Q&A: Drawing on Disco History, Say She She deliver an Empowering, Groovy New Single with “Disco Life”

MusicQ&A

Sep 9

INTERVIEW

In 1979, radio DJ and notorious disco-hater Steve Dahl encouraged fans to attend “Disco Demolition Night” at the July 12 Chicago White Sox game. Fans were encouraged to bring disco records to destroy, but instead, many simply brought any vinyl they had from Black artists, even if the music did not fall into the disco genre. At the time, Dahl’s personal hatred for disco was fueled by his recent firing from a rock station after it shifted to a disco format.

Attendees in the packed stadium stormed the field and began rioting. They started fires and were arrested. For many, this horrific riot was a manifestation of the bigotry inflicted on people from marginalized groups who found a community in disco. Since their inception, disco clubs were safe spaces for Black, Latinx, and queer folks. While Dahl still maintains that the “Disco Demolition Night” was not sparked by racist and homophobic prejudices, the riot continues to serve as a reminder of the violence and discrimination these marginalized groups have faced, and continue to face, in the U.S. and beyond.

Now, over 46 years later, disco-funk trio Say She She is retelling the “Disco Demolition Night” narrative on their new single “Disco Life.” With a groovy guitar-led melody and sweet sonorous vocal riffs, bandmembers Piya Malik, Nya Gizelle Brown, and Sabrina Cunningham reclaim and reimagine both the baseball field and the disco dancefloor as places where all people are loved and accepted. The single is a standout from the group’s forthcoming third album, Cut & Rewind, which they recorded with backing musicians Dan Hastie, Sam Halterman, Dale Jennings, and Sergio Rios (referred to affectionately by Malik as “the guys”).

Growing up and playing music together in NYC, Say She She took inspiration from ‘70s icons like Nile Rodgers & Chic. Sonically, the group draws from the past, recording retro-inspired tracks on analog tape with analog instruments, but their lyrics look to the future, encapsulating both the personal and political of the trio’s 21st-century lives.

The band sat down with Luna to dive into their new music, recording process, and decade-long friendship.

LUNA: Can you tell me a bit about the album’s title, Cut & Rewind? Is it a nod to the origins of disco music and disc jockeys who would cut and remix songs together, or am I way off base here?

MALIK: I mean, you've nailed it. Also, we record to tape, so we also cut and rewind the tape constantly in our sessions, and listen back to things. I feel like it was inspired by all of those things, you know? Even when we're doing music videos—you can't even say double entendre, it's like a quadruple entendre there—it's just such a part of our lives. Like with video shoots and directors cutting and rewinding back. It's also such a metaphor for life as well, isn't it? Everything's like, “Wait, hang on a minute, cut. Let's go back and take stock.” Especially with everything that's happening in the climate as well, while we were writing this album, so many crazy things were happening to women's rights. And “She Who Dares” is one of the first singles we wrote that's very powerful and political. It sets the stage for a dystopian future, which doesn't seem that far in the future now. It seems far more relevant now than when we wrote it. We wrote it looking to the future, a dystopian, Handmaid’s Tale-esque thing. But so many of those situations are exactly where we are now. It's like we were rewinding to the past, and we just want to stop that.

LUNA: Is it cathartic for you to write songs like that, or do you find it more stressful or frustrating to get into that headspace?

MALIK: I would say cathartic for sure. I mean, everything we do together musically is cathartic for us, because that's all we have ever wanted to do. All the other jobs in our lives and all the other things that we do have really been about pouring ourselves into this, whatever time we can, and positioning ourselves to be able to do this full-time. So it feels really amazing when we're in the studio getting the whole day to focus, record, and be one with our band, who are all amazing and incredible musicians.

We've had to play with musicians of all calibers over the years to get our foot in the door and to learn. You're just hungry to play for so many years in the city, and if you keep doing it, hopefully, you're getting better and learning something from each person. When we met the guys [Hastie, Halterman, Jennings, and Rios], their rhythm section was so tight that it was like, “Wow. We're stepping into this with such privilege and honor to be working with people who've been working together for over 20 years.” They met in high school, and they've been playing since they were kids. They have another wave of communication with each other.

And with over 10 years of friendship now, for some of us, it feels like we have this communication now. We know how each other works. We know the quirks. We know that two of us can roll our eyes and giggle at the other one. We're good-natured with it, and we know each other. Then, the guys have 20 years of communication. None of it is verbal communication, by the way. They aren’t sorting out their emotional problems or anything. So don't worry, hell hasn't frozen over. Men still don't talk to each other, but they definitely have channeled all that communication into their music. And it's amazing to watch. Dale can start with a bass line. Then, Dan will just come in with melodies sometimes, and Sergio will come on with a top line that will change the whole thing. And all the time they're being guided by us, and they're so open to that. They're so respectful of the space—and we don't really believe in hierarchy, not in the writing room—but there is a hierarchy in how they let us breathe our ideas out first. They’ve never overstepped that in any way. It is quite rare to find male musicians of their caliber, who really, oftentimes musically, understand things that are more technical, but never lord it over us and have respect for our taste as an equal contributing factor to things. I really love that about this project and about this band.

