Before Say She She spoke, they sang

Sabrina Cunningham knows the arrangement like the back of her hand. She hums the melody as the song begins. Piya Malik started her vocal warmups immediately upon waking up that morning. She outstretches her arm to watch it change colour with the lights – purple, green, blue, then back to purple. Nya Gazelle Brown leaves her body, for a moment, channelling the disco diva character she dreamed up months ago in the studio. “We’re taking back the major league / A playing field where all are free,” the Brooklyn-based trio proclaims, in distinct harmony. They admit they “never had a disco life,” but when Say She She meets the stage, under the spinning mirrorball, they become disco.

“Disco Life”, the third single of Say She She’s upcoming record Cut & Rewind, is a love letter to disco music – a genre that preaches expression in the face of prejudice. When Malik shared an article she read about Disco Demolition Night with her bandmates, they got to writing. In 1979, Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl organised a gathering at Comiskey Park to destroy disco records. Between the games of a White Sox doubleheader, Dahl set a crate of unloved sleeves and discs aflame before 50,000 cheering fans.

Malik begins to weep when she talks about Disco Demolition Night, the infamous attack on disco putrefying with anger toward the Black and queer communities upholding dancehall culture in the 1970s. Brown likens disco music to freedom: “It’s the feeling that you can be your complete self. It’s freedom of expression, freedom of love…” A tear slides down my check and onto my keyboard. Say She She, too, represents freedom and boundless creativity. Cunningham, Malik, and Brown write about the issues on their hearts – whether that be contentious American politics or failed relationships.

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“Everyone’s always floating around everywhere,” says Malik, the self-described “chatty Cathy” of the group. “We’re very nomadic.” On our four-way Zoom call, Malik’s in Los Angeles, Cunningham’s in Brooklyn, and Brown’s in Maryland. Brown cradles her baby daughter in her lap because she couldn’t find a sitter. She coos and whines occasionally, eager to participate in her first on-screen interview.

Cunningham, who Malik and Brown lovingly nickname “Sab” or “Sabs,” describes the dawn of Say She She as a “New York tale.” Cunningham lived below Malik and her roommate in an old tenement building in the Lower East Side. “I only knew about them because I heard them through the floorboards,” she says. “I’d hear Malik late at night walking around with her heels on and singing.”

Eventually, Cunningham and Malik met and became fast friends. They found their missing third piece, Brown, at a house show in Harlem. After the set ended, the party migrated to the roof to dance. “We just started singing at each other and harmonising,” Malik says. Still the trio consider this moment to live at the heart of their friendship – before Say She She spoke, they sang.

Music has always been a constant source of community and belonging for the band. Brown has been performing since she was a young child – arts group on Saturdays led to her pursuing classical training at the Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C. After a year of studying classical voice training, Brown switched to jazz. “I figured that was more my speed,” she says.

Cunningham spent her early years being scolded by her parents for singing too loudly in the house. In college, she began channelling her passion for noise into friends’ projects – singing backup and getting comfortable being on stage. “I had my own band, but we were terrible,” she laughs. As Cunningham familiarised herself with the New York venue scene, it increasingly began to feel like home.

Malik tells a story of her and Brown watching Cunningham play with a band at Rockwood Music Hall. The friends shuffled through the crowd to get a better view of their beloved Sab, who they believed should’ve been placed front-and-centre. “That guy needs to move!” she exclaimed, playfully referring to the lead singer for whom Cunningham was singing backup.

Like Brown, Malik launched her singing career in youth choirs. They’d perform at Royal Albert Hall and take choral trips around Italy, but Malik was most interested in spending time with the cool, older girls in the group. Her first solo performance took place at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. “I was a really high soprano in those days. You wouldn’t believe it now,” she laughs.

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Malik recalls feeling isolated as an Indian girl in English classical music. She didn’t often see other brown girls singing solos in choirs. With flattery from audience members would come sensationalism. “People would be like, ‘Oh, look at this!’ It was almost a novelty,” she says. It wasn’t until she landed the role of Mabel in Pirates of Penzance that she felt truly embraced by her creative community.

While living with a DJ boyfriend in Barcelona, Malik shifted from her classical roots to drum and bass. Still, a career in music remained an extra-curricular activity. “I maybe would’ve chosen to go to art school, but I had these wonderfully traditional Indian parents who were like, ‘You want to do music? You better have two Master’s degrees.’ So I did!” she says. Malik was several years into a career in politics before she met her future bandmates in New York.

Over time, playing in other people’s projects was starting to lose its allure. For the part-time band members or the speed-dial backup singers, the magic of the production process feels out of reach. Malik, Cunningham, and Brown were three friends who loved to make music together, living and working in New York City. The choice to form their own project felt like kismet. They named themselves Say She She – a silent nod to disco superhero Nile Rodgers.

