ARCHANGEL on Rebirth, Richmond-roots, and Using Music to Organize.

BY JUSTICE SMITH

ARCHANGEL by @lightpainterr from the Ice Cream Social at The Broadberry.

Richmond has been a hot spot for music lovers for generations. With its vibrant underground music scene and access to Grimalkin Records and Spacebomb, aspiring artists have found a network of resources in the River City to jumpstart their creative work. However, the beauty of the music scene in Richmond is its marriage to community-building and mutual aid support. In this interview, we talk with Archangel — DJ and community-builder — about her upbringing in Richmond and how she uses music as an agent for change.

What are your earliest memories of music?

A lot of them are related to my parents. My mom and dad met in college and would take me to Norfolk State University homecomings with them. The HBCU marching bands were the birth of my fixation on percussive beats, remixes, and drum kicks. I was raised on 90’s and early 2000s hip hop, soul/neo-soul, and R&B. My first video game console was a Gameboy Advance – some of my first games were Street Fighter 2, Megaman, & Pokemon Gold Version – each one being my gateway into electronic genres such as Electro, Techno, Garage. They taught me a lot about music scoring, the power of looping, and using sound to tell a narrative. Going to visit family up and down the east coast helped me fall in love with regional club music. My parents taught me how to use LimeWire and something SHIFTED. Yeah, my music taste is a culmination of my childhood experiences.

Why the name ARCHANGEL? What does it mean to you?

My birth name is shared with a warrior in the Quran that was killed in battle and became an Angel after. My father is named after an archangel in the bible and his father’s name is also a biblical name. My parents put a lot of work into raising me, and when I chose the name Angel, I did it to honor my birth namesake who fought so hard for his beliefs and transformed into an ethereal being after. Transitioning did not erase who I was – it gave birth to the self I am now – the self I am after the hardship. My artist title, ARCHANGEL, pays homage to my father’s name, honoring the religious backgrounds of my family while recognizing my identity, not as a sin but as a divine blessing. It’s a tribute to how my work has led me to the best version of myself.

ARCHANGEL during her B2B with LIMITBREAK! for Body Hack’s end of year celebration at Nowadays.

How do your Queerness and Transness influence your music making?

I never had formal music training. I started producing music and DJ’ing after starting to publicly live my life as a transgender individual. I had to learn the basics of music through trial, error, experimentation, and research – much like my journey in becoming the woman I am today. In being a queer and trans person, I often found that I had to be innovative to find the best way to embody my truest self and take alternative routes to self-discovery. When my friend taught me how to use Reason, a DAW by Propellerhead, he told me, “Here are the rules. Now it's time to break them.” When I was born, it was like I was assigned a reading entitled “How to be a boy.” Obviously, socially and medically, I’ve broken that rule. I’ve been told awful things like, “you’ll never be a woman.” F*ck that. Look at me now.

My identity gives me an expansive view of genre. In the world that we live in today, people's sexuality and gender exist on a spectrum. While the history of sexuality and transgender identity is important, our heroes paved the way in teaching us that the boundaries of gender variance are limitless. The work of the pioneers of different genres taught us that dance music, as we know it, is built around Black music. And the legacy that these pioneers left encouraged musicians to pull from different genres to the point where electronic dance music is a mixing pot of different influences, where many of my favorite tracks can't be categorized under one genre alone. I’ve had to look to different inspirations, whether they be real people or fictional characters, as references when coming into my womanhood. As I stepped into my life as a producer, I wanted to incorporate different genres and assemble them into something new and beautiful.

My experience affirms the importance of artistry outside just dancing, outside of just making something for people to groove to. My work is like an open journal of my innermost thoughts. More than just a tool for DJs to spin during their sets. My work is a celebration of Black trans magic via the joy of expression in storytelling. My work is abnormal; it can maybe even be described as strange, brave, and adventurous. It’s so much more than a .wav file. It’s the product of the fantasy landscape that I build into the future of my reality. One where I can tell my story through the narratives I build with sound. I’ve been told awful things like, “you’ll never be a woman.” F*ck that. Look at me now! On electronic dance music social media platforms, it’s often cis-gendered, straight dudes telling people how they should be making music or DJ’ing. Resisting those sentiments is grounded in the reality that is my stance against transphobia and anti-Blackness — just by being alive in spite of the violence I’ve faced. Sometimes I’ll scroll through my feed and be like, “Okay, well, y’all are critiquing artists for doing this, yet the girls and the gays are getting more bookings than you instead of looking down at everyone.”