CUNNINGHAM: I would add that every single song, on this album and previous albums, stems from a conversation that’s started between the three of us, and it's like we're working through it. Whether it's a love-related relationship issue or something that's happening in the world, we're talking about all that stuff constantly. And the fact that we get to express that in a song is absolutely cathartic. We look forward to being in the studio.

MALIK: It’s the best, and we write all of our lyrics on the spot, more or less. Sometimes we'll go back and tweak things. Sometimes we've got three options, and we can't choose. We think we've chosen one option, and then we find out we've been singing the song live with the first option, but singing the second option in the recording. That just happened recently. We've been singing the old lyrics that we wrote. Luckily, the song isn’t out, so no one noticed. But you can only do that if you've had a lot of conversations, and know that you're all on the same page about what you’re trying to say and what you're talking about. We can do that when we're just talking about our life and our reality, and in that sense, it's modern. Even though a lot of people describe the sound of our music as late ‘70s. That's just a legacy of the fact that we use analog instruments and analog tools like tape, but I think our issues are very modern.

CUNNINGHAM: I think we work through issues as we discuss them or as we write them. It’s almost like a therapy session, in a way, to get it out of our system.

LUNA: You wrote and recorded this after being on tour. What aspects of live performance do you bring into the recording studio? Is there anything that you learned on tour that you were eager to apply to this new record?

BROWN: We have always made it a point to perform and sound the way the record sounds. The way we write allows us to do that, because we're all in the same room. The instruments are all recording at the same time. So we say to ourselves, “We're going to record it this way. We're going to play it this way.” And being on tour, the more you play together, the tighter you become, and the stronger the bond. In recording this album, I would say our bond and our chemistry together are more beautiful than ever. We’re hoping that came out in the recording, because we've been touring for a while now and touring pretty hard.

CUNNINGHAM: I think also, we are not the kind of band that writes music and then test plays it in front of a crowd. First, we write the songs, then put them to tape, and then we perform them after the fact. It's probably a different process from some other bands, but that's always how we do it, or how we've been doing it.

BROWN: It's always fun to play new stuff. We do play some of our new stuff before it comes out. We're in this bubble together when we're writing, and anything goes, you know? We're pulling from so many different genres and so many different influences that we don't necessarily know. If someone were to ask us, “Describe this.” It's really hard because we're pulling from so many places. So when we play it live, it's like “How's the audience gonna receive it?” At least that's what I'm like, “How are they gonna receive it? Are they gonna like it? Are they gonna dance?” You never know, so it's always a treat. It's always a treat when we play a new song. I'm constantly searching the audience, looking at their faces to see how they feel and see if they're digging it. So far, the songs that we've been playing from the upcoming album have been landing pretty well. So it's pretty exciting.

MALIK: That's what I love about the way that we do it, too, because it's kind of old school. It reminds me of all the David Mancuso loft parties where Arthur Russell would come down with a loose end joint on the vinyl with the first test pressing. They’d pick up the test pressing that day, take it down to the club, and put it on the decks. If everyone danced, went crazy, and the crowd went wild. They’d be like, “It's gonna be a hit. We're good. Tell them the test press is clear.” Hanging out with Sal P. from Liquid Liquid, he would tell me all these stories. He was like, “Yeah, we didn't f*cking know. We would just take it down to the club and test it, and that's how we knew it was the move.”

For us, we're not doing that because we're not DJs. But with a live performance, we get to do it like in the flesh and perform it. The first time we did “Disco Life” for the audience, everyone was dancing, straight away even though they didn't know the song. Normally, when the audience first hears something, they're concentrating, and you get a sinking feeling like, “Oh no. They hate it,” or “It's not making anyone do anything.” Then, at the end, they'll erupt into applause, and you're like, “Oh. Did they like it?” Then, the next time they hear it, they're dancing, and you realize, “Oh, they were just concentrating because it was something new. So it's always an interesting thing when that happens. But “Disco Life” was definitely one of those songs where straight away they were dancing, and I was like, “Wow. That's cool. That's a nice feeling.”

LUNA: Speaking of “Disco Life,” I'd love to dive into that song a little bit more. I learned about the “Disco Demolition Night” not too long ago, after listening to a podcast that covered the event. I'm interested in hearing about when you first learned about this event. What were your first reactions? When was it that you decided you wanted to do a retelling of this horrific, distressing event via song? And what is the message you want to share through it?

