SONG PREMIERE: "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me" by Indira Valey
"Give me power from the highest, from the worlds unseen. I am a force unlike possession digging life out of recession."
In an interview with AMAIZE Mag, Indira Valey describes her new single, "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me" (translated to “Do Not Fear Me Do Not”) as an “ode to the forces we fear that in reality can guide us to restorative states of embracing, beginning with ourselves”. The Spirit House Records artist uses bilingual poetry to deliver her message of self-love and taking back her own agency. The beauty in the song lays in the lines of Indira Valey’s poetry and lyrics – the differentiation between those blurs a bit – as they starkly hold her self-worth and all that makes her human in their palm. She takes back what is hers – she claims her own vulnerability, her strength, her humanity. And she does it both mightily and shakily at the same time.
The corresponding music video, which she was very hands-on in creating, is essential for the full Indira Valey experience. As she lays in a bathtub filled with flowers and water and her own body, you almost start to feel like she’s disintegrating into the root of her spirit. The sensual rawness of the music video for “No Me Tengas Miedo No Me" feels like a short film that transcends the bounds of music that is simply pleasurable to the ears. Even her 2016 Recordar album is a collection of experimental, healing songs in which she lays herself out, bare, over harp-like vocals and unembellished lyrics. Indira makes courageous calls to take back what society attempts to possess and manipulate. She breathes life into herself, essentially creating an entirely new being, stable and content with all that she is.
Make sure to check out the "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me" music video below!
The incredible talent behind "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me", Indira Valey, discusses the details of how the project came about and her thought process in an exclusive interview with AMAIZE Mag below!
AMAIZE MAG: The video for "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me” was incredibly powerful. Can you give us a rundown on the creative process behind a project like that?
INDIRA VALEY: Thank you! One night while performing at my friend’s house in Oakland, my friend Regina Larre Campuzano and I had plans to shoot a music video. We had this whole elaborate plan to go to a river and a place with a hot tub. After realizing we’d prefer to stay indoors at the house we thought why don’t we just film in the bath tub?! I slathered on this purple glittery makeup I had gotten earlier that day and filled the bathtub with buckets full of hot water from the kitchen sink (the bathtub hot water wasn’t working). We picked flowers and leaves from the yard and figured out diy lighting that included a bike light. Ricardo Saavedra helped with the lighting while Regina filmed me improvising movements with the water and flowers. They took a phone recording of me playing the song live and we played it over while filming. The video was shot before recording the track. The process of performing in the video and being informed by the footage connected me deeper with the message of the song. My friend Monica Metzler recorded me at a music school in Portland that we work for. I had written the spoken word piece on the plane ride home from the bay. I then let the video editing process be informed by the flow of the song.
AM: What is the message behind the track “No Me Tengas Miedo No Me”?
IV: The track and video for "No Me Tengas Miedo No Me/Do Not Fear Me Do Not" is an ode to the forces we fear that in reality can guide us to restorative states of embracing, beginning with ourselves. This is not a hypersexualized male gaze image of a woman in a bathtub. This is the body returning to itself surrounded by flowers in water for the approval of no one.
We are being called to reconnect to our intuitive knowing, to break the cycles of following the control of fear. What does it look like to admit our fragility, to strip the masks, to shout out for help knowing that our vulnerability can be the key to our strength?
Constant numbing to the realities of our violent human experience will likely be the wall holding us tightly wound. When we are with our bodies unwinding, with the grief arising, the sensuality of feeling, tasting, washing and watering, we give space to the inner voice guiding us out of our conditioning. How can we then act from a sense of interconnection out of the parts hidden and neglected? This song is the voice speaking in bilingual tongues from the amorphous presence reminding us "lo que sigo si me cuida/what I follow does take care of me and protect me".
AM: We noticed you edited together the video, are you normally very hands on with your projects?
IV: I like to experiment in several creative processes and videography is one of them. I love thinking of video editing as a sort of choreography where the manipulation of movement twists and turns time to bring you into an inner realm of imagination. I see all art forms as interconnected, informing each other while informing the self. I like to be as hands on as I can with my creative processes.
AM: Who are some of your musical influences?
IV: Some of my favorite musicians that I look up to are Jenny Hval, Lucrecia Dalt, and Juana Molina.
AM: Is your music a reflection of your experiences? Or do you take inspiration from what you see in the world?
IV: My music is an exploration of how the worlds unseen such as the intuition, imagination, spirit realms can inform our human experience and how the physical experience is connected to those unseen realms. My experience as a queer first generation Latinx and Jewish artist does spill into what kind of art I make. In my DNA is the experience of immigration, the unending redefining of identity, the searching and creation of home. I see my music as an ally in helping me and others reconnect to their emotional bodies and their authentic expressions.
AM: When did you start getting interested in music and what guided you to it?
IV: When I was younger, I always admired my sister who played piano and sung. I always wished I could sing and thought if I could I would be busking all day. Turns out it was the school system that told me I could not sing, that art forms were to be compartmentalized. In middle school and high school I played trumpet in band and struggled with reading music. I started exploring playing music on my own when I got my first loop pedal and began creating ambient, somewhat rhythmic tracks. My approach to music while developing Indira Valey rejected reading sheet music as the only way to write. I instead focus on deep listening and experimenting with the guitar, mic and loop pedals as my main tools.
AM: Can you describe your journey towards self love and empowerment?
IV: I left college for about a year and a half at which point I trained in movement based expressive arts therapy. This program along with other dance and multimedia performance practices introduced me to the arts as healing forms. I discovered how to access my voice and learned to love who I am. I see art and performance as containers for being vulnerable and allowing for whatever it is you're experiencing to be transformed if we allow them to be. I feel blessed to be surrounded by folks in my community that center self and community care in their lives.
AM: Is there a special space you’re drawn to when writing music?
IV: I like either being on walks by myself through a neighborhood or nature spot to let songs come to me. I also do a whole lot of writing when I am performing as my performances as mostly improvised. The thing is, I don’t usually remember most of what I create on stage.
AM: Name a silly fact about yourself!
IV: I like to sing and talk in funny voices and experiment with gender bending performative expressions. My masculine alter ego is named Tony Silver. I’ll leave you on that note.