While I experience so much trans-togetherness and joy, I experience discomfort and stress from the outside world for being a woman every day. Whether I'm “passing” or “clockable” for the day. Oftentimes, this contributes to me having a lot on my mind – including concerning myself with my own safety and peace of mind. I’m looking forward to achieving my gender-affirming surgery and moving my life forward in a big way. I’m battling heartache constantly from the fact that I and so many other girls have to be “resilient” in a hostile environment. I started focusing on production heavy after getting fired from my job at the start of the pandemic, and began relying on music as my sole source of income. This contributes to the amount of time that I can spend on my music and explains why my process is more eclectic and scattered. I’m not in a place where I have a home base right now. I’m always traveling. It brings a rawness to my music process that’s special, humble, and realistic in nature. I don’t always have access to a studio. Sometimes it’s me, my laptop, and headphones. No beat pad or anything because I wouldn’t be able to fit that in my luggage or carry-on. A lot of tears and memories are in those tracks. I try to capture the full range of emotions and thought processes that my experience brings me into those tracks.

My upcoming project is a narrative of my trans experience told through the journey of a hero and the trials she faces on her journey. It’s dedicated to the person I shared my first queer friendship and relationship with. He’s not here with us anymore, but he lives in a special place in my mind.

ARCHANGEL’S cosplays Little Red Riding Hood for a Body Hack set.

In what ways has Richmond shaped you as an artist and person?

I became an artist by entering the DIY music scene in Richmond. It’s the city where I first built my trans community; it's the city that birthed the real me. When I was a budding musician in Richmond, my queer community felt sort of compact. It felt like all the gay people knew each other or knew of each other. In the practice of DIY, events were mostly held in people’s homes. This made things smaller and more intimate than the large venues in other cities. In this creative ecosystem, I learned not only the importance of independence but the practice of leaning on support systems. It instilled a sense of responsibility into me of taking care of each other, making sure we could each get to the function, get home safe, learn from each other, support each other, and pour into one another. The people’s shows I went to were my real friends that I hung out with outside of the shows. These were the same people that taught me how to produce and DJ, and vice versa.

Events were put on with intention, and we made it a point to stand against oppressive behaviors that were the norm in established venues in our sacred spaces. 2017-2019 was a golden age for the Richmond scene. My friends, who I'm still friends with today, lived in different show houses and put together programming for touring artists that impacted my art immeasurably. I’m not in Richmond as much these days, touring different places and working in New York City. In all my travels, it’s rare to find cities like Richmond. It feels like there’s a special care we have for one another. Some of my favorite bands and DJs tell me Richmond is one of their favorite places to stay for that reason. That’s something precious.

I started my party series, Ice Cream Social, because a lot of house shows were punk or noise music. I wanted a queer and trans night with DJs that played rap and electronic dance music across the genre (and gender) spectrum. I wanted parties that prioritized Black, and of color people with a practice of emphasizing “anyone can come, but this space is by us and for us.” The first Ice Cream Social happened in the living room of my apartment. I invited all my Black queer friends to come over and dance. I was playing tracks from my laptop, and after that, I wanted to take it to the next level and start packing out venues. My friends were DJs, so I knew I could curate bills to provide an experience people hadn’t had in Richmond before. I was less concerned with playing music myself rather than setting up an experience for my friends to give our city something we hadn’t had before. I started DJ’ing after my friends hyped up my living room dance party, and the rest came together from there.

Music has a long lineage of bringing communities together. What role does your music play in community-making?

Richmond and Ice Cream Social gave me the tools to combine fundraising with live shows. It taught me the concept of: “We can make space for one another to perform, get paid for it, and raise funds to support other people or organizations in our Network.” Being a part of the Richmond DIY scene was a gift because it introduced the idea of events like these where people could turn up and have fun while also meeting other queer and trans people. A place that gives folks the opportunity to make connections with people that can see and understand them. A place where people can go if they don't want to be alone.

Joining the Body Hack team in New York as a resident DJ & organizer has been more than an eye-opener. It broadened my horizons of the word “community,” as Body Hack: a dance party and mutual aid group, has put together programming and organizing in NYC, Peru, and beyond. It’s really taught me how important having a team can be to making big things happen — how important it is to have a space where there can be intergenerational cohabitation, a range of artistic performances, besides DJ’ing, and believing in the girls, gays, and theys that come out to help us raise money for the fundraising beneficiary of the month. Body Hack taught me how to use my skills and take them to the next level, and to always think bigger.

