How Composing Music for a VR Feminist Film was a Mirror to my Own Life.
Words: BISHI
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Growing up a teen in the 1990s, finding South Asian women's representation in music, pop culture and film were the equivalent of searching for hen’s teeth. There was Sonia from Echobelly, Jas Mann from Babylon Zoo - it was very blink and you miss it, and I hadn't even begun my GCSEs when the Asian underground. The Asian Underground, in the UK referred to South Asian musicians who blended sounds from their South Asian heritage with Western underground music. This exploded from the basements of Hoxton Square into the mainstream . I would later learn that women like Sweety Kapoor, played a crucial role in inaugurating the scene, so I missed out on this seminal movement. I came decades after pioneering artists; Sheila Chandra, Asha Puthli and Tanita Tikaram.
My period, vagina and sexuality were treated like they were dirty, this being a cultural norm of my Indian heritage. I was instructed to cover myself up and to deflect attention from prying eyes. The irony of ‘covering up’ couldn’t be more pronounced as I started secondary school. Upon getting my period aged 12, I was followed down the street and harassed by older men in my school uniform, day in, and day out.
Growing up in the 90s, as we were brought up in the shadow of sustained attacks and murders committed by the National Front in the early 80s, I was raised with an understanding that danger and violence were imminent. Being schooled at a private school for girls, my immigrant parents couldn’t keep up with the weekly designer clothes and shoes my fellow pre-teens would show off to each other at the beginning of each week. To be popular, you had to be rich, blonde and white. I failed on all counts.
However, my love of mainstream music icons from Bjork, Shirley Manson, Skin, PJ Harvey, Kim Deal, Hole and Elastica gave me the confidence to pull through, pick up a bass guitar, and start writing songs. Like all my fellow school girls, I watched The Spice Girls Movie on its Boxing Day release, not because I felt I had to, but because I love a bit of pop culture, innit. The social freedom I was given via music was poured into teenage DIY scenes, where gangs of teenagers performed in band nights and everyone was photocopying zines in the glow of dial-up internet. I first performed backing vocals onstage, upstairs at The Garage in Islington when I was 14. I was shaking with fear, disassociated in my baby woman’s body. But it was the start of performing live music I craved so deeply.
I’d mix Miss Selfridge baby doll dresses, feather boas and plastic tiaras to emulate a tween charity shop Courtney Love look and neck Smirnoff Ice whilst dancing to Blondie, Placebo and Madonna. Boys wore as much make-up as the girls. It was very fluid and it was us against the world. My mates got to be extras in the Kenickie Nightlife video and that’s unfortunately where my parents drew the line. I wasn’t allowed to go to the shoot, which I’ve never recovered from.
On my school career’s night in 1999, I was told that “Women couldn’t be record producers, only Anne Dudley from Art of Noise was allowed” and “There are no female composers.” The career advisor’s attitude was one of resignation to a life of toeing the line; “If you’re really lucky, you might get to do ‘some work’ assisting a male film composer,” she sighed. Discovering electronic pioneers Wendy Carlos, Delia Derbyshire, Laurie Spiegel, and Laurie Anderson opened the doors of possibility in my young teenage mind - I knew there was a world out there of femme pioneers and unsung heroes. When I entered puberty, the musicians I grew up watching on Top of The Pops and The Chart Show, and trawling the pages of NME, The FACE and Melody Maker, were the women who guided me to my power.
In Maya The Birth of a Superhero, Maya is visited by the goddess of menstruation, voiced by Indira Varma, who guides her to accept the power within. “There is power in our blood” Varma narrates during one powerfully bewitching moment in the film. Learning several different instruments, from Sitar, and piano to teaching myself bass guitar, synths and programming on my computer gave me the musical language to create my own unique dialogues.
The DIY band culture and queer culture where I was nurtured in my early teenage years, coincided with the explosion of the internet and the increased sophistication of home recording equipment for musicians and producers alike. With all of the challenges of social media and the dominance of big tech, platforms like Instagram and TikTok are central to our discovery of other artists. Poulomi Basu and I connected over Instagram Stories. CJ Clarke heard me being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 and I composed and produced this soundtrack in my home studio, which was mixed remotely in Brooklyn. Technology has liberated and transformed the lives of women to create work outside of the approval of patriarchal gatekeepers.
Maya The Birth of a Superhero is a wonderland referencing ancient spiritual symbols and divine feminine power. The immersive experience is as influenced by Octavia Butler, and Hindu mythology as it is by horror films and fantasy series such as Netflix's Stranger Things. The player gets to fly through mountaintops, fight demons and soar above the rooftops of East London. This project is directly inspired by the stories of real women in Nepal who are forced into exile because their menstrual blood is considered impure. Artist Poulomi Basu wanted to shed light on issues surrounding menstruation. In India, 24 million girls drop out of school the minute their period starts because they don't have access to toilets and sanitary napkins.
“Technology has liberated and transformed the lives of women to create work outside of the approval of patriarchal gatekeepers.”
She wanted to tell the story of an Indian immigrant girl, growing up in London, and reveal hidden types of misogyny in the West, whilst decolonising the superhero genre. It is an abstract satire, as much as it resembles a dark psychological thriller. The audience journeys from shame, fear and loneliness to innate power.
As Maya is soon released worldwide on the meta store, I have come to reflect on how the story of Maya, reflects my own journey, as a bullied and excluded teenage girl, who overcomes fear & shame by channelling the inspiration of other women. It has led me to be a composer and music producer against huge statistical odds and I am proud to have scored this groundbreaking VR film, shortlisted at Cannes.
Photography: Frederic Aranda
Maya The Birth of a Superhero, a VR short, directed by Poulomi Basu and CJ Clarke, is the story of a South Asian girl’s coming of age and the awakening of her sexuality. She must overcome her shame and fear to find her inner strength and true superpowers. It stars Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Charithra Chandran (Bridgerton), BISHI (original soundtrack) and was recently selected as one of the eight projects in the immersive competition for Festival de Cannes 2024.
