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Nisha - Midas

Nisha uses pop-poems to empower women through music

LOS ANGELES, CA – As a female Indian immigrant artist, born in Nigeria and raised in America, Nisha’s work explores the crossroads of her different identities. The migration always made Nisha an outsider in her communities where the quintessential tenet of assimilation was, above all else, “don’t act out, or be different.” But as she grew older and began to learn more of what the world had to offer her creative sensibilities, she discovered a power inside her that was longing to be unleashed.

Nisha is releasing an EP called “Behavior Self” – a tongue-in-cheek project of pop-poems paired with dance-inducing sounds that empower women and encourage people to think about life through a different lens.

“I really tackled some things that were important to me on this EP,” she said. “My relationship to being a woman, and the limitations I felt imposed on my gender. I just wanted to get these ideas out to the world and present a new perspective. Even in the 90s, we grew up on fairytales that gave women so few options.”

“Songs like “Wendy” and “Bad Sandy” are tracks from the EP that have already been released and point directly to the new ideas that Nisha is bringing to the table. “Wendy” is the “girl’s night out” version of Peter Pan. She said the song was born from reflecting on the many ways that women are automatically expected to be the caretaker in the room. “Bad Sandy” is a follow-up to that idea and takes the viewpoint of the girl who goes carefree in “Wendy” and is open and assertive about being in love rather than passive and coy.”

Two other singles from the EP are “Balance” and the most recent release “Midas.” The latter is a focus track that Nisha said is the center for the ideas she’s bringing across the entirety of the project.

“Midas,” which was just released this month, is the product of a single, independent woman who was born with two nationalities, coming to understand the value of her intersectional identities. Nisha said, ultimately, the song is about all the hard working people who go unacknowledged – the ones who make beauty out of chaos

“It’s an idea that really resonates with me in regards to immigration and what’s going on in the world right now,” Nisha said. “It’s about the people who built our world, and continue to go unseen while they don’t get the credit. I was in South Africa recently and we were going on a tour to try and see penguins and my tour guide was a badass business-woman named Sandra. She worked, raised a family and modeled her own clothing designs. We spent a lot of time talking while we were walking along the beach. When we got to a rocky place where it didn’t look like we’d be able to go any further, I wanted to turn around, but she just picked up her dress, took my hand and said, ‘Let’s just start and we’ll figure it out.’ That moment was a shift for me. That energy is the very energy I want to embrace. It has become the motto.”