Anohni Photo: YouTube screenshot
English-born, New York-based singer, songwriter, and visual artist Anohni has released a new album as Anohni and the Johnsons - a throwback to her previous artist name, Antony and The Johnsons.
Music 101's Charlotte Ryan spoke with Anohni before the release of her new album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross.
Marsha P Johnson adorns the cover of Anohni and the Johnsons' new album. Photo: Supplied
The album is a tribute to legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, whose striking photograph adorns the album cover.
The photograph "shows resilience and depth of spirit and depth of knowledge", according to the artist, who says she was told that "a record cover is always an opportunity to show the most beautiful possible thing".
Anohni met Marsha just before her death in 1992, as a young person new to New York City.
"I didn't know her, but I was an admirer, like I was a kid in the city and I'd been directed to her by my elders," she says.
"And she was considered sort of a saint in her lifetime. She was called Saint Marsha, that was something assigned posthumously."
Describing her as "the embodiment of what I'd call Jesus as a girl", Anohni says overall, Marsha was known and admired for her generosity in New York's Greenwich Village.
"As a person who was living on very sparse means, she'd be begging for money on the street or panhandling and then someone would come up to her with a need and she'd just give all her money to that person."
My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross is Anohni's first album in 13 years - aside from music, she is also involved in theatre and performing arts but says despite working in multiple mediums, her message remains the same.
"All the work is talking about and moving through and addressing the same concerns," she says.
"Because it's all my feeling, grappling with what's really happening and grappling with my agency and my complicity in the face of what's happening … an exploration of my porousness, a deeper truth about my physical relationship to the manifest world."
And in the manifest world currently, LGBT people are facing numerous attacks, particularly in the state of Florida.
"There's this assault on vulnerable members of the community, something that's almost resonant of a level of bullying and violence against people that pose no harm, a mobilization of a kind of lynching mentality that is very deeply frightening.
"Last week in Florida they signed a law saying you could retract healthcare from anyone who was gay. That's an amazing line to cross because healthcare is a human right.
"It's like the kind of thing the Nazis were doing in the incremental assaults on Jewish people before they started rounding people up."
A pride parade in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers have passed anti-LGBTQ laws. Photo: Joe Raedle / AFP
Anohni says as polarisation increases, some media are helping to fan the flames while distracting from more important issues that are harder to deal with.
"I think it's a malevolent campaign to groom people through the media to seek to blame vulnerable members of the society rather than attempt a more frightening reality," she says.
"[Rupert] Murdoch has created an incredible monstrous force for disinformation and disruption of wellness. He's just destroyed so many of the connections that would lead people to a more collective understanding of what's really happening.
"A lot of this is also a final death cry of a patriarchal superstructure that honestly seeks to end its own life rather than succumb to a different way of organising ourselves collectively."
Anohni says this bigger issue is harder for people to understand, as it's too frightening.
As such, she says it's easier to find a scapegoat to blame as a distraction.
"This is stuff that we thought we'd put to bed, because we had put it to bed," she says.
"Reproductive rights, we put it to bed. All this bullshit about gender variance, it's a non-issue. It harms nobody, it's a beautiful aspect of humanity."
With her new album, blessed by Saint Marsha's image, Anohni says she is trying to engage in a way that's meaningful and goes beyond her demographic as a transgender person.
"As someone from my demographic that has access to any kind of broader platform, that's allowed to talk about infrastructure rather than just myopically create a conversation about my own demographic," she says, "I can talk to the world about the structures that are hurting all of us."
Anohni performs in Denmark in 2017. Photo: Michael Svenningsen / AFP
