent
We will speak our mind
We will not be broken
We respect all human kind
We will not be silent
We will speak our mind
We will not be broken
We respect all human kind
My mission is so clear haven’t you heard
Respect the feminine is all the word
But you continue acting like a turd
I guess, to you it sounds absurd
It seems that you don’t understand my power
Prefer me to back down here and to cower
Like a fairy tale you’d lock me in a tower
Not now, I’ve made a different vow here
I’m here to show the femme what she deserves
Discarding all that crap which no longer serves
Sing praises and rejoicing in all her curves
Tough luck, if it gets on your nerves
Oakland-based music producer and performance artist Onah Indigo aka noaccordion dedicates her platform to amplifying
extraordinary voices in the Bay Area and beyond. As a multi-instrumentalist, she defies the limitations of genre by introducing club beats to underground MC’s or freaky variations on mainstream key patterns to techno and drum ‘n’ bass....more
Bay Area queer collective (the founders of Swagger Like Us) introduce their label with this bright electro house mini-compilation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 10, 2017
