Ears of Maize: I’m Ears of Maize on 90.7 FM KALX Berkeley, and sitting down here in conversation with Say She She coming to the Bay at August Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, January 27th. It’s my pleasure to be in conversation with y’all. So again, I want to thank you for the time and I also wanna congratulate you on the new 2025 release Cut & Rewind. And not only that, but your discography and your past records of Silver and Prism have been on my turntable since they dropped. So again, thanks for joining me in conversation today.
Piya Malik: Thank you so much for having us, and that’s really cool. I’d love to hear that you guys have been spinning the record since, uh, day one.
Ears of Maize: Oh my God, I, I can’t get enough of your sound. Silver in 2023 was my record of the year.
Piya Malik: Yay!
Ears of Maize: Absolutely. And too, there’s a lot of crossover for me in sort of finding your music and the sound that y’all have. Just the musicality and the musicianship, as well as sort of the acrobatics of what you’re doing on the vocal side of things– it hits, in a way that I don’t see music really being made in the current tense. I know I’ve seen a lot of influence that you list with Nile Rodgers and Chic, but how do you sort of see it in– especially that sort of musicality side of things, of making music, but with real people, real instrumentation? How did you get here, or what does it mean to you in sort of the present scene?
Piya Malik: We did name the band as an homage to Nile Rodgers in the sense of, you know, “c’est chi chi” in French as this really geeky, nerdy, bilingual homophone, and it’s a word play that means “it’s chic” and then it’s a haptic to him. But really it’s not so much about the band or the music as a direct influence ’cause actually I don’t think it is. I think he’s so inspiring in the sense that he is a writer and a producer, you know, and a musician that plays across all different genres and that no matter what has happened in his life – if you read his autobiography, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that – he still chose to like dedicate his life to making joyful music that brings, um, joy into the space and uplifting spirit that no matter what’s going on, [laughs] it feels like there’s a space to dance and to celebrate. And that notion that we are making spaces that are in our own way protest spaces. We can protest and have a good time, and we can have solidarity and not be exhausted by the end of it, but be energized by that.
Nya Brown: Having a good time is a protest. [Laughing]
Piya Malik: Yeah! Especially, especially when it’s us having a good time. They don’t want us to have a good time.
Nya Brown: No.
Piya Malik: The black and brown bodies out there are having a good time. It’s something that’s like, you know, being massively shut down, so–
Nya Brown: Yeah.
Piya Malik: Yeah. It’s more about that. So I would say the musical influences are very different to that. You know, of course we play with the Orgone rhythm section and we chose them as our counterparts because there is this insane amount of funks that sound– the energy just, it oozes out of them from the Meters to James Brown. You know, those are things that we love. But also we love the idea that we can bring in some of the classical influence, whether it’s Maria Callas, or arias that we learned when we were little that, uh, inspired us from The Flower Duet and from Lakmé. And how do you bring that into contemporary music sounds, but also keep that lovely old sound from the ‘70s without wanting to be dated and sing about dated things, or have a band that’s, you know, run by men who sit behind a desk? What does it mean to us to take homage and reference from those girl groups that we all love listening to from the three part harmonies, from choral entities and make something like Rotary Connection, that’s a collective of various musicians and musicianship that pulls from every corner of the record shop. And to us, that’s what’s more exciting. And those are the real references, whether it’s Usher, or whether it’s Aretha Franklin, or whether it’s Minnie Riperton, or whether it’s John Cale or, or J.J. Kale. Whoever it is that we’re inspired by, when we, the musicians are in the room, whoever’s writing that song, we’re feeding off each other’s energy, it’s unique because it’s us, you know, in the sense that everything is unique to any musician that’s in the room. Then we can go wherever we want. And the thing that unites it is the voices and the sound and the kind of interplay between everyone. The dream is that you’d find a Say She She record in any corner of the record shop one day. You could call it soul, you could call it funk, you could call it disco. That’s why we always came up with this idea of self-describing as “discodelic soul” or “discodelic funk” or “operatic funk discodelic soul!” [Laughs.] I don’t know, it’s all of it, maybe!
