Portrait en Rouje: Inna Modja
Inna is a musician and activist based in between Paris and Portugal. She is an ambassador at the United Nations and actively advocates for women’s rights by working closely with La Maison de Femmes, a space that has been created to protect women and their rights from domestic and sexual violences.
I met Inna on Zoom, an ocean in between us, from my home-office in Brooklyn to her living room in Portugal. As a young woman activist, my conversation with Inna was one of the most inspiring I have had to date.
Her vision on both the power of solidarity, the unjust experiences of minorities, and the power of dialogue in the arts reminded me of the work that we are doing together as well as the hope that there is to have in new generational change.
Photography by Marco Conti Sikic for Speciwomen
Philo Cohen for Speciwomen: In your most recent work there was an intentionality in bringing back your African heritage in the album Motel Bamako. Can you speak a bit about this process and your decision in making the album?
Inna Modja: When you’re doing pop music there is a certain kind of imagery and people don’t usually try to go behind the image. My music and my activism and who I am as an African woman is very intertwined. Motel Bamako being my third album I wanted to go back home and share with people who I am. A lot of people didn’t really know me when I started. With Motel Bamako I felt I had a platform with people who had been there since the beginning. I had people who were really supportive and really connected. And so this was the moment to show them who I am.
I wanted to share what Africa is in my eyes and what we have to share with the world as a culture. It’s 54 countries, but we have a lot in common. I wanted to change the narrative a little bit. With Mali being in the middle of a humanitarian crisis and a war, I wanted to talk about that, but also share all positive sides that we had. And I did so with my previous album, but just only with the images. For the first album, the cover of the album was shot by a Mali photographer Malick Sidibé. For me that was sharing with people where I come from, coming from Bamako. But it wasn’t enough.
The music is a very interesting industry. As an African woman it is not always easy to create a platform for yourself. I felt that my third album was the right moment to do so. I was coming off the success of the previous one, French Cancan. It was very big and I felt that people wanted to know more. Now, five years later I just dived back into Africa and shared more and more.
PC: I am interested in the evolution of your sound. What has changed in these stories that you tell through your sound?
IM: When I started doing music, activism and feminism wasn’t seen as it is now. Even when I started doing Motel Bamako I struggled a lot to make people listen to what I was saying. I felt that when I started doing music nobody would give me or let me have a platform if I was mixing my activism with my music. I was still talking about topics that were really important to me. I remember in 2014 I did a project called La Valse de Marie-Laure and it was about domestic violence. It was about really diving into what the problem was and still is and directing and confronting the problem. And nobody was really interested in what I was saying despite the fact that I did have the platform. I remember that a few media outlets picked it up, but I had difficulties. I was kind of, not blackballed, but faced with this attitude of “she’s not fun anymore.”
And it wasn’t just the media, it was also some of the pop audience that was not interested in women and girl’s rights, domestic violence and talking about all of that. I remember a lot of people told me that I was going to scare people away and that I should be more censored. And that was only six years ago. But, I wasn’t going to let anyone shut me up. I kept doing it.
PC: How has your activism weaved itself in your practice over the years?
IM: The thing is that I have been an activist since I was 19. I have been working with different organizations to fight against female genital mutilations. This was also the moment where I started supporting La Maison des Femmes and Ghada. I had a friend in common that introduced us. He is a plastic surgeon. He wanted to learn how to practice female gential mutilation reconstructive surgeries. I thought that was so beautiful. He said, “I want to make women feel beautiful. Not just from the outside, but from the inside.” And he’s a man! I just love that about him, that he is so compassionate.
He introduced me to Ghada who actually taught him the technique. We become friends instantly. She told me, “There is this project I am doing. The hospital gave me the land. I need to raise money to build this practice and open it. Will you support me on this?” I said, “Yeah!” I went to the hospital and she showed me the land that used to be an old parking lot. It sounded crazy, but I totally believed in her. I felt we could really change things. We worked on it and we opened it two years later. And now here we are with people supporting the amazing work we are doing.
Ghada and I also created group chats with victims… I want to say both victims and survivors of FGM because there is a few steps before you become a survivor. We had people who were interested in the FGM reconstructive surguries and we also had domestic violence group chats. Just people coming together and having the same kind of stories to share and having a platform where they felt safe and could speak about their stories.
