SOUND STYLE
An electro-groove singer finds her flow
Afew days after she saw the blockbuster smash “Black Panther,” Nnedi Nebula Agbaroji, lead singer of local electro-groove trio Trouble in the Streets, was still sorting through her emotions. As a firstgeneration Nigerian American, she was astonished by the movie’s depiction of African culture, “represented in the spectrum that I grew up in: color, celebration and transparency.”
The message she took from the film intersected with ideas she already was incorporating in her new practice as a holistic life coach. “We all belong to each other, no matter your color, culture, disposition or craft,” she wrote on Facebook. “We have to look out for one another because in the end, we all want and deserve to be here on this earth.”
The last few years have been a time of transition for Agbaroji, whose band plays South by Southwest side parties on March 12 at Hotel Vegas, March 13 at Empire and March 16 at St. Elmo Brewing.
After five years working for a local nonprofit, Foundation Communities, the 2012 University of Texas grad’s music and performance art began to
demand too much of her time, and she moved into a more flexible side hustle in temporary catering. Now, she spends many of her days working as a chef at the Texas Athletics Nutrition Center.
And though she made a name for herself as a backup singer, first for the Lisa Marshall Band and later for Mama K & the Shades, she’s front and center — a commanding presence — in Trouble in the Streets. Onstage, she allows her voice to rise from a soulful croon into a howl, into raw shouting over a turbulent vortex of rhythm provided by bass player Andy Leonard and drummer Bobby Snakes.
She describes the band’s sound as “motivational rage.” It’s aggressive and raw. Inhabiting the music is a cathartic rush, she says. But her new stage persona came with an unexpected consequence.
“I realized I was getting typecast into this really hard, edgy, very asexual type of person, and I was like, ‘I’m actually a really girlie girl,’” she says with a laugh. “I do performance art. I’m a hooper. I’m a girl.”
But it’s a strange time to be a girl in the public sphere. “It’s getting harder and harder to define what that is for yourself, because other people are telling you, ‘Oh, well you don’t have to be girlie, you can be anything you want,’ but what if I really want to be girlie? Whatever that means to me.”
She credits Ghislaine Jean, the artist better known as Qi Dada Ras, half of the husband-wife duo Riders Against the Storm, with helping her tap back into her femininity. The couple’s monthly Body Rock parties foster a sense of community, and in that space she felt free to release.
“I’m a dancer, so being able to express that without judgment,” she says, “without unsolicited advances from other people, just feeling safe, in a safe space … (surrounded by) beautiful people getting to do the same thing. …” The liberation was dreamy and it helped her lose inhibi-