One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful woman.
One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful girl.
But for today I am a child.
For today I am a boy.
This is what Anohni, at the time Antony Hegarty, sings, the founder of the New York group Antony and the Johnsons, in For today I’m a boy, part of their second album I am a bird now.
Graduating year 1977, born in England and grew up in California, she conquered artists along the lines of Franco Battiato, Bjork and Lou Reed.
There would be a lot to say on how remarkable this person and on the heavenly and baritone voice, characterised by a vibrating effect.
Some compare her magical voice to that of Nina Simone, she grew up with the myth that is Boy George and her voice is what helped her get through a tough period when at home she was forced to hide her sensibility and emotions, considered by her dad to be completely out of placed for a boy.
Her first step into the show world was in 1990, when she moved to New York and began to perform at the Pyramid Club with Blacklips, a show that had been put together in a few days in which she impersonated the androgynous drag queen Fiona Blue, inspired by Diamanda Galás and Klaus Nomi.
It’s in these clothes, waist cincher and shaved head, attending and immersing herself in the punk and drag scene of the East Village in New York, when she finds her perfect environment for what is only the beginning of her artistic identity search.
Exactly.
The search for her own identity.
It’s Painful, but she continues.
That began in high school when she was there, in the middle, “between the boys’ and the girls’ choir”.
But it’s in 1995 thar Anohni began to devote herself to her main passion, music.
And she does so with some former members of Blacklips with whom she then founded Antony and the Johnsons, a wonderful orchestra composed of electric bass, cello, violin and piano, which is named Marsha P. Johnson, African-American drag queen founder of a shelter for transvestites in New York who was found dead in 1962 in the Hudson River after a gay pride parade.
Thanks to the extraordinary, soothing, melancholic, intense voice of Anohni and to the dreamy sounds that narrate the search of own’s sexual identity, the Johnsons conquer the audience in no time and the fans include Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson and David Tibet, leader of Current 93.
And in the blink of an eye, Anohni, alone or with his orchestra, is to travel the world, to share important stages and affect partnerships, calling herself queer and continuing to write only in words that reflect her spirit and her torment.
For today I’m a boy, is a song full of hope and a sense of reality.
It’s the thought of a child who feels like a woman and imagines his future as his ultimate self, a woman.
It talks about the theme of gender identity without focusing on the pain of seeing in the mirror a body in which we do not identify, but instead it shines a light on the belief that things can change.
But for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.
One day I’ll grow up, I’ll feel the power in me.
One day I’ll grow up, of this I’m sure.
Often one confuses gender identity with sexual orientation, thinking that a gay man should necessarily feel like a woman. Well, here’s a spoiler: it doesn’t work that way.
And it’s a great thing that someone has decided to sing about this reality, to give it a voice (and what a voice).
When lyrics like this will not be an exception anymore, the musical world (but not only this one) will be a more complete place.
Anohni’s production meanwhile continues, relentless, without pressure, in a natural and sincere way, for over twenty years.
And it’s in February 2015 that she announced the release in 2016 of Hopelessness, the album under the pseudonym Anohni.
It will be a kind of debut for a new project, a new creature, a new sound and a new piece of the puzzle that is called infinite search for oneself.
Certainly, another album overflowing with feelings and emotions.
True ones.
And we will be waiting for her in Italy, on 12 July, in Collegno, at the Flowers Festival.