While much of their discography falls under the “discodelic soul” sound, Say She She rejects the constraints of genre. “The sound of the band is who we all are as individuals, and what we bring to the table in terms of our voice and the freedom to be anything we want,” Malik says. They seek inspiration from all edges and divots of the musical spectrum – from New York classics like Joe Bataan and The Salsoul Orchestra to contemporary favourites like Lady Wray and Khruangbin.

Malik, Cunningham, and Brown have been singing together since 2014, but Say She She didn’t release their first record Prism until 2022. When their friend Joe Crispiano of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings was gifted a tape machine, they offered to be his first round of guinea pigs. At the start of the pandemic, the band used those early demos to build Prism. In turn, they learned a core value of their artistry: “the magic of the first utterances.”

Excessive re-recording sheds the vulnerability and certainty inherent in the performance of a first or second take. The band asked themselves, “Why don’t we just adopt this approach to recording music where we always respect that those first recordings are actually going to be the final piece..?” And so, their 2023 record Silver honoured the same philosophy.

After they completed Prism, Terry Cole of Colemine Records recommended the band try a writing retreat in Los Angeles. He arranged a studio session with Sergio Rios, Dan Hastie, Sam Halterman, and Dale Jennings of LA-based funk group Orgone. “We ended up writing ‘Forget Me Not’ on the spot the first time we met them,” Cunningham says. Their “throwaway” session with their new rhythm section birthed the lead single for their second record – an homage to New York City’s Guerilla Girls and woman-led liberation movements.

“We obviously knew that those were our people,” Cunningham says. “They were so respectful, so lovely, and such amazing human beings, but also such incredible musicians with incredible taste. And the rest is history.” The bands have been playing and writing together since that day, their most recent collaboration being Cut & Rewind.

Cut & Rewind is Say She She’s most urgent call to action yet – to organise, to advocate, and to practice strength. The record features a variety of protest songs, romantic ballads, and catchy pop choruses, all dripping with sweat and Studio 54-era glamour. At twelve tracks in length, Cut & Rewind finds the sweet spot between its predecessors. It’s concise, yet absolutely expressive and real.

Malik measures the length of her friendships with Cunningham and Brown in Donald Trump presidencies: two. “I don’t like to swear, but it’s fucked up,” she says. “It’s fucked that we’re having to write about these things.” The trio have never decided to only write protest music. But they write about the topics on their hearts – many of which are political.

In fact, Say She She’s existence is inherently political. As female musicians from varying racial and ethnic backgrounds who draw inspiration from genres rooted in resistance, their voices are vital in this period of heightened censorship and obstruction of human rights. “Music is so emotive and it’s such a powerful tool,” Malik says. “It can have the power to save people, but it can also have the power to incite, and it can have the power to soothe, but also alarm. It’s everything.”

“She Who Dares”, the seventh song on the record, envisions a Gileadean dystopia in which women are revoked of all rights. A foil to Janelle Monaé’s “Crazy, Classic, Life”, “She Who Dares” opens with a message from a Big Brother-esque political figure (Cunningham’s voice through a megaphone): “She who dares / To question authority / Will suffer.”

However, in the verses, Say She She rebels against the oppressive power, professing over pulsing bass, “We run the rally / We run the fair / The ride is long for / She who dares.” “Ideally, [‘She Who Dares’] is less scary and more empowering,” Cunningham says. As women’s rights are being targeted by governments worldwide, “She Who Dares” intends to lift us onto our feet instead of cowering in fear.

While much of the record leans into political themes and metaphors, track ten, “Little Kisses”, is more straightforward. A silky and sensual reprieve from the higher tempos, it’s the perfect song for when the disco ball slows down: “Little kisses / What I’m missing,” they repeat. Cut & Rewind speaks to the two-pronged nature of political women – and many women, in general. We are outspoken and principled, but we also feel desire and seek softness and compassion.

As Say She She approaches the release of their third record, the trio praises another core value of their creative process: “come as you are.” Whether they’re sharing lyrics and melodies, making production recommendations, or just sitting together in emotional moments, Malik, Cunningham, and Brown rely on the safety and sisterhood they have cultivated with one another. “Brown’s an only child, and now she has two sisters and four brothers – and Cunningham’s the dad,” Malik laughs.

Above all, there’s an equity to the Say She She project, in which one is safe to share their hearts and minds through art – a robust, communal opposition to those that try and fail to silence women and demolish disco. Perhaps, the music world could take some notes from this found family.