Black lives ‘Join the conversation... it’s everybody’s’
‘DIVERSITY is inviting someone to the party. Inclusion is asking them to dance.’
Ngaio Anyia is a musician, writer, inclusion consultant and force of nature. One of the people behind the Black Lives Matters march in Bristol, she has spent her life campaigning for inclusion.
For her, the world has failed other women who look like her over and over again, and she believes not enough positive and authentic stories are told about black people.
She claims black women face the brunt of expectations, demands and criticism.
“We are expected to be strong and carry this emotional load but still remain poised, and then carry other people through at the same time,” she said.
Last year, Ngaio launched her EP We Fly, which featured her critically acclaimed track Blackbird – an insight into her experience as a mixed-race woman growing up in the UK.
Her dual heritage is something she feels was often a battle for her growing up – never knowing where she belonged.
“In school, I was always this bridge between ‘real black people’ and white people because I was the safe option.
“White people would come and ask me questions about race.
“I was like, ‘ What do I do with this?’ I didn’t fit in anywhere.
“As a mixed-race person, I didn’t know where I stood in the conversation of race.
“I knew my privilege as a lighter skinned person, but then I realised it was my conversation to have as much as anyone else, because I can use my privilege to have that conversation in other places where they may not usually take place.
“Don’t not be a part of the conversation because you don’t think it’s yours. This conversation is everybody’s.
“Some white people say they don’t understand so they can’t have the conversation, but it’s that they haven’t taken the time to unpick their privilege, put themselves in the shoes of the unprivileged and do their research.
“Now is the time to have those discussions – the whole world is talking about it.
“It’s great people are talking about race more now, but people need to also begin recognising there are differences between being black African, black British, black Jamaican and everything in between.
“There’s so many nuances and we need to start getting to them,” Ngaio said.
She grew up with her white mother and they moved to Wales when Ngaio was five years old.
Her being treated differently to her mother made her realise that she was viewed as the other.
This was another factor which contributed to her recent business initiative, Beyond The Hashtag, a space created in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, standing in solidarity in the virtual world through resources.
Ngaio said: “I think I was the only brown person in my town.
“There was a lot of bullying. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I would go running in the fields and play a lot of music.
“In school, kids did not want to play with me. During break time the boys would choke me in the gym.
“Teachers would tell me to stop copying other students’ work and would tell me I wasn’t smart enough.
“I didn’t realise it was racism until I was seven years old and I told my mum.
“We spoke to the headmaster, and my mum said, ‘ When she first joined this school she would come home laughing and now my daughter’s changed and is so quiet. She doesn’t even speak anymore’.
“My headmaster replied, ‘There was nothing wrong with my school until you brought your inner city ghetto into it’.
“All my confidence had disappeared. I didn’t know how to get back on track.”
When she moved to Bristol aged nine, she was met with the questions of her classmates about her identity, but she also channelled this pain through her love of music.
At one stage in her life, Ngaio worked for a big news corporation but realised it was predominantly led by middle-aged white males and the stories being made were also for that audience.
There is not one black woman I have spoken to recently who has said she’s OK. It’s too much – people need to start stepping up and supporting us
Ngaio Anyia
“I realised something had to change,” she said.
“I fought with my editors when we were working on a story about what was happening in Boko Haram with young girls being taken.
“I would tell them that we needed to continue running stories on the subject matter, and they would turn around and say, ‘There’s no information on it to print’.
“I was hired through a diversity programme – this is what I was here to do, but I wasn’t being listened to.
“That’s when I started writing Blackbird because I wanted to tell our stories in a relatable way.
“When news stories were told about us, it would always be violence and corruption stories.”
Ngaio is known for her bassheavy DJ sets and her powerhouse vocal range, and Blackbird oozes intricate jazz harmonies, African percussion and truth-laden spoken word.
Through her music, she confronts the politics of black bodies, while poetically unravelling her mixed-race identity, in a five-track EP housing a lifetime of lived experiences.
A short film for her song Blackbird will be released on the first anniversary of her EP release on November 1.
It encompasses the adornment of traditional African cloth in Bristol’s Ashton Court Mansion, a Grade II* listed estate that is representative of the disparate distribution of wealth and inequality in a city deeply tied to the slave trade and built from the riches of slavers. Its significance is maintained throughout the short film.
On the topic of her song, she said: “Blackbird is about the strength black women have to carry.
“We are always being told we’re too much, too this, too loud, too sexual and we are never protected, and whilst people are disrespecting us we’re told we’re not allowed to talk about it.
“With Blackbird, I was like this is about the fact that we need to be listened to and we cannot allow society to affect our mental health.
“There is not one black woman I have spoken to recently who has said she’s OK. It’s too much – people need to start stepping up and supporting us.
“I’m not gonna keep telling you how you can support me. When the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum this year, everyone was saying ‘What can I do?’ and my answer was ‘Go and listen to my EP, go and read what I’ve written – I’ve been doing this’.”
» To mark Black History Month, the Bristol Post is shining the spotlight on black-led businesses across the city.
We aim to cover everything from the importance of representation, the impact on their communities and the effects of the pandemic on their businesses. If you know of a black-owned business that should be featured, let us know.
While highlighting these businesses, we recognise that it’s important that we represent black people within the media all year round and not just during one month of the year.