L’nee Golay’s music is like an evolving quest to understand what it is to be different. The songs from her new extended play seem like they are written to someone imaginary, offering them all the confidences and affirmations of a world where there are no labels. Standing tall in support of the LGBTQ+ movement, Golay is hopeful for a world without prejudice and hate. ‘Her’ from the EP is soulful. “I wrote ‘Her’ (at the time) about the state of society regarding the LGBTQ+ society in India. My naive mindset was that if someone were to settle in the west, boom, that would be the end of their problems. They would be totally accepted for who they were; no one would judge them and they’d live happily ever after. I thought that these places would be more progressive, accepting of humans from all walks of life. But from my two years of living in this country, I can tell you that people are just scared of ‘different’, just like back home. The meaning of the song changed entirely after that. It now signifies a hope, an empowering thought, that one day we will be more accepting,” says Golay.
Her roots are dug deep in South India where she grew up in a musical family who steered her in the direction of music very early on in life. Currently she’s at Leeds in the United Kingdom for higher studies waiting to for the lockdown to lift and enter her third year of college. Despite the uncertain times, Golay rolled out two new tracks that says a lot about her as a musician.
A lot of people have a lot of time on their hands right now, which may cause them to focus more intently on a singer’s work. Yet there is always the chance the opposite may happen. These are, as you can hardly have failed to notice, extraordinary, unprecedented times. There is no escape from what’s going on in the outside world: to release an album now, an artist would have to be supremely confident they’d made something capable of cut- ting through the constant roar of news about the terrifying global crisis; something capable of subverting our natural inclination to react by turning to aspects we already know and love and find comforting. But L’nee is pretty confident about what she creates. And she should well be —her new music is intimate and moving and lavished with gorgeous melodies.
L’nee wants to transport people to another time, another world, even if it’s just for a moment. “I associate songs to specific moments of my life. For example, if I hear a certain song, it takes me back to where I was when I heard it, for instance, the song Unstoppable by Lianne La Havas takes me back to driving in the forest on the way to my grandparents’ house with my parents and sister, with it comes a whole array of forgot- ten senses.” She’s been doing that since 2015 when she was just a teenager perform- ing a powerhouse R&B set to a packed house at The Humming Tree. Even though she was opening for the Kolkata composer Tajdar Junaid, Golay made a deep impact. Her other achievements include performing with rock bands like Mad Orange Fireworks. ‘I love Mad Orange Fireworks so much, what a talented group of wonderful beings. They have always been so supportive of me and Michael Dias (frontman) has always looked out for me and I owe a lot to him, he’s almost like a mentor! It was magical when they played my music with me for the first time,” she said.
Before ending the hour-long conversation about music, art, culture and acceptance on Zoom, I asked Golay to describe her music as though it were a person. “If my music were a person, she’d be very indecisive and inconsistent. She’d disappear off the face of the earth for months, stay for a few weeks and then take off again. She likes to sit in her sadness and sometimes she tries to sound happier but it doesn’t really work out, not because she’s sad - because she is actually quite a happy person - but because her strengths lie in telling sad stories, apparently.” A promising name in the soul-baring pop/folk genre, you can explore more material from Golay and the entire EP, this year.
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Text Hansika Lohani Mehtani
Date 03-03-2021