We have come a long way, but I feel that in 2020 we are in a good space. I see more and more, musicians, artists, and regular people talking about the issues. Confronting the issues. Now we are empowered to do so. And we weren’t empowered, we took the power. Now activism and what I am saying is finally mainstream and people cannot just look the other way. It is different now. Six years ago when I started doing it...whew! But I didn’t care. For me, this was a call. I am not chasing after fame. I care and own success but don’t care about fame. I just wanted to tour the world and make music. And that is exactly what I did with Motel Bamako. I wasn’t looking for fame. As a musician I am looking more for purpose than for fame. I didn’t mind going into something that was less mainstream. It was more satisfying to me. I felt like I could make a change and that I was doing something that was meaningful. In the long run, I felt this was something that was going to make me happier than having a No. 1 hit song on the radio.
PC: Your activism and the work you do with multiple organizations has been global work. What are the importance of intersectionality and global impact in activism?
IM: I feel that these issues are global. I am an African. I was born and raised in Mali and in Ghana. To me, really focusing my work on the African women in the beginning was really important. And then it shifted. It became more and more about women in general. What we as women go through, the sexism and all the difficulties we face just because of our gender. Then you add to that the race, the poverty, someone’s class, and everything. All on top of the global situation with climate change. You as a woman are in a very difficult place. How do we work for every woman? If one woman is not free, none of us are.
I’ve been saying this for the past six years, when there is a crisis the first thing to jump out of the window are women’s rights. And it is happening right now. We are seeing all around the world people trying to take away our rights to abortion and our rights to be equal. We have jumped back so much and it is scary. And with the COVID19 situation it is even more scary. I can really see the impact of what is happening in Africa or other places. I’m not going to be negative, but I am frightened. I feel like there is an urgency and emergency to do something right now. That's why the quarantine in France, Ghada did a communiqué. She wanted to ask the government to add two weeks to the legal time of abortion. This was because a lot of women couldn’t afford to go out. It was two weeks that could save people’s lives. The government denied us that. And it’s disappointing. We have a lot of work to do.
Domestic violence has risen like crazy. Being confined in quarantine with your abuser, that is mental to me. The abusers didn’t have any other form of destruction than to abuse their partner. People were confined to their homes and people were afraid to be in contact with other people because we didn’t know how the virus would spread. And in Africa , people are losing so many jobs and opportunities and support. The crisis is back on our shoulders again. For me, now more than ever, we have to fight back and we have to stand up so we don’t lose everything we have gained. We have a long way to go, but we went back during all of this.
PC: There is a real thirst for change right now. I wonder about artists right now during these times and what they will have the power to do with this. How does it impact your making, if at all?
IM: I feel like we all have a voice in this. For once, artists don’t have a bigger voice and it’s fair. There are people in the streets demanding for a change. We are all together in this and I feel that as an artist I want to go even further in my job. Artists don’t have to be scared. A lot of people want to protect their image. We don’t want to make anyone unhappy who is a part of our fanbase. If you lose something because you have a voice that wasn’t for you to begin with. As an artist I’ve been confronting things through my job as an activist. With Motel Bamako I started and I will never stop and I will never go back. If people don’t give me a platform because of that, I really don’t care. As you said, to get my voice heard, I went global. And I did that by producing my own tour to be able to tour with this album.
I remember my label told me very honestly, “This album is great. You made it. You made it to be everything that you needed to be a great album. But, unfortunately this album is not going to be successful.” And my label is full of good people! They were very honest with me. They would say, “This album is not going to have No. 1’s. We are struggling to get you out there.” But, the project was everywhere in the media. I had great support, but the audience was not specifically open for that.
I was with a touring company and I decided I was going to just quit. They didn’t understand it, but I told them, “With this kind of album I want to tour the world with it. I don’t want to stay just in a few territories. I know I can be bigger than you say.” And they said, “Okay if you can do a better job.” I didn’t know for sure, but I knew I could try. I didn’t know if I could tour let alone do an event with more than a few people, but I knew I could try. So with my husband, we did it! And we toured the five continents. We did over 200 gigs in big festivals. I had the biggest media cover like the cover of The Sunday Times in Africa, the cover of the biggest newspaper in Australia, and Brazil. I knew I had that ability to do it. I was not afraid. And that is something that is important.
If you are afraid of your image, if you are afraid as an artist to lose money or lose anything because you have a voice and you say what you truly believe in, just give it up. You are never going to stand your ground and say your truth. We are as humans, as a generation who wants a change will all have a voice. I have my voice. My nanny who takes care of my baby, she has her voice. I listen to her because to make a change it is not just an artist or our leaders, it is every one. Even for the climate crisis, when we saw Gen Z in the streets it was so inspiring. I used to go to the UN every year for the general assembly. Last year was incredible because for the first time there was the youth assembly. Seeing and hearing what they are doing gave me a lot of hope.
PC: Transnationality is really empowering in both creative work and activism and I see that in your work.