MALIK: I found out about it the most recently, which was only a couple of years ago. It’s not something that people in England are aware of. I talked to my colleagues—we are all history buffs. We love studying things. We‘ve studied the civil rights movements and other things like this, but there are these nuanced moments that happen in America that are huge and bear such an impact on society. They shape how people feel and how they belong. Coming here and learning where this country has been, it was just astounding to me that something like that could have happened.

It was perpetrated by a broadcaster, though he denies it, and it's just despicable that so many people were allowed to occupy the baseball field like that. I know things are privatized here, but sports grounds and big places that are community spaces should be for everyone. So for that to happen, where they're just burning basically any Black artists, it's got nothing to do with the hatred of disco. It clearly became a racist thing. And we were like, “You know what? If you hate disco, then you're a f*cking racist.” You go to this extreme to just come up with what the story is. For us, we were like, “It would be really interesting to turn the song into a place where you're actually making this the playing field where all are free.” We’re subverting it and using all these baseball analogies and references.

That was really fun for us in the writing session, searching for things. None of us played baseball or watched it. I've been to one match. I just said match. You’re supposed to say “game,” aren't you, in America? Sorry, I just gave myself away. But it was really fun searching for the analogies. Also, there’s a parallel between the baseball field and the disco dance floor, with the disco being a space that's super safe for Black and queer folk, and for marginalized people or anyone who's ostracized. Especially in New York, it’s where all the weirdos are celebrated. That's why people who have grown up in more conservative backgrounds where they weren't accepted come to places like New York, where they're accepted. They come to places like London. They come to the big cities. It's a liberating, free time and space for them. It's also like, “What were the disco haters so angry about in the first place to start this nonsense?” Because it's not like [discos] were taking over the world. People were just enjoying their lives in their spaces, on the disco floor, and in their clubs. Like, “What has it got to do with you? Why the hatred?” And we know why, of course. It's sensitive.

CUNNINGHAM: I obviously had known about it, but the fact that it had come up more recently for you, Piya, when we started talking about it…Like you put these things out of your mind, right? It was so interesting to revisit the details of the whole history of it. At that time, the disco was meant to be a safe space for people who are marginalized. And the fact that it was completely stomped all over and ruined by these people is heartbreaking. We wanted to bring that good feeling back. We wanted to make a safe space. We want people to dance. We want people to feel good. I think that little element of the disco mentality is always a thread through our music overall. Not every song is in your face disco, but the sentiment of it is definitely a through line in all that we do.

LUNA: It’s so great to hear that when you all have been playing “Disco Life” live recently, people are jumping right in and dancing. I bet that's such an amazing feeling to subvert this terrible event and see it bloom into something that is all about community and people dancing together. I bet that's very awesome to see.

I want to ask you all about New York. Are there any spots or venues in the city that inspire you, whether musically or in your lyrical songwriting? Are there any places you went when you were creating the album that inspired you in any way?

CUNNINGHAM: I will say the Lower East Side is an inspiration to me, because that's where I met Piya and ultimately met Nya. So it will always have a very lovely place in my heart. That's where I met these ladies and where the course of my life changed. In that part of lower Manhattan, we definitely hung out there. That was an amazing place to meet up with other musicians and friends in the neighborhood.

MALIK: I would say for sure Lower East Side, and then also Red Hook, Brooklyn. We spent a lot of time down in Red Hook. Our friend Benny has a record shop there. And in the early days, we were painting, stripping, cleaning records, and staying up until the early hours.

BROWN: Not stripping like dance stripping.

MALIK: No, like paint stripping. There are pictures of us with handyman tools in the shop on the first day that it opened. It's such a special place down there by the water, and it's got a very cool community. I moved down there for like, five years, I think. Some of the earlier musicians that we would play with lived down there, too. It's a great music community. There's a bar called Sunny's as well that is for music lovers. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but beloved, and people know it. I would say that's the other place that feels like something special.

BROWN: Definitely Brooklyn and, like Piya said, Red Hook and Lower East Side. There were so many bonds and memories made in both of those areas, building our friendship and creating.

MALIK: We used to spend a lot of time in Fort Greene as well, didn't we?

BROWN: Yep. Creating the foundation.

MALIK: Yeah, or hanging around in the park. I mean, Nya and I met in Harlem, but we didn't hang out there that much. I mean, you did more than me, but that does still hold a special place in my heart.

CUNNINGHAM: I think the other one was Union Pool, right?

