Abiyah: Cincinnati Music Legend With *Still More to Come
On a beautiful autumn morning at the Mariemont Concourse, Women of Cincy sat down with Abiyah, a multi-genre singer, songwriter, recording artist, and musical muse. For more than 20 years, Abiyah has been engaging fans in Cincinnati and around the globe with her boundary-blurring musical styles of floetry, hip-hop, beatbox, indie-rock, and more. Listening to her music has been described as “like getting blitzed by Maya Angelou and Chuck D at the same time!” Meet Abiyah, a woman with a deep, distinctive laugh, who laughs often, and who will be rocking the musical scene in Cincinnati for years to come.
Interview by Ginny Taylor.
Photography by Chelsie Walter.
I love this description of you from your website, and I’m paraphrasing just a little bit here: “Take a Soul Train dancer from 1974-one of them sistas who didn’t care about cameras or Don Cornelius-well, if that sista made love to George Clinton and they had a baby girl and they let Patti Smith and Sister Carol raise that girl child in an embrace predating same-sex marriage debates, that girl child woulda grown up to be Abiyah.” But, assuming that didn’t happen, how did you discover your love of rhythm and music and words?
Yes, that quote is from Kathy Y. Wilson who used to write for CityBeat. I didn’t start writing songs and performing them until I was 31. I’m 53 now, but the basis of my songwriting was from poetry. So where we are here now, in Mariemont, is where I found my poetic voice. I had poems selected for the Cincinnati Public Library’s juried high school literary journal, The Seven Hills Review, back in the mid-80s. I always was intrigued by the liner notes of albums. I was fascinated by the cover art of records, and the liner notes. I would read everything on the back. So, you know, I think that is where it seeded perhaps.
Then, I guess in the late 90s, I interacted with someone in New York who was putting poetry to music. He was kind of in the avant-garde end of the poetry and hip-hop scene there. He was trying to establish the “floetry” movement, not like the group; the group came a few years after that. He was encouraging poets to put their words to music. It could be experimental or avant-garde hip-hop or whatever. I had some friends who were hip-hop producers here, and this is like when I’m 29 or 30 years old, and started doing poetry to their beats. He was like, “yeah, now just add a hook to your poem.” And then, voila, we have a song. So I think that kind of framed how I looked at my songwriting. I’m like, oh, I don’t have to change what’s coming out of me and how it’s coming out of me, because it’s there. So then I started singing.
That passion for music and then turning it into a career, how did that happen? Can you talk about how that happened?
It’s interesting. I’m very left-brain, right-brain balanced. I’m extremely logical. During the day, I’m a senior business information consultant. I’m a project manager and data tester, but then I’m also extremely creative. But I’m not meeting in the middle; I’m on the edges. I’m more on the avant-garde end of the creativity and some very extreme logic over here. What the logic does is, it informs my business acumen. And I think that’s number one what helped me, you know, like the marketing, the structure of everything, the booking the shows.
But Cincinnati has been very kind to me in being very receptive to my poetry and my songs. Like in 2002, I played the first MidPoint Music Festival. And CityBeat called us the most creative set of the Festival. One of the people in my group at the time, he took those beats, put them in like a sampler, and then played a slide guitar over them. I had a woman who was an electric violinist who was playing over those tracks live as well. He wanted to help me. He was like, “I really like your songs, and I’ll just help you get out there.” I had not been performing in the music scene; I had just been going to shows. That just popped off, and I got a great reception. I just really stuck with it then, and really looked at it more like a career. Obviously I have my full-time day job, but it’s something I’ve stuck with. Now that you’re asking me, I didn’t think I’d stick with it this long.
As a woman, have I been through some shit? I have, I have. I don’t know if any of those things made me stronger and able to endure, but I did endure. And here I am. It feels really good to be able to have that outlet. But also, it helps me connect with people who may have been in the position that I was in. I think that’s kind of why I can’t stop because I want to help others. None of us are fully healed. Anyone who says that is lying. But trying to get there. And I think that the business acumen has helped keep me going too, because if I know that I’m faltering on the creative side, there are other avenues.
In Detroit at the 2015 Allied Media Conference, you presented a strategy session called “Odd Woman Out: Being a Female Hip-Hop Artist and Promoter.” Talk about the challenges of being the odd woman out, and what strategies have been successful for you.
