ANTONYMS AND ANGELS
Anohni, previously known as Antony, has released a stirring new album
WHILE this year’s Academy Awards were embroiled in controversy because of the (understandable) #OscarsSoWhite saga, a less publicised drama played out on uber-cool, sort-of-leftfield-but-notreally websites. Best Original Song nominee Anohni — the second openly transgender person to be nominated for an Oscar — wrote an open letter declaring she would boycott the ceremony after she was not invited to perform.
While this might sound somewhat petulant, artists who weren’t even nominated were invited to perform — but there was no room on the glitzy stage for one of the most daring, original and talented artists of the past two decades or so.
In her searing letter, Anohni wrote that she knew she “wasn’t excluded from the performance directly because I am transgendered”, but “if you trace the trail of breadcrumbs, the deeper truth of it is impossible to ignore. Like global warming, it is not one isolated event, but a series of events that occur over years to create a system that has sought to undermine me, at first as a feminine child, and later as an androgynous transwoman. It is a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed to crush our dreams.”
She continued: “I was told during my 20s and 30s there was no chance someone like me could have a career in music, and this was reiterated by so many industry ‘professionals’ and media outlets that I lost count.”
Formerly known by her birth name Antony Hegarty, Anohni earned critical acclaim — and the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize — as part of her project Antony & the Johnsons. Her mournful, fragile and heartbreaking vocal style coupled with a minimalist sound didn’t make for background music at a party, but was perfect for dancing alone with the darkest parts of your soul.
After collaborating with artists like Bjork and Lou Reed, and going silent on the album front for six years, Antony Hergarty officially returned last month as Anohni with the release of the record Hopelessness.
The world’s first glimpse into Hopelessness was the stomping anti-ecocide anthem 4 Degrees, a far cry from the chamber pop of her past. The song’s release coincided with the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference and had grim lyrics like: “I wanna hear the dogs crying for water/ I wanna see fish go belly-up in the sea/ And all those lemurs and all those tiny creatures/ I wanna see them burn.”
Our destruction of the environment isn’t the only thing Anohni sings about: the National Security Agency comes under fire in Watch Me (“Watch me in my hotel room/ watch my outline as I move from city to city/ watch me watching pornography . . ./ I know you love me/ ’Cause you’re always watching me/ protecting me from evil/ protecting me from terrorism/ protecting me from child molesters”).
Barack Obama’s presidency also come under Anohni’s spotlight. She added some star power to Hopelessness when she released the video for Drone Bomb Me — a love song slash protest song — starring Naomi Campbell lip syncing the lyrics while slowly slipping into a teary state.
One of the catchiest songs on the album also has the most intense subject matter — crimes that are punishable by death, including homosexuality: “Execution/ it’s an American dream/ Like the Chinese and the Saudis/ The North Koreans and the Nigerians.”
Violence is a recurring theme, particularly when it’s linked to patriarchy, as on the track Violent Men, where Anohni repeats the line (while sounding like a distorted Nina Simone): “We will never again give birth to violent men.”
In her anti-Oscars letter, she declared fiercely: “I enjoy that wild and reckless exhilaration that comes from naming my truth as best as I can; it is what Nina Simone might have called a ‘boon’. I was not groomed for stardom . . . As a transgendered artist, I have always occupied a place outside of the mainstream. I have gladly paid a price for speaking my truth in the face of loathing and idiocy.”
That’s a message many of us can get behind, transgender or not. LS