A Conversation With … imbi the girl
‘imbi the girl’ has constructed a name for themselves as an explorer of compassion for their younger-self, and their song-writing journey has followed suit with the release of their most recent EP ‘Back Then’. Starting out writing songs with their sibling, Imbi found their passion for empathetic story-telling through spoken-word poetry in high school and has since blossomed into an unapologetic self-love advocate through poetic lyricism. Their unique lyrics, and melodious, dreamy harmonies have carved a space for them within the Australian music scene, and have seen them support the likes of Sampha the Great, FKJ, and Odette, and collaborate with names like SUPEREGO and Genesis Owusu. Stay tuned this year, big things are coming for ‘imbi the girl’ and they can’t wait to share it with the world.
BYO: First things first, why songwriting? How did this form of creative expression find you?
IMBI: I have been singing since I was very, very little. Ive always enjoyed the act of engaging my vocal cords and putting music out there. I wrote a couple terrible songs with my sibling over the years of growing up. I sort of put it to the side because I was made aware that financial stability was the key to life and singing and songwriting could be a hobby. But I then picked it up again after I started writing spoken word poetry in year 9, and then started engaging more seriously with songwriting.
BYO: Can you tell us a little bit about your stage name, ‘imbi the girl’?
IMBI: I was experiencing the peak of my gender journey right around the time we launched the project. When I say ‘we’, I refer to myself and the person who was managing me at the time. I was also just starting to engage heavily in politics and really figure out what it was that I believe in and a key principle in that was feminism. At the time, I wasn’t identifying as a woman, but in the leading weeks I was like “this feels right, I want to be amplifying the voice of non-men, I wanna be championing that and being unapologetic about that”. I wanted the name to have some sort of political undertone. After everything launched and I came out to my close friends and eventually to my manager, there was this conversation of like “… fuck, we’ve just launched this project, what are we supposed to do now?!” [laughs]. I spoke to a lot of my queer trans friends about it and they all kind of had a similar perspective (which was along the lines of) language is just another colonial code. ‘Girl’ has connotations of weakness and naivety and being inferior. That’s something I wanted to reclaim and that I wanted to call my own and amplify, and also fuck around with. I’m gonna call myself ‘imbi the girl’, and I’m not a woman, but I can be a girl if I want to. That doesn’t mean that my gender is female, that means that I’m playful, that means that I’m exciting, that means that I have a positive outlook on the world if that’s what I want it to mean. Sort of just messing around with general ideas of what is and isn't a ‘girl’.
BYO: What has been your biggest challenge so far as a musician in the Aus music scene?
IMBI: Biggest challenge? Probably leaving management. I was managed by a cis, white man, and the longer I exist without him on board the more I realise just how differently I perceived myself. I thought I was being treated a particular way because people respected me, but in actual fact I think people respected him. It would be that, and also being a ‘diversity tick-in-the-box’ on lineups. It’s so painfully obvious when that happens, and it happens way too often. I feel like sometimes I’m just there so that they can say “we have a gender-diverse line-up! We have all these diverse people here!”.
BYO: How do collaborations with names like ‘SUPEREGO’ and ‘Genesis Owusu' happen?
IMBI: I actually met both of them just through gigging and sharing a stage together. I was doing the ‘Listen Out’ national tour and was in Perth and was thinking about how I could take advantage of my time there because there are so many amazing creatives all over Australia. They (‘SUPEREGO’) popped into my head and I got my then-manager to reach out to them and hook that one up. With Genesis it’s a bit of a funny story because I started working with his brother, Citizen Kay. I wrote this one song, and we were in the studio together producing it, and I was like “oh, this needs a feature” and in my head I was saying “I really want Genesis”. I looked at him and sort of just asked “would it be weird if I asked Kofi (Genesis) to jump on this?” and he was like “yeah, but don’t go through me” [laughs]. So yeah, it got hooked up through that and then made it happen. That’s one of my favourite tracks ever. Canberra is underrated; there is good shit going on there.
BYO: What narrative/s are you exploring in your most recent EP, ‘Back Then’?
IMBI: It was actually a self-reflective tool for me to think about childhood and childhood trauma and how that impacted and continues to impact the person that I am today. Just the idea that everybody goes through some element of trauma or traumatic experience when they are young because they're fresh to the world and shit it fucking intense. Obviously to varying degrees, but I used the EP to look back on it all and try and make something beautiful from something that was chaotic.
BYO: It feels as though your songs act as an outlet to poeticise the trials and tribulations of not only living, but surviving as a truly empathetic human. How does the process of writing and producing music affect your day-to-day?
IMBI: It’s a constant thought in my head all the time. I can be anywhere at any given moment and something will pop into my head that I know is going to be a great song and I can either choose to engage with that and write it down if I have the space and time and energy to do so, or I need to let it go. That’s a really exhausting thing, because obviously I’m emotionally attached to the things I’m creating. It gets exhausting to have that on the brain all the time. That being said, would I change it for anything? Absolutely fucking not [laughs]. I love my process. I think it’s beautiful and strange and I cant understand it and part of me loves that. As exhausting as it is, I don’t imagine that I would be less exhausted if I didn't have it.
BYO: What is the most rewarding part of making music?
IMBI: At the moment, I have been doing a lot of collaborative work. I guess all my music is collaborative to an extent because I’ve been working with these other producers, but I think the connections formed in the creative process is one of my favourite parts. Being able to sit down and facilitate a space that is safe enough for two or more people to feel, or be vulnerable and authentically express themselves and engage in creative expression without the need to dull themselves down…there’s something so divine in that. That’s one of my favourite parts. The other one would definitely be the catharsis that comes with writing every song. A lot of the time, when Im actually writing it, I don’t understand what it’s about. Its only after I reread or re-sing the whole thing over am I like “oh shit, I’ve been trying to say this for so long and I haven’t been able to, and now it’s on paper and in computer and making noise” [laughs]. So that’s really cool.
BYO: Where is 2020 taking you?
IMBI: There is some really cool shit in store, I can’t say too much. But, there are a couple of amazing collaborative projects that I’m working on at the moment …