There are some things to not discuss because they’re somewhat traumatic, but I think one of the main strategies was to find other women in the national and global hip-hop community. I connected with a woman in England, but also the sistas in Detroit who were putting on this women in hip-hop conference as part of the Allied Media Conference at Wayne State University. It’s a very beautiful, strong, and supportive community that’s uplifting other women. Then also, not taking the “dude’s shit” is a good strategy. It’s hard, because some of the things they put us through. I had little break-out sessions, and the number one thing—and these were women of different sexual identities—but almost all of their number one complaints was sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Even then, in 2015, I don’t think I was ready to share a lot of that locally because of safety issues or whatever. But not going into too much detail, I would like to have it noted here that yes, there are men in Cincinnati in the hip-hop scene over the last 20-25 years who have done things that were not positive towards women. So I think that another thing was stepping out of the hip-hop scene as well. I mean like, I was flung into it because of how I started with the person in New York, and the poetry, and the hip-hop beat; even though I wasn’t truly a hip-hop artist, that’s how I got categorized. But then stepping outside of that, it was more like a clean break. I said to myself, “I’m done with this.” I had already been more successful in the “rock” scene, like indie rock or like electronic, who were very open to what I was doing. Are there the same issues in any music scene? There are, of course. But I felt more support because, like the title of the session, I wasn’t the odd woman out. There were lots of women musicians, all girl bands of all ages.
CincyMusic.com Ezra Waller described your music as: “It’s like getting blitzed by Chuck D and Maya Angelou at the same time!”
Bless his heart. I love when he said that!
Can you talk about that quote and how you respond to that?
That was in the very early to mid 00’s that Ezra said that. I think he meant the force behind my lyrics, getting back to impactful poetry like Maya Angelou. Then the whole “fight the power,” of Chuck D, like fighting misogyny. So I think that’s where he was going with that.
What do you love about the music industry here in Cincinnati?
I love how diverse it is. Could it use more diversity? Yes. But I am encouraged by the millennial and GenZ folks as well because they are really being creative, being more inclusive. And I do love how many women there are. My best friend, Dana Hamblen, is in three bands, The Fairmont Girls, in which she plays drums and co-leads singing; Culture Queer, where she also plays drums and co-leads singing and Darlene, where she plays bass and co-leads singing. She’s also my backing vocalist. So she’s been around for years. The Fairmount Girls is an all female indie rock outfit. There are a lot of women artists, and a lot of musicians of color in the indie rock scene now as well. So that is what I am looking forward to seeing grow and burgeon. Yeah, that’s the right word, burgeon. (Laughter)
As a professional musician, is there a performance or opportunity that stands out for you?
Oh, gosh. I really enjoyed opening for Big Freedia on Fountain Square, the unit from New Orleans. That was wonderful. But actually, now that I think about it, performing with Kid Lucky also stands out. He passed away in October of 2020 of cancer in New York. My friend Kid Lucky was an iconic beatboxer in New York, and he would put together vocal improv acapella orchestras that he would conduct. He had friends who were jazz singers. He had friends who were beatboxers. He had friends who were rappers. The SideWalk Cafe in the lower East side (it’s no longer open) was the home of the anti-folk folk movement. I performed there with him in 2009. Dana and I went up there, and we did an “Abiyah” set, and then I got to be in one of his little things. He would get maybe five to six people on the stage at a time, out of the whole pool of people he invited. Then he’d swap people out, so what we would do is kind of like hum melodies or vocalize melodies non-lyrically, and some people would beatbox, and then he’d be like, “you, you, you,” so he’s like literally conducting. It was wonderful at the time because I’d always wanted to do that. I’d been friends with him since 2000, and so to be able to do that was wonderful.
Is there a particular song you’re most proud of that you’ve written?
Gosh, I don’t know. There’s so many, and they vary as I’ve grown. I’ve been doing this for like 22 years. As I’ve grown, the flow has changed a little bit. I mean, I like the ones I’m working on now for my album. And they’re all different genres, so it’s hard to pick. Of my recent songs, I would say “Mirror Flower,” which is kind of like ambient type slow jam, kind of like massive attack. Warren Harrison produced that. I submitted that to Echoes, so we’ll see if John Diliberto will play that because it would fit that format.