Ears of Maize: I’m a person who sort of has this feeling of, um– when I listen to some of my favorite records where I have this feeling of being born of the wrong time or of the wrong generation and that I missed my moment of the music that I really love. And I feel like what you just described is this piece of sort of synthesizing the influence, but your music is so forward thinking and forward moving and of the current moment. Um, how do you balance that, you know, that influence and also, sort of, where you’re trying to take it in having your own sound and making your own statement in sort of the next chapter?
Nya Brown: We have that analog sound, the warmth, the realness of, um, being in the studio and cutting things to tape. But then we’re still at this time, so it’s like we’re really just drawing from our influences and just the things that we love and bringing off the table, not with an agenda, per se. It’s kind of like just coming to the table as we are. And we still have appreciation for music currently, and we’re living in the times that we’re living in. So it’s like you can’t help but – if you’re coming as you are – you can’t help but pull from all those places current and past.
Piya Malik: It’s very hard right now to be a band that’s full of live instrumentation. It’s extremely expensive to go out on the road. A lot of musicians are struggling with the increased cost that is a direct result of what’s happening with this administration. Everybody’s seeing inflation, you know, on their groceries, let alone can you imagine the inflation for the gear and the touring, even the cost of the bus and the transportation and the hotels and the food and everything’s going up. So, you know, even if guarantees are going up, it’s not translating that easily for people. So most people are paring down their bands, their acts and their music to strip it down to something that is, you know, a one person or a two person or maybe singing to tracks. And for us, it’s a very difficult place for us to keep our integrity with our music without, you know, having that live instrumentation. That’s the thing that really moves us and makes us be musicians, you know, this is like craft and trying to understand where chord structures go and where the musicality marries with the voice and taking it very seriously. We are not gonna just turn our backs on that live sound that’s so integral to who we are. That’s why we are on the road all the time. You know, we play shows so that fans can come and enjoy these spaces and, you know, support us through merch and buying records and, you know, we tour endlessly across the world, really, so that we can spread the music and hopefully keep doing what we are doing.
Ears of Maize: Oh, I love that. And I hear both in what you just said there as well as in the music itself– it comes across as y’all are unwilling to compromise. I really appreciate that. And there’s power and there’s strength in all of that. And, um, as a listener it comes through and I thank you for that. There’s no shortage of material in the political climate of today. Do you find that in this creative process you find some relief from the current times, that in sort of putting this into tracks you find any resolve?
Piya Malik: It’s like catharsis. It’s therapy. It’s also trying to find our communities through the messaging, you know, when we sing about, for example, She Who Dares is on the record, sometimes we have opened our set up with it and it is painting this very dystopian picture, almost Handmaid’s Tale- esque, you know? But that’s actually the reality. [Chuckling.] When we wrote that song, it was meant to be more of a vision of a dystopian way-distant future, you know, and this kind of ominous warning. And then by the time the song came out, we were like, “Wow, this is actually way closer to reality than we ever imagined it being.” And you know, that’s been a tricky, crazy thing to realize. But it’s also meant to have this hopeful undertone too, which is– it’s a call to arms and a rally. And you know, there’s lyrics in there that are meant to empower us as women and feminists, which means that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist, of course. You just have to believe that we deserve equal rights. It’s simple [laughing], and I think, you know, there’s lots of other songs that are– have a more hidden meaning, like Take It All, no matter what’s happening out there in the political climate, there are some things that are sacred, like our community spaces and our ability to express ourselves through our art, which is a dangerous thing that, you know, regimes have shut down for centuries at this point, precisely because of how powerful it is and how much music and art has the power to incite and to rally and to coalesce people and communities to rise up against hatred and oppression. It’s absolutely necessary for us, not just for our own relief, but also ’cause that’s the mission.The mission is in the music.
Ears of Maize: I’m glad you pointed that out. She Who Dares was probably the first track off the new record Cut & Rewind that just grabbed me. I found it as an invitation to the conversation of feminism joining in sort of waving the flag in solidarity and this feeling of sort of a call to action. And the other song that really resonated for me was going back to Silver with the track NORMA – a sort of a response to Roe vs Wade, the last line in that song about, again, that call of action of “write a letter to the state.” It comes with action in this, like, “Get off your ass and go do something.” Is there specific groups or causes that you all are supporting, that you invite, you know, we, the listener to participate in or to join you in, in a call to action?
