Page 12 - NY Waste Fall 2014

12
New York Waste
Roctober issue 2014
Natural Rebel
Father: Italian, German
Mother: Cherokee, Blackfoot and Black.
#electronic gothic hard rock metal progressive rock New York
Closing in on the eve of the release of
BAIT – the first release from
THE VILLAINESS, a two-album concept proj- ect, MilitiA’s response to + antithesis of the pop princesses of today.
There is something very satisfying about listen- ing to Militia's new album Bait...
Her voice, has that simplicity and power that feels so good...
Extraordinary power that washes over you. Keeping it sweet and deep in thought. This voice is so empowering. It's a real voice. It's a classic voice. And it's Militia's voice.
Lucky Lawler joins Militia in the cool of the night for a bottle (or two) of wine.
“I know life is good, because when I look up at the sky, I know we are all looking at the same one.” Militia starts, “I was pinning for the old days the other night, when I could just roll out of bed and slap on some black lipstick, get into something fun that was a little dangerous, kinda wild and chock full of excitement with the possibilities of every- thing that NYC was at the time. Now I feel like it's all about, you know, designer flats and designer you know, baby carriages and strollers.”
“Yeah... “I want a Gucci baby”, assholes!”
“I can't stand it! I hope my womb is as barren as the Sahara Desert. I have never felt the maternal instinct the desire to procreate or anything like that. I've just never been that way. The other girls growing up, they played with dollies and knick- knacks and I always said, “I want to be a Punk Rocker”. Everyone else sighed, “I wanna be a princess”, me, “I wanna be a Punk Rocker!” even when I was like 5!”
“I was reading that on an interview you did, and in it you said your mom was saying about Heavy Metal “don't listen to that!”
“Yeah, she was pretty out of it, she just didn't want me to poison myself, I guess.”
“What kicked that off?”
“It was Metallica, I went right for the good stuff - They did a pretty good job of sheltering me, I grew up in Columbia, MD, between Baltimore and DC, it was a small town community from like the 70s, you know... it started in the 70s and in the 80s it was this interracial haven. At the time it was all like horse farms, it was really rural... I would be walking down the street and there would be horses walking towards you and you'd go grab at one and give them a piece of corn... it was really country. My friend and I would go ride bikes and go watch the stallions run. So it was this weird an- tithesis between city and country, between these two cities. Unless it was on TV or on radio there was no real way to find out about music. I was a classical pianist at the time, since I was about 7
years old my world was Mozart and Beethoven, and then I started hanging out with this guy, (it always hap- pens when you're hanging out with some guy, right?) and he's like “I'm teaching myself to play all the Metal- lica songs on guitar” and I was like, holy shit.”
On hair:
“I don't support certain artists, because I feel like they have a disregard for the natural beauty of mixed race people, or even black women. It's the plight of the black woman... you have to straighten your hair, you have to wear a wig to be accepted. Basically the standards of beauty are saying that my curly hair is a handicap and should be covered. That's what it says to me. It's what people are doing right now and I don't appreciate it.”
“It's so odd, because when you think about the days of Jimi Hendrix and the hippy days when the natural was such a fashionable thing, everybody craved it.”
“That was the first time you saw the acceptance of it.”
“It's gone backwards, think about the Jewfro, everybody wanted that big curly hair. People used to go get a perm to be able to have that hair, now perms are used to straighten hair!”
“It seemed like it got misconstrued. I mean if you had a curly, curly, natural hair... I don't even like the word nat- ural, I mean what does natural hair mean? It's why I find it so disturbing when artists like Nicki Minaj who puts on the straight blonde wig and blue contacts, I just go like, “Oh, are you ugly? Is that what you are telling peo- ple? Are your dark eyes, dark hair and hair texture ugly? That's what you are saying. That IS what you are say- ing!”
“I watch Queen Latifa & Wendy Williams the other morning and both of them wear amazing wigs, and the Real, it's amazing the hair pieces, extensions and wigs they wear, and the other day I couldn't believe it, the round table was all about how you cannot possibly be seen dead, in front of your boyfriend, your husband
even, not one moment should he ever see you 'natural' and how you have to be ‘perfect’, with your wig or ex- tensions always in place...”
“Effectively looking like what you don't look like.”
“Apparently. And they were really discussing this, it was amazing, and if you are going to wear a scarf to cover your 'natural' state, it should be something glorious and obviously something really expensive, like a Valentino scarf, it can't be a little...”
“A do-rag! Lol!”
“yeah, that awful word which means whatever, because it is just a way of tying your hair up, which in fact it so 50's housewife, isn't it, with the knot up at the top, (I Love Lucy) which is so retro and so cool in our world again. But apparently according to them, there is some- thing really wrong with that.”
“well because there is an Aunt Jemima feel to it. It has a different connotation if a black woman does it.”
“That is awful and so bizarre in this day and age. I would never think of that.”
“Of course not. This is the shit that, I swear, makes black women in this country nuts, every day. And I have pur- posefully had to raise my middle fingers to all of it.”
“Yes, you successfully ride your horse through it without letting it drag you, or your hair down. Your beautiful 'natural' hair, however natural it may be...”
“well it is!”
“Oh, come on, I've seen you color it, and style it, cut it, play with it...”
“Yes, because I've always been like, a lone wolf. I'm like, if you have a problem with my hair and you stare at my hair, then I'm gonna make it pink so then you really have to look at it. It's an ongoing issue my whole life. My mom tried to get me into modeling when I was a child, and she took me around to all these modeling agencies, and you know what they all said? They said
image by Willow Waxdoll