Then I like “BLUP” which is the only video I’ve done, and I guess it could be termed noise-rap. But I’m not rapping; I’m doing floetry. The producer of my album, Eugenius, produced that song and also appeared on it. So I think there’s such a wide variety that I can fall in love with pretty much all of them.
Where do you look for creative inspiration when you need to be inspired?
Sometimes I struggle getting inspired, to be honest. I think because of some of the treatment I’ve received in the past in the music scene, that has dampened my inspiration at times. I’m like, why do I even want to write a song, nobody cares. There are people that do, but that’s what we tell ourselves. Especially during the pandemic, where we were having a lack of connection with each other. I work from home. I’m single, live by myself. I do struggle with loneliness at times. I feel like the most inspirational things are when I’m able to connect with other people and hear their stories and relate with others. That’s why my album is called Strangers Love Me.
I have a very small core group of solid friends, five or less. But I named my album Strangers Love Me because I go out a lot by myself. Sometimes I’ll meet people, and looking like I do, how I dress and my style, but also I guess my countenance is approachable as well, people come up to me all the time. In the grocery store, they’ll go like, “Oh, your hairstyle is so cute,” or “I love this or that.” So then I just start engaging them in conversation, and that’s what music helps me do, too, because I can connect with people like that, and those are more strangers. When I’m struggling with loneliness, I feel like I can go to the grocery store and feel the love if I need to, do you know what I mean? It’s not ego based at all. It’s heart-based.
Any encouraging words you’d like to share for young musicians?
Yeah, I think for younger folks in general, and maybe especially women, just be true to yourself. It’s hard. Understand that it’s hard. And recognize that it’s hard first. Because acting like it’s not isn’t helpful either. But when we do that, we can then identify ways to endure. There’s not a lot that you can’t get through; even though some things can seem pretty awful. If you look at the end game, which is that you’re able to connect with people. That’s what music does. I mean that’s what we’re doing. A lot of people do it for themselves. They just write songs at home and never release them. And that’s awesome, too. I would say just if you’re feeling that in you, then let it out in whatever way you can, and reach out to other folks. Find like-minds if you can. Know that you can be entirely different from any other musician you hear or like, or whatever. You can still shine. Yeah.
*What’s next for Abiyah?
I’m working on my album, so this is my first full-length. I’ve released an EP, and a few singles, and things like that. But this is my first full-length. I do have a small feedback circle for the demos as I’m writing them at home, and getting a lot of positive feedback. The songs are all over the place. The one I’m working on now is a punk song. It’s going to be called “Still,” and it’s about ageism against women performers in music. For example, when I saw Grace Jones perform in 2015 at AfroPunk in Brooklyn, she was I think like 71 or 72 at the time, and people were like, she’s still performing? Like there’s an expiration date? Do men get told that? They do, but not nearly on the same scale as women. Then also with the word still. We’re not sitting still. My son said once when people say, “I’m old,” that just means you’ve given up. Have I heard 25 year olds say they’re old and that they’ve given up? Sure. That’s at any age. So I’m here to show women especially that they can do anything at any age as long as they are able and capable.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel on this album now. It’s certainly not my last hurrah. But I’m writing it like it’s my last hurrah. I think you just got to get it all out. As we’ve seen during the pandemic or the societal turmoil right now, we’re not promised tomorrow. I live my life, especially in the last six months, like each day is my last.
Who is an influential woman in your life?
I would say as an artist, Grace Jones has always been since I was young; seeing her, and just being like woooow!I love James Bond movies and she’s in a James Bond movie, A View to a Kill, and she’s wearing Azzedine Alaia for the movie. I was really into avant-garde styles even in high school, and then to be able to get to see her live in 2015, eight headdress changes, oh my God. She is definitely one of the top female musicians.
Locally, my friend Dana. She’s very inspirational. Not just to me but to a lot of folks, whether they let her know or not. If they don’t, they should. She is such a ball of creativity, like never ending. Like that light will never be extinguished no matter what. I draw a lot of inspiration from her as well. Just creativity, style, music, everything. So I would say those are two of the main folks who are inspiring to me.
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