IM: One has to create that. It doesn’t just happen like that. There are other touring agencies in France who are more global, but I wasn’t lucky enough to be with one at the time. Now they have shifted a little bit in things, but at the time when I was working with them they were interested in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. I can understand that, but I am not the artist for you then.
You have to be very specific with every artist you work with. You cannot just take me and try to place me in the footsteps of Francophone artists. I am not French to begin with, my music is not just French. Even though France is one of my biggest audiences. I am really supported by them and I love them. At the same time, I needed to get out. I really had to have support everywhere. I had to tour the whole world to be relevant and still exist.
As women we were told by a lot of people that we are not able to do it all. I was lucky to have a father who was a feminist and a mother who always told me, “You can choose to be whatever you want to be, you just must work hard and focus.” So, I never doubted myself that I could do everything that I wanted to. I just had to do things to work on it. I think this is something that is really important to tell young girls that you are enough. You are enough to become anything that you want. It’s not just words, it is true to what we are doing. Seeing representation of women who are able to do it all is really inspiring to others.
PC: I’m twenty two now and to say, “You’re enough.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. To hear that now is important and feels empowering.
IM: Yes! People think that you have to be so many different things and that you have to prove so much and achieve so many things to be “enough” and that is not true. You were born enough because we are all unique in our strengths and our weaknesses. And even weakness is something that is empowering. You learn more through failure than you do by winning. When you win something it’s done. When you fail you realize, if you’re willing to change or question things, you can have an opportunity to analyze yourself.
Ask yourself, “What did I do right? What can I improve?” And this is going to get you further than winning the first time. To me, if you believe that you are born enough and everything you’re doing is building you up, you don’t have to be built up to start with. Every step of the way your experience is building you up and you’re evolving with time. You are never not enough. You are always enough, from the beginning you have experience even without achieving your goals. Just as a human being we all have a purpose.
We just have to work on each finding what our purpose is and what our inner strengths are. I feel that it is something that is taken away from women and young people. People tell young people that they don’t have enough experience and that they know nothing because they are young. And that’s not true! Even babies are intelligent.
Society makes you feel like because your age is a number until your voice comes and that is not true. For women it is that your gender makes you not enough and because of this your voice doesn’t count the same way that it does as a male. Just because of your gender? That is so ignorant! We still think that because of gender some people are less and some people are more. To me I believe that we have to embrace, the good, the bad, the feathers and the wings and just keep going. It’s like people say, “Take your L and and learn from it.” Move on. Yet, when a woman makes a mistake, it’s terrible. You’re supposed to have to live with it forever. The standard is so high for women and so low for men. It is like we are always trying to justify men’s actions. “Boys are going to be boys, men are going to be men.” This is just because he is a “man.” That makes zero sense.
We should all have a voice no matter your age, no matter your gender, no matter where you come from. As an African woman, you are Black, you are a woman, and you are African? The odds are against you. But it isn’t true. I am here and I know a lot of women who are doing far more amazing things than me. We are a generation that does all of these things, and it didn’t just start with us. Society has to listen. When I see the uproar against racism it is really empowering. Everyone is concerned. Racism is not just about minorities or Black people, it’s everybody’s concern. The people who are racist they are concerned, even more concerned than anybody else. It is crazy to see the shift, and to see it happen after the crisis of COVID19.
PC: As a Black woman in the music industry you’re seeing this shift, what is the shift going to bring? You said it yourself, you’ve been doing this, you’ve been in it. Some people are starting to wake up, but you have been awake.
IM: I think that what is happening in the street is real, but I am not seeing a shift in the music or art industry. I will believe a shift is really happening when I see it. I believe that hashtags and all the social media fighting against something is very powerful. I also believe that the trends fade. And when it all fades, let's see what happens. I think if we want this change to be relevant and happen in the long run we have to be consistent and we have to not back down. We have to work all together in the long run.
I think everyone in the music industry knows that to be a dark skinned Black woman means you have to fight harder, work harder, and prove yourself harder. You are not going to be given the same amount of opportunities as other people. I truly feel that if I was white or light skinned my career would be even bigger. It would be easier. Everything that I have and have had in the past I fought for 1,000 times more than everybody else.
This wasn’t something I was talking about before because I was focused on the work. I am saying it now and I think people are able to understand and listen and get it. I feel like now people are ready to hear that. If I said that five years ago people would feel I was complaining or I was bitter. But I am not bitter. I am just being honest. I am having a great time touring. I have gotten to play live shows, big festivals and share my work with thousands of people. I have been doing that and having a good life.
