It’s seven forty-five.
Monique is extremely punctual, as always Centrale is all a hustle and bustle of every age and colour.
In the background loud chitchat, the radio of the bar, the noise of cups and spoons to mix the sugar.
Monique Mizrahi is a bassist, charango player, songwriter, educator and supporter of LGBT reality.
And along with Gioele Pagliaccia, a drummer deep into in funk and jazz, and the multi-instrumentalist remix maestro Gigi Funcis (Eterea Post Bong Band), they are Honeybird & the Monas.
As Honeybird, Monique has performed throughout Europe and in May 2015 she released the album Out Comes Woman, in which she recounts her experience of coming out as a bisexual.
Two weeks ago, on March 28, WM was released, an EP signed as Honeybird & the Monas.
Four songs which a celebration of women’s emancipation, of bisexuality, of therapy, of solitude and of the divine feminine that flows in our veins.
With her, who the night before shared the stage with the Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti at Alcatraz, I hope I’ll be able to talk about all this.
Although we don’t have a lot of time.
Let’s start with your music Monique, with the disk that you released last year, Out Comes Woman.
For me, music and activism are related. Through music I have always been able to communicate things that I could not express in words.
Out Comes Woman is my solo album but also my coming out as a bisexual.
I felt that this was a very clear way for me to publicly come out. Ten years ago I tried to come out but I was not clear myself and my parents would not listen to me, everything was a bit vague.
This record was an important moment for you.
Yes, I have been living in New York for two years now and that’s where I started going to the LGBT centre and I started to feel less alone, especially as a bisexual.
Ever since I was thirteen years I felt inside that I was a bisexual, so that I was interested in women and men and everything in between, both emotionally, sexually and spiritually, but I felt very lonely.
I felt like this for twenty years, and when I went to live in New York and I started to go to the LGBT centre, it gave me courage to make this happen and to proudly let my parents and friends know that real pride is.
I have linked all this to the disc, in which there is for example a song that says, come out, come out I won’t love you less, and this was specifically referred to my parents: I thought that if I am myself with them we can understand each other and love each other more.
You can interact differently.
That’s right, to deeper into discussions allows us to get to know ourselves better, after all this album is very focused on my identity and to get to know myself better.
I often think back to myself as a thirteen year old when I was feeling very lonely; it’s important to communicate with younger people who feel either bisexual or anything that is not heteronormative, it’s important to tell them that there are many roads and that everything is allowed.
There is a phrase that I really like, you are not alone, you are not broken, you are not wrong, that is very strong.
And the new work, WM, how did it come about?
Ah… good question… (Monique laughs)
It’s very attached to Out Comes Woman but the same issues are still very strong, fluid, evidently encouraged by the previous disc. You feel an adrenaline and happiness rush, as if there had been a push and now you feel more free.
Of course.
Let’s say that you can already hear that from the name of the band, Honeybird & the Monas; I play with two guys from Veneto and we had been joking about mona that I didn’t even know what it meant, then I discovered that the mona in Venetian dialect is the vagina and that it also means moron. This made me reflect and I wanted to open a dialogue to enhance the importance of the woman, and not only the mona.
Because there is a lot of sexism, but I actually found that there is a strong ancestral power within us women that is something that is underestimated, dismissed as if it didn’t exist.
But I know it exists and this four tracks EP is linked to the power of the ancestral woman, the sacred feminine.
In Brooklyn we organise meetings with the Full Moon also to discover this force we have within us. We women are stronger than we imagine and it’s not just a matter of saying it in words, but we have to believe it, and the more we communicate, the more we reinforce this.
The first track of the EP is called Sono Una Donna (I’m a woman) and it’s the first that I write in Italian; the song expresses the feeling of saying that I am enough, that I don’t need you; it’s a son about female empowerment.
And regarding independence. We’re used to always lean on someone and it’s difficult to find the instinct and the spirit of being alone. The positive solitude after all, is one of the album issues, right?
Loneliness is a way to know yourself.
In English we use the term women empowerment and there isn’t a translation in Italian that I like, however it means finding that power within ourselves.
We could talk about women emancipation, but it indicates more the emancipation itself rather the very self-discovery. The album is very focused on believing in yourself.
The last song, Under The Moonlight is dedicated to the full moon and the cyclical nature of life.
In the last few months I have been following my menstrual cycle and is something that actually teaches a lot; we are linked to the cyclical nature of life, the moon, the earth, the plants, all this is extremely well connected, and even during live concerts I try to recognize and talk about the cyclical nature and cosmic connection that we have between us women and human beings, a very essential and carnal concept but that actually exists and that would be good for everyone to reflect on.
There is discrimination against women in the music business?
You lived in Rome, but you’re American and now you’re back there. Is there any difference in the way female are treated in the musical universe in Italy and in America?
Definitely a female musician in Italy is a very big challenge and that’s because unfortunately there is in my opinion a considerable prejudice linked to the Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition.
We have a very strong cultural heritage.
