2023-07-25 09:35:22
First known as Anthony & The Johnsons, Anthony Hergarty became, a few years ago, Anohni. A fervent activist for the LGBT+ cause, she first shone with intimate folk music before experimenting with more abrupt, electro and ultra-political sounds. With My Back Was A Bridge for you To Cross, she returns to the music that has nourished her since childhood: soul, with a pinch of folk. When his voice rises, on the opening track “It Must Change”, we are overwhelmed. Anohni and I have already had the opportunity to meet in the past and our reunion, by interposed screen, between Paris and New York, his adopted city and heart, gave rise to a conversation as sincere as it was moving. Like My Back Was A Bridge for you To Cross.
One-on-one with Anohni
On the cover of My Back Was A Bridge for you To Cross appears Marsha P. Johnson, whose queer activism is a landmark today, and which manifests itself in your music from the moment you choose your stage name, “and the Johnsons”. Did you have the chance to meet her?
Once, towards the end of his life – Marsha P. Johnson was murdered in 1992, which still breaks my heart. She was very popular in the West Village, where I had settled when I arrived in New York. If Marsha was very generous, she lived frugally, benefiting from the financial assistance of these friends. She was homeless, like most of the central civil rights and rights figures of the LGBT+ community of the 90s. Not only was she queer, but she was also black, which made her extremely socially fragile. However, on the streets and in the clubs, Marsha was a saint, a triumphant star. Today, thanks to the networks and the documentary on Netflix, she is recognized for what she was: a living and eternal myth. If the music on this album is above all soulful, it is because this music, so emblematic for black Americans, translates what we tried to do, Marsha, me, and many others: to transform the experience of suffering into an ecstatic, almost transcendental form of self-expression.
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