Piya Malik: We absolutely have so many different, um, organizations that we’ve been working with, you know, from– really we started, uh, around the time of writing Silver to get things lined up. We work really closely with Everytown For Gun Safety and the lobby around, you know, looking at gun safety measures and laws. And we did a postcard campaign as well. So we still encourage people to go and download the postcard there ’cause so much of that is still in play and been pushed forward. And I think everyone should believe in safety. Everyone should believe that– I mean, I was shocked, especially growing up in England, to find out that you don’t need a gun license to purchase a gun online or at a gun fair. You do from a shop, but not a gun fair and online. So surely if you’re going rogue and you’ve got malintentions, is it not the first place you’d go, somewhere invisible? [Chuckles ruefully.] I just– I– I– I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that. So, you know, we stand behind, um, anyone who wants to donate to Planned Parenthood – a no-brainer for us. Anything to do with sexual health that women and women’s right to choose. You know, we absolutely stand by organizations like Médecin Sans Frontières, or as they say in America, Doctors Without Borders. We’ve all worked in community education and political things, whether it’s Sabrina working with the Lower East Side [unintelligible], or Nya working in educational publishing and curriculum and literacy and phonics and me working in Parliament in my previous life in the UK and then in New York, uh, for the Institute for Children Poverty and Homelessness. So, looking at family homelessness and housing and the energy crisis, climate change, all of these things are dear to our heart and I think people really need to pick a few things right now. And I think AOC said it best, “Let’s not get overwhelmed” ’cause they’re attacking all these policy areas and there’s so much work to do and it’s overwhelming and you dunno where to go. Pick the things that you are focused and interested in and have the networks with maybe already. Focusing in to achieve those smaller things is gonna do a lot more for the greater good than trying to disparately spread all your resources and becoming overwhelmed.
Ears of Maize: In listening to your music and, you know, the messages in there, it has sort of this idea of, you know, demonstration on the disco floor or disco for demonstration. And I’m curious because, um, especially here in our backyard I’m seeing a decline of the club space and this third space for folks to find themselves to dance, to find solidarity in community. How do you sort of see the translation of music of this style or sort of the future of where we, in this generation, go to dance and to find each other? What does it look like for you in the future of dancing and finding folks?
Piya Malik: Obviously that’s what coming to a Say She She show is all about! [Laughing.] So if you’re in the Bay Area, find yourself at August Hall with us. Um, no, for real–
Nya Brown: Find your people.
Piya Malik: Yeah, find your people because, and that’s why we make these shows, you know, like it’s not just about us dancing with you and singing and sharing our ideas, it’s about people who are like-minded coming to our show and finding each other. This is what’s so wonderful about being on stage. It’s not some, like, huge arena yet, but it’s this really intimate space. Those are the spaces where the music and the sound resonates. And then everybody’s dancing together and they’re not even facing forward at the show the whole way through. Like, people are dancing with each other and talking to each other and making out with each other! And we’ve even had proposals at our shows! It’s so beautiful! [Laughs.] And young girls, you know, singing to NORMA is– it gives you chills. It’s special ’cause you think, “Wow, they’re finding each other.” They’re finding their community in this space that we’ve created at a time where all this stuff is stripped– being stripped away, and funding for the arts across the world is in decline. And if there’s problems with the economy, then a lot of these spaces– it’s the first thing that sometimes people feel like they can’t afford to go out and socialize. But I say you can’t not afford to go out and socialize because you have to keep your sanity and you have to keep joy around and alive because guess what, if we let them take that away, that they’ve won, you know, like we have to protect that and we have to maintain those spaces.
Ears of Maize: I’ll be on the dance floor here, come January 27th, and I’ll be looking for some new friends in that community. So I thank you for that. Um, the other thing I wanted to ask you about is I’ve really enjoyed the sort of aesthetic piece of your commitment to putting out music videos. It seems like something of this past world that– you know, I grew up in a time of really loving and seeing an artist’s expression through a music video and wondering what your creative processes of that, or how you can extend your mission through the visual component.