Yes, indeed there is the Vatican, a very strong rooted concept of sin. The woman who is a musician is submitted to a very strong judgment, and now that I have lived for two years in New York I see it even more.
In the past, as a female musician I didn’t give my femininity much importance, I was still myself, I told myself it didn’t matter to give ourselves importance, I was just as strong.
And I hid behind a shield.
I did not want to be vulnerable.
And instead I’m finding out that the vulnerability is what causes us to be stronger.
It allows one to reach a greater awareness of oneself.
For example, yesterday I shared the stage with Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti at Alcatraz and there were like 1 500 people, was very full, and then five guys there with me.
In the past I would not have thought about the fact that I am a women, while yesterday it felt like real pride and I said to myself YEAH!, I put on my sequined dress and told myself, Come on women! portraying exactly that pride of being a woman, contrary to what I was doing before.
When I had my first trio based in Rome we were two women and a man, and there were very few bands who had a woman as the leader of the group.
You were a novelty?
Yes, I was a novelty and talking about it gave me strength.
We must make ourselves heard and give courage to the teenagers, telling them that they can do it.
One shouldn’t ignore the judgment, man’s critical eye, but at the same time you have to hold your head high and say it’s me, I’m here, I do this and I believe in myself.
In New York it’s different, I think in general there is more appreciation for women, I’m thinking of the feminist movement, the suffragettes, it’s been around longer there and it’s actually felt more.
But there are also more women who have this empowerment, the ones who are like I am me and that’s what I do and I am inviting you to listen to me.
Even tying to link all this to the LGBT movement I feel that there is something more there, the clarity on identity or femininity or bisexuality or whatever brings a major audience.
In Italy, feminism began during the war but women for a long time have underestimated it without being aware of themselves and what they can be, without being bound to a stereotype, to a precise model, often distorting the concept of feminism in an invective against the male figure.
I was just about to tell you that our stickers say I love your vagina, symbolising that empowering a woman doesn’t necessarily mean underestimating a man, but to simply make people understand that we come from a matriarchal society, that there is mother earth and that we all come from the mona.
Sometimes in the Full Moon meetings we say that the uterus is not a place to hold back pain, but a place to give birth to the possibilities of life, ideas, beauty.
But at the end of the day there is femininity in all of us and it’s nice to invite and help a man to understand his own.
You are from Los Angeles and at one point you came to Italy. Where have you lived? How was this change? What was it like to be a foreigner in Italy?
I had a great experience of integration, Los Angeles is a city of massive distances while in Italy there is this human warmth, a closeness, I deeply wanted to experience in this society.
At the same time, however, when I came here it was as if I had moved away from my being American. I was able to soon have my citizenship thanks to my father who is Italian: for me having the ID card and the Italian documents was fantastic, and my being American was like a weight on my shoulders and so I moved away from it.
As I learned to accept myself, my American side, and I am now more at peace with myself.
Have you found your dimension, then?
Yes, I found my dimension and this B is in everything, not only in my being bisexual.
Certainly for the stranger in general there is a wary eye.
There is the foreigner who comes here to create art and those coming for example from Syria, from places where there is war, and I see significant discrimination in Europe to those coming from the south.
Discrimination against those in need.
Yes, of those in need.
I personally respect everyone and I always feel feelings of equality towards everyone.
It’s a basic thing for me.
Discrimination in these cases is due to a policy that seeks to put the blame on those who come into the country, and I really feel this, my family ran away from Egypt because we are Jews.
You have lived through it yourself. It’s hard when you’re in a state of need and needing to move from one place to another, integrate, create something new and simultaneously accept one’s diversity and having to accept it.
This discrimination against those who are not moving to look for success but to look for basic things like food, shelter, work is a problem in Italy just as much as it is in the US.
I really do think about this discrimination a lot but it’s something that I don’t currently deal with in my activism, it’s something that is beyond my ability to go investigate.
But I do care, I care about it so much. I wrote songs in various languages, for example in Hebrew and in Arabic, looking for ways to communicate with a large part of the audience.
It’s a very broad topic and I always invite everyone to be as open as possible, to put into practice that thing called listening, which is the basis of everything.
We know it’s hard to listen to those with whom we have a less developed relationship, with whom we understand each other less.
With whom we have less resemblance.
Yes, right. What I try to do is to always listen to the other whoever he or she is and I’m still learning a lot.
The LGBT centre that I attend, I go there at least once every two weeks, we also have a meeting that is called Bi Request which is dedicated to the bisexual community in New York and there are many voices of different people, there is one who is a veteran, one who is trans, one who is a Catholic.
It’s a moment that represents a community of different people and different situations. And this opens me up a lot and I learn more and more by listening to the voices of the other people: I think it’s the starting point to try to have less discrimination and sexism for everyone, for foreigners and for people who are from a new city or country.
We say goodbye.
The train takes Monique to Rovereto, where there is another stop of her Italian tour.
Next week she will already be back in Brooklyn.