Nobody can blackball me because the platform I created is from me directly to people. But, honestly? If I was white my voice wouldn’t have taken so long for it to be heard. Even with the #MeToo movement, a Black woman still isn't going to be the first to be on the magazine cover. They’re not going to be the one that everyone says, “Did you hear what she said?!” No, someone else has to amplify their voice. That's just the truth of it. I am okay with it. I have great allies. I work with amazing women. You’re one of them. Interviewing me is amplifying my voice. This is how we come together and make things intersectional and make our voices heard.
The music industry has a lot of work to do to create a real change. It is based less on a purpose and more on the economic side of things. A lot of executives believe that people are like children and you have to feed them very simplified things. Before the internet and streaming platforms if your music wasn’t released in other countries you would not be heard. Now, with streaming platforms you can hopefully be more global. You can finish your music and spread it everywhere. In a sense, things are shifting. As an actress it is even worse.
Now I have to write my own film to have a real voice. In the film industry we have to be forceful and be forceful together. We have to hit them where it hurts the worst, hit them in the pocket. We have to say, “We are not going to support you if you are not for everybody. If you don’t tell stories about everybody.” It is kind of stupid. With the Black Panther movie it proved that people are starving for different kinds of stories. It wasn’t just Black people in the theatres, it was everybody. When I went to see Parasite I was so happy to see other stories. I discovered things I knew nothing about. It was so interesting. I think that is the world we are living in. We want to know about each other. Let’s break the barriers we have created. Let’s stop being so ignorant in thinking people only want to see one kind story. It is so in the past now.
PC: Can you reflect on 2020 so far regarding what it has simultaneously taken away from us and brought back as a new normal in our lives?
IM: We are not only just together, but we are stronger together. We are taught to believe from a very young age that we had to compete as young women. Because of that we are systemically divided. But when we come together are women, women of all colors, cis women, trans women, heterosexual, homosexual and all come together and show the different faces of who we are it is so powerful.
How can you tell us that because of our gender we cannot do it? We are all so different. How do you tell all of us we are not good enough? That all of us are not important enough as men? That is crazy. I think we are starting to get there.
2020 is a terrible year. It is horrible, but at the same time we are seeing the ugly truth about everything. We just have to deal with it. After this crisis the world will never be the same. And we don’t want to be the same. We want to change what wasn’t working before. It is a very bad and difficult reset, but to make a deep change we have to go through something really difficult. It gives us strength. We are not dead. After COVID19 we are still standing. We have enough strength to tackle all these issues. And yet we are told we don’t have enough strength to do it. Especially around climate change. We are told it's too much money, too much whatever. We were in quarantine for so long. The world was on pause and we are still here. There is going to be a huge economical crisis, there is going to be a huge humanitarian crisis, but we as human beings are still here. We can evolve. 1% of the world has more money than the rest of us, so maybe they can do their part.
I feel like in 2020, more than ever, we are meant to feel that we all have a stake, that we all have a part in this. We are not voiceless, we are not second class citizens. We always felt like politicians were the first to have voices, but we gave them their voices. When we are in the streets and marching and demanding the change they are scared. Because they want to be elected, they don’t want to mess up things. Except for the crazy ones. Only the crazy ones are standing up and lying and claiming that things are going great. And you know who I am talking about. We are at a point where politicians will have to listen. Nobody wants to go back to a crisis and now that the Western world knows they are as vulnerable as what we call the “terrible” countries. Nobody is willing to take a risk and go back to this space again. I think we are more than ever conscious that climate change is a real threat and it can cause a serious crisis even to the Wester world, like COVID19 did.
We are in a mix of shedding skin that feels too tight and it is violent. You have to go through it. All deep changes hurt. It is really terrible that innocent people died so that change could happen. We can pray for their souls and move on together in a way we hadn’t done before. We thought with COVID19 we were all on the same boat. We thought we were all facing the same issues of the virus. It felt like a link between people. Everyone was watching the news around the world. We weren’t just watching in our bubble. We made a connection with our neighbors and other people. When everyone talked about race, people said we want a change. When people started marching in the US it spread everywhere because we feel connected, we feel like we are together.
I remember when I was advocating for these issues people felt like because I wanted a better world I was weak and naive. But, actually you have to be strong to want these things. It is not just “Oh I want peace in the world.” It’s I want peace in the world I am going to fucking work for peace in the world. I am going to work for things to change. Don’t be condescending when I am saying I want to make a change. I will make a change, not because I am a superhero, but because I am one person in a group of people willing to make a change. It is something that the world has to live with and to embrace. It is going to happen anyway. You have to be super badass to believe in a better world. We have to stop shaming activists who believe that they can make a change. It is possible.
This interview was conducted as part of Speciwomen’s partnership with Rouje.