Whether it’s Ice Cream Social or Body Hack, I use my music to help people like me get free, shake their a**, meet one another, and have fun. I hope to use my music to create pockets of sanctuary on the dancefloor, or through the speakers on someone’s headphones, listening to a mix of mine. My friends love to come to my sets and go crazy. Sometimes it feels like it’s a chance for us all to see one another at one time. Sometimes the DJ booth can feel like a little corner in heaven with the right people around. I use music as a way to unite people in a space, especially when it comes to booking or curation. I want to create nights where Trans artists and attendees are the norm.

I have the pleasure of DJ’ing a lot of my friends and peers' music during my sets. Lots of times, these are exclusive tracks that might not be available to the public yet. I share out some of my unreleased tracks as well so my friends can play them in their sets. Passing music to one another is a special act. It’s a reminder that we can all be connected to each other through our art practice, the venues we frequent, relationships, and the internet. It’s cool to get out of our bubbles and interact with other people who make up a larger creative ecosystem that we individually occupy. It’s like we’re all working to help each other build soundscapes that push the culture forward together, tuning each other into the projects we’re working on, and sharing in our love of making music. That’s a special kind of community to me.

ARCHANGEL post-set for Body Hack at Nowadays.

What do you see for the future of your music and artistry? What do you want to see in the future for BIPOC Queer and Trans communities?

I’ll be touring Europe for the first time in April, and already making plans to go back there this summer and early fall. I’m working up to the release of my debut solo LP, which is getting mixed and mastered by a friend who's an incredible artist – and supported by one of my favorite collectives ever. After that, I want to dive back into my collaborative projects: BLVCKPUNX & INDEX. I’m making plans to do live production sets when I settle after some touring. In the future, my goal is to do sound design and scoring for movies, video games, performance art pieces, and fashion runways.

As a long-term goal, I want to write and direct a movie and video game. I’d like to re-enter the world of acting, as an actress – instead of an actor. I dream of being able to contribute to a space where I can teach others my skills to encourage Black queer people to participate in music. I plan to keep excelling in my path as a producer and a DJ. This ain’t even my final form yet.

In the future of BIPOC queer and trans communities, I want us to be serious. I want us to be for real.

What does that mean? Facing the facts. That Black people experience an intersection of transphobia that is othered from non-Black folks of the trans experience. With that knowledge comes the understanding that these differences create an atmosphere of inequality. With the reality of inequality and inequity, there should be an understanding of what we can do to contribute to the protection and enrichment of Black trans people.

For the future of queer and trans communities, I want the term “transmisogyny” to become common knowledge. I want people to understand that trans women, especially Black trans women experience an escalated level of violence that is the centerfold to general “transphobia”. I want us to recognize that trans people, who have to navigate medical systems and procedures for their care have a life experience so nuanced and specific – and not everyone can relate to that.

I want to envision a world where other queer and trans people can STAND UP for Black trans women. Vocally, physically, and emotionally. The world is already telling us that we aren't deserving of womanhood, and it’s sad to feel that there isn't a priority in providing our trans sisters with the delicacy and empathy people are taught to share with cis-gendered women. I think it’s so easy to share Instagram infographics, but when push comes to shove, are y’all challenging your own transmisogynistic tendencies?

I want us to realize that overall queer and trans liberation will never happen without addressing the needs of our most marginalized members. That non-Black trans people need to be thinking about what resources they can share with us to close those gaps of inequity. Non-Black trans people have to become less defensive, more open-minded, and not afraid to put their back into throwing some cash into the community.

It’s so common to see people pay homage to Marsha P. Johnson, the characters and cast of Pose, and Laverne Cox. Are you pouring that same love and respect into the Black trans people in your personal life? Or are you picking and choosing which parts of the Black trans experience make you feel comfortable, and what parts concerning our tangible needs and safety may you keep avoiding. If you’re comfortable saying Black lives matter, protect trans kids, and queer rights – but you have issues with treating these people with love, respect, and empathy in your personal circles – you are far less radical than you thought.

I want to see more intergenerational spaces and interactions. More queer babies with queer elder friends, that can be there to guide them. I’d like to see more trans-masculine, especially Black trans-masculine, DJs – as that’s something I don't see enough.

I want to see more parties directly raise money for people in their community. I want to see more shows book Black trans girls on music lineups. I want us to see us pouring into each other so much that no one worries about having to find a job because we’ll have people in different places that could put us on. I want people to have easier access to their medicine due to organizing on our part. I want us to break down the walls of capitalism that tell us “ I can’t” by coming together with a “We will” mindset by passing money along to the cycle that embraces us each in the end when we need it the most.

ARCHANGEL poses at Elsewhere for New World Dysorder set.