Written by Thea Martynska
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: First of all, where are you from, tell us a little bit about yourself!
India (Obedeya): I’m 23, I grew up in Morocco, and then once I came back to England my bus got stolen so we moved to Hastings to live my grandparents. I’ve always made music, but I first started as a live musician, so like guitar, mainly a vocalist, I really enjoyed doing jazz style vocals. Since moving to London, it has just been about dance music really.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: so why did you move to London and when did you move?
India: so, I moved to London in October last year. When you’re from a small town I think everyone has that feeling of oh my god I need to get out, because you’re just seeing the same people over and over again, and creative wise it’s hard to find people who are on your level. There’s a lot of music going on in Hastings but it’s very male centric like most of the bands are male musicians and it usually covers the genres of jazz and country, which is great in its own respect but not really something I could fit into.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: when you came to London did you find a good female community?
India: I’ve definitely had more of a female community since moving up here, however I do feel in the production scene for like jungle, drum and bass I still have yet to find my community. I understand how important it is and I’m really working towards it. I have met some cool people like Midrib who I’ve made music with. I did some MCing for SLM (Sexy lady massive) for a little bit which was nice to be part of a female community but i guess now I’m looking for producers.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: We get this comment with a lot with people we’ve talked to, mainly when it comes to producing.
India: Exactly, in my university in all my classes it’s literally me and one other lady in a class of about 16! I guess it needs to be more encouraged, I’m not really sure why women aren’t getting into it, it could be that they don’t see it as accessible enough.
I often feel pushed back into the background when making music with my male friends. I feel like with dance music there’s such a rigidity to the way that things work, it’s a difficult community to be part of sometimes. I’ve started making music with Izzy (Pillow princess), we connected after your event. Working with people like Izzy is just so refreshing, she’s an amazing flute player and being able to take that and make it into dance music is so exciting. I guess it just about not looking for specific people but working with female musicians as a whole!
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: What drew you to dance music?
India: The first time I started producing, was because obviously like being a vocalist you want to be able to support yourself. Sometimes you don’t get a say in what’s happening in the music as a vocalist in a band. I felt like stylistically i never had as much say as I want to, and I have so many ideas to give! I got logic originally and started making weird vocal ethereal stuff. I can’t remember who, but somebody sent me a folder of break beats and just slowly I started trying to figure out what I liked, for ages I was making break beat without even knowing I was making break beat. I guess it kind of happened unintentionally at first. From moving to London, I just think like the city scape and the sounds you hear, like a train moving is so repetitive and has a rhythm to it and I guess I just started pulling influence from that sort of thing. In a field in Hastings there might be some birds or a little sheep, it just became a little bit more industrial. It’s also the same sort of time I went to my first Distant Planet and just felt this sense of energy that I hadn’t felt at another event ever. For me as a vocalist this is such a great way to take away the perfectionism of music as well, I felt like a lot of my compositions before dance music were like really emotional and I’m not prepared to release my inner thoughts.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: So how long have you been doing this for then?
India: So, I started mixing in February and I got my vinyl turntables, luckily my dad gave me this massive stack of records which is mostly like psychedelic rock but there were a lot of jungle and speed garage in there. I had about 20 records I could mix before I even started looking for records. I’ve been producing dance music since about last October.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: What brings you joy in your journey and your career when you make music?
India: What brings me joy about it is the idea that I can share my knowledge in production with other people and get other women involved. I would love to host production seminars, not to say that I’m very good right now aha. Feeling like I’m part of a community and releasing music without all the stress of going through a label as well. Everything’s quite close knit within this community right now, everyone gets to know each other, and I really like that.
IDONTWANNAMESSTHISUP: So, what can we see from you in the future?
India: I’ve got a backlog of tracks right now and I’m waiting until my mixing and mastering skills are good enough to release them. I would really like to do an Ep; I’d love to start a podcast to do with production just talking about like topics to do with women in the industry. There are quite a lot of opportunities, but I hear about them after the deadline all the time. I feel like if there was a platform that could share all the opportunities and tips and tricks to do with music or even just samples. I feel like people always wanna get into jungle/drum and bass, but they can’t find the samples that you need, so I’d love to create something like that. I’ve recently got a press of vinyl it’s a track called Pornstar, and DJ B pressed it, that was one of my things on my bucket list. At the moment I’m just mixing it in my sets. Hopefully one day I’ll be selling it.
Obedeya played at our arts and music event at Avalon café in Bermondsey and we can’t wait to have her back at our future events!
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