MALIK: Yeah. I mean, that was a club we came up in. We did our first residency there, and the owner, Eric, and his husband are really cool, supportive people who support up-and-coming artists. And queer and trans communities feel very safe in that space. I think that was like an early, very special club to us, Union Pool. Our die-hard people that we love, who are all incredible musicians and also bartenders, work at Union Pool. It's truly a community run by and for artists. Even the tacos there are the best in New York, especially when you've had a few drinks.

CUNNINGHAM: Barbès, as well. Barbès is where we had our first show as Say She She, so that one has a special place as well.

MALIK: Which Robert Plant showed up to, but he wasn't there to see us. It was by accident, and we were like, “Well, if Robert Plant shows up to your first show, you should probably keep going.” So that was awesome. What are the other venues that we love? Obviously, Bowery Ballroom, once we finally broke through, has been an amazingly supportive venue. We've played there as the opening act for so many different things. And Nya's friend hooked it up for us to do the first Immigrants’ Ball there, so that was really cool with Nappy Roots. You're always the opener, and then one day, finally, you get your headline there. That was just this amazing feeling. You're like, “Oh, New York cares too.” Because this is a weird thing, but bands often break on the other coast. I remember asking our agent, “Why does New York still not come to the shows when L.A. is being so supportive and showing up tenfold? How is there such a disparity in the numbers for shows? And he goes, “Oh, it's always like that. No one cares if you're on their doorstep and you're available. The grass is always greener on the other side.” So that was really nice to finally feel like we arrived in the place that we're from. I think my dad told me this years ago. He said, “Don't worry about what we think, just worry about what your peers think. That's all you should care about.” And it's kind of true. That's who you should care about, because you're making it for each other and with each other.

Your contemporaries are the people who are your sounding board. They hold the mirror up to you in some ways, because we're all living through these times together. How we digest and express is what sets us apart and sets our artistry apart. At places like Union Pool and all of these places, there are so many incredible musicians that we’ve all admired for years. Maybe they haven't made it onto the touring scene, or gotten to this level of tickets, or whatever it is that people might think of us. But those people and the music that they're making in those communities is 10 times more impactful, powerful, and meaningful. Sometimes it confuses me why some things move and others don't, but it's in vain if it's all just for the business, if it’s not truly for the art form. There are so many true artists in New York, and those are the spaces where we've encountered them, been influenced, and been so motivated by the words that people share with us. You learn so much from their mistakes or from their perspectives before you even have to go through it.

It reminds me of something a mentor, former lover, and a great artist in his own right, said to me when I was like, “Is it important if we’re just singing love songs? Is it as important as political activism and the concrete work that he was doing?” And he just said, “You guys have got to see yourself as beauticians. You’re reminding people of the beauty in this world, and that's just as important as politics.”

LUNA: Looking ahead to the album release, what is one thing you hope listeners take away from the record? Is there one message, mood, or sentiment that you hope sticks with them?

MALIK: I love the concept of protest music dressed up as a good time. There's activism, going to shows, dancing, and supporting things, but I also love the freedom that we have to be ourselves. Just being ourselves is political enough. And having visibility—not just through our music, but through traveling and being able to take our songs around the world—has been a pretty special thing.

CUNNINGHAM: I would agree with that: serious topics dressed up as a good time. I think that's really a big part of what we do. We write lyrics that have some weight and meaning, but we also want you to feel good at the end of the day. We want you to have a release at our shows and feel good when you put it on at home.

BROWN: And inspired. Inspired to move. Inspired to write a letter to your state. Inspired to keep going, keep grinding, and cut and rewinding.

MALIK: It's true. Also, there’s power in making a life with the women or the friends around you. “Chapters of Love” is about this, and I think it’s probably the most personal out of all the songs. I think so often we're told as little girls that our value is in getting married and having babies. And if you don't achieve those things in this Disney fairy tale way, you feel that you are failing and not good enough, like left on the shelf or like something isn't right with you.

Then, growing up, you have that thing that's there, but you don't choose that life. You choose your music. You choose your friends. You choose all these other things that feel better for you, but you still worry that you're failing. We just want to release people from that and help them realize that stuff is not true. There are so many ways to do things and so many ways to love. What if we didn’t see every single relationship that doesn’t last forever as a failure? They are just the beautiful chapters that make up your life, and those are the chapters of love that you take the lessons from. It takes the pressure off of feeling like everything has to last forever in the same way.

I think growing as women over the past decade and watching our families grow, change, and shift—through house moves, breakups, and makeups; new ideas, new wardrobes, and new styles—we've done it together. We've been supportive of each other, and that's going to continue. I hope that's something people feel when they see us and feel the music. If you stay true to yourself and keep working hard, grinding, and putting the effort in, I know it sounds corny, but you can make your dreams happen. You can manifest the things that you love and want to do for yourself. It's a lot of work, but it's worthwhile. And if that's what you want to do, you should do it.