Music: "The enigmatic voice of ANOHNI, formerly known as Antony Hagerty", by bonzopoe

There are many types of voices in music. There are the gifted ones like Freddy Mercury, Mariah Carey or Celine Dion, to name a few, with impressive registers. There are thick and sensual voices like Barry White's, brandy voices like Brian Johnson, lead singer of AC / DC, and we could go on listing styles or categories of voices.

However, there are some that have the ability to convey emotions in a way that is sometimes difficult to understand. The possessors of that voice are sometimes called interpreters, rather than singers, because of their ability to impress on their voice an emotional charge that goes beyond registers and vocal possibilities, and one of those cases is Antony Hegarty, also known more recently as Anohni.

Anohny is a transgender artist, which means that she does not identify with her biological sex at birth (male), so as anyone who refers to Antony does, which you can easily verify with an internet search, we will refer to her and not him.

Antony, her original name, had a happy childhood, and it can be said that normal, having parents who never gave too much importance to the signs of her gender ambiguity according to social standards, and it was until he was 12 or 13 years old that she became aware of having a different identity, and considered ambiguous by others, which did not stop her and did make her introspective and relatively isolated from others for some years. Antony refers to these years as her crisis years.

Before the age of 20, she decides to move to New York under the pretext of studying theater, and it is in the underground scene of this city that she finally finds herself. Following in the footsteps of her first idol, the British singer Boy George, she already had some time with the concern for music, and it is in this ambiguous and bizarre environment of New York cabarets and clubs that Antony begins her life in the stage.

Despite how hostile the public could sometimes be towards her, she found himself surrounded by an artistic community that accepted her naturally, and that allowed her to strengthen and harden, in addition to discovering that she was not alone, that there were others like her, that escaped definitions and stereotypes.

By 2000 Antony had already recorded the first album of the project that made her known, Antony and the Johnsons. The band's name, the Johnsons, was inspired by Marsha P. Johnson, a New Jersey drag queen known for her fight for gay people, who died under very suspicious circumstances.

Antony and the Johnsons was a group half rock band, half chamber orchestra, which together with a more than unusual voice, achieved songs with a different sound to everything that was on the market at that time.

Being the leader and creator of the concept, Antony was gradually gaining in reputation, first in the underground scene, and then in the mainstream, obtaining the recognition and admiration of established artists, with many of whom she shared the stage, including his first idol of the youth, Boy George, Björk, and Lou Reed, to name just a few.

From 2000 to 2012, Antony and the Johnsons released 5 studio albums, and from there the group broke up. Antony made collaborations with other artists, highlighting one with Hercules and Love Affair, and then momentarily disappearing from the map, only to emerge later as Anohni, her current name, with an electronic music album that is considered a masterpiece and one of the best of 2016.

Anohni is a singer that you either love or hate. She has such a peculiar style that it is difficult to describe. She conveys a captivating vulnerability. Seeing her on stage is like seeing that friend who sings beautifully but she has never done it in public and she does not know how to behave or move on stage. She looks shy and self-conscious, but at the same time her talent and her expressiveness emerge and mix with that sense of "awkwardness" that she conveys.

Anohni is a being of light, with a weak and vulnerable appearance, but who addresses strong topics in her emotional themes. Sexual identity, loneliness, gender violence, death, the crisis of ecology, epilepsy, politics, the need for belonging and similar issues are addressed in reflective and irreverent themes at the same time, but when interpreted with sweetness and intensity, instead of stridency and claim, they manage to convey their message in a way that is difficult to reject.

Few artists make my skin crawl and make me stop what I'm doing to concentrate on listening to them, and Anohni is one of them. She is a singer who has broken and will surely continue to break schemes, such as being the first transgender person in 30 years to be nominated for an Oscar for one of her songs, and then boycotting the ceremony in protest for not allowing her to sing it in it, to quote just an example.

Topics such as "Epilepsy is dancing" in which he compares epilepsy with dancing and dreams, and sees it as something divine instead of something cursed, "For today i am a boy" in which she captures the dreams of transgender children saying "One day I will grow up and be a beautiful woman, for today I am just a child", and "Fistful of love", a theme about gender violence in which she explains from a woman's perspective why she agrees to be beaten for the man she loves, they are just a sample of what she is lyrically capable of writing and transmitting with that enigmatic voice that lives in her throat.

I hope that if you did not know Anohni, today you have an idea of the origin and trajectory of this artist that specialized critics consider that will be one of the most important voices in the history of contemporary music, if she continues on the path that she has traveled until now. For my part, it has been a pleasure to immerse myself in the sound and lyrical world of this artist who is one of my favorites, and to be able to write this presentation of the character and her work. I hope she has been to her liking and until next time.

Thank you very much for reading this post and dedicating a moment of your time. Until next time and remember to leave a comment.