Piya Malik: Yeah. My baby sister, who is no longer a baby, she just had her big birthday, [laughs] and I’m just so amazed at the creativity that flows out of her that, you know, is inspired by us. You know, she loves what we’re doing. She’s a photographer and a director and she does everything, really. But for her, going and starting to do the music video stuff was very much inspired by what we were doing and the music we were making and the mission that we had. And one of the first music videos she did for us was for our song, Forget Me Not, which was our first single that we ever put out, and really helped kind of put us on the map in this really beautiful way. And it was so sincere how we wrote that song and what it was about and when she kind of understood what Say She She and the project was about, she helped us to make a piece of work that really is something we’re all very proud of still to this day. It’s an homage to the Guerilla Girls who, um, you know, were this awesome group of women fed up of being shut out from gallery spaces and shows and, you know, felt that it was so male dominated. They decided to take these masks and go incognito and take these aliases of artists who had passed away, whether it was Alice Neel or Frida Kahlo or whoever it was. They take these aliases and they campaign vigorously to try and make some noise about why we should have more women represented in the gallery spaces. That style of campaigning is really inspiring to us, so that’s depicted in the music video. Most of our music videos were made in New York with our friends, with our community, whether it’s Nathan Corbin or my sister or uh, people from the Roters group. You know, everybody has pitched in and helps each other make their art and their work. And it is incredible finding all these amazing videographers and directors and, um, crews of people from makeup artists to stylists. It’s their profession and their expertise. And then they’re helping with their art and their worlds to support our world. And you know, it’s this exchange and you feel, I don’t know, you feel extremely grateful that you can still make music videos at a time when most music labels, especially indie labels, are not prepared to fund those things ’cause they don’t think it moves the needle, with the advent of TikTok and more kind of quickly consumed and digested content. I just think it’s important for us to do what we think is good art.
Ears of Maize: It’s this extra dimension that adds context to the music you hear, the record you love, and just to see you all in your power. I really appreciate it. Is there new music that you discovered here in the last year or, um, projects or other artists that you wanna give a stage to as far as inspiration, or just what sort of moved the needle for you and your listening here in 2025?
Piya Malik: Well, I’ve been geeking out a lot this year on Charm, the record by Clairo, um, produced by our good friend, El Michels Affair, aka Leon Michels. I would say that was definitely my most listened-to album. I think it’s so beautifully done. It’s really tasteful. And it’s also interesting to see how you can bridge the gap between our two worlds, our indie world of more analog approach to recording, you know, thoughtful, careful, poetic lyrics, um, and that sort of, like, older sound, but with a mainstream pop artist.
Nya Brown: Um, I’ve been listening to, uh, Jalen Ngonda, who is a buddy of ours. We actually did a tour with him, uh, a couple years ago. But I just love to see him on the rise. He’s just a soul singer, soul from the past. And he just comes with the passion and the musicality and the voice that is undeniable. And, um, a lot of our people are part of that project, so it’s really good to see him just take off. Baby Rose, if you know her at all, her voice is like– unlike no others. It’s like a mixture of Nina Simone slash– I don’t even know–
Piya Malik: Tracy Chapman slash–
Nya Brown: Tracy Chapman, yeah–
Piya Malik: Billie Holiday slash
Nya Brown: –But but’s a voice– it’s like this–
Piya Malik: Oh, I will say KIRBY as well. KIRBY blew me away with her record and the visuals and the music video for that. So if you haven’t checked out that record, you definitely should. Yeah.
Ears of Maize: Awesome. Thank you. You’ve built a list of me to go and start listening. So, um, again, I want to thank you so much for your time sitting down with Nya and Piya of Say She She, reminder Tuesday, January 27th, coming to the Bay at August Hall in San Francisco, and on your latest record, Cut & Rewind.
Say She She together: Thank you. Can see you at the show. Hi, this is Say She She here and you’re listening to 90.7 FM KALX Berkeley.
