Deep Dive #1 (Interview): If Sona Koloyan stops writing…
“Somebody wins”
“This is my 500 year prediction for the future,” Sona tells me in a quaint, viridescent cafe in South East London, perched next to a screaming pram.
“They’re gonna develop gene selection which will be really amazing at first, and cure horrible illnesses, but then they’re going to start genetically engineering humans, and people who can afford it will hop on. And us bozos will stay stupid, poor and unhealthy”
What an opening statement. This frank, direct honesty is why I wanted to speak to Sona Koloyan, who has just released, “Under My Own Gaze”, an arpeggiated, big-band epic, her ‘favourite to perform’. The song explores her relationship with her body, as well as romantic love vs the love of community, which makes our conversation incredibly fitting.
“She warms her bed alone”, Sona sings defiantly, then launches into a bitter iteration, “I’m fine”, over and over, with a spitting lilt suggesting the statement should not be believed. The sentiment feels ubiquitous; friends writing on instagram, “the anthem!”, and “the cathartic song we all need”.
This music has been in the works for years, largely because Sona changes her performance every time she’s booked for a gig. This fluidity serves as the hallmark of an accomplished musician, and reassures me real, live music is well and truly alive. It extends to her band, too, who all met at Goldsmiths when she moved to London in 2014. Opting to record with Harri Chambers at his rooftop studio in Greenwich post-graduation, she drew on her band to finish what she started, including vocalist Imogen.
S: “I’ve been reading Stephen Hawking’s book, ‘Brief Answers To The Big Questions’, and he’s talking about Elon Musk but still as if he was a good person, as obviously he died before he saw Elon become an absolute lunatic.”
C: “I’ve just seen that Elon’s paying for Stephen King’s twitter blue mark because King refused to pay…it’s like he bought twitter to control what he thinks are his little dolls. The ego needs to die there.”
S: “I consume so much post-apocalyptic media — I feel like I just need to know.”
C: “Oh god…this interview is already going down a dark, dark hole”
I say this, but I love people I can talk about this shit to. It’s somewhat of a taboo nowadays as everyone crawls, quite wounded, out of the entrails of lockdown. People just can’t cope, especially now it’s becoming more and more of a reality. Finding others to talk about the apocalypse with feels like finding a needle in a haystack, as well as the rare occasion of speaking to another musician who has given up so much in the pursuit of creativity.
S: “Stephen Hawking’s book has so much hope, and I just don’t”
We talk about cults, and the law of physics. Sona tells me about everything growing until it implodes, and tells me she stays off social media to keep a ‘smooth brain’. We both laugh. We talk about how difficult it is to do art, something all artists talk about with each other in the dark. Sona says something I love — “if I stop writing, “somebody wins”.
What a way to look at it.
“If I stop writing, somebody wins”
C: “Let’s talk about your amazing music. I’m sure these thoughts have inspired your lyrics”
S: “I don’t consider myself a lyricist. I always write music first and then fit lyrics in around it. For In The Air, the lyrics were very in the moment. I just fit them into the melody I’m writing.”
C: “They’re some of my favourite lyrics, because they’re so direct. Lyrics belong to you — you can be as direct as you want. And your lyrics are so human, and I really locked onto them, so it’s funny to hear you didn’t overthink them.”
S: “I’ve been in those songwriting loops where I write lyrics to death, and it never works. For me, it never works. But when I get in the zone, the very few times I get in the zone, it mostly just comes out like meditation.”
C: “and how do you sit down and meditate? Do lyrics come in that space?”
S: “if there’s something I know I’m going to write about, like with ‘In the Air’, then I let the pure thought come out, like, “what am I trying to say?”. And usually that’s the lyric. Sometimes I set up a notebook and write out, like, “what am I actually trying to say? What’s my problem?” And then I write…I feel like…I’m in the air, you know?”
C: “I love the artwork you did for it. It encapsulates everything I feel about London. The power lines”
S: “yeah, the power lines. A few years ago, I saw this film, I don’t know who did it, and it showed these stills of rows of houses, rows of lampposts, and power lines. And on top of it, there was this electronic version of Clair De Lune. I was so hypnotised. It felt like the buildings were alive, it felt like they were trees. I never found out who that was, it was so good”
C: “I love it when pieces of art have roots, like, when they inform other pieces of art. I don’t really think anything is copying because it’s…just interacting with what you see. I often find that songwriting is inspired by a multitude of things. Is In The Air about dissociation, being part of a diaspora, neither, both, or more?”
S: “I think maybe about both. It was definitely written pre-pandemic. I had these moments of dissociation for a long time. Social situations as a teenager would put me in these weird brain glitches. I’d think, “everyone knows that you’re weird”. And no one ever felt that at all. It was just my brain sabotaging me. But that’s such a familiar feeling to me. When I sing, “everything I have is on loan”, maybe that’s more about being part of a diaspora, or maybe it’s about how nothing really belongs to you, not even your education. I rent my house, I haven’t paid for my degree yet. I don’t really own anything. I have way more roots back in Armenia, but in London, here, my house isn’t mine.”
I’d think, “everyone knows that you’re weird”. And no one ever felt that at all. It was just my brain sabotaging me.
C: “that’s one of the lyrics I relate most to. Hard. At the moment, there’s so many ‘to-let’ signs, kind of like that film. I think the UK is on the precipice of something. Moving to London felt so exciting at first. I felt like I could zoom out of my bubble a bit, and meet so many people from all over the world. Actually, I remember ages ago, we had a conversation about Western music. Do you have any advice for people looking to decolonise their western teaching?”
S: “hmmm, maybe a lot of listening to different folk styles, maybe trying to transcribe the music you hear to understand it. Even though sometimes it’s impossible, like, there are letters in Armenian that don’t have the equivalent in English. So, English-speaking people would have to throw away the alphabet and listen to the phonetics of it. It’s similar with Western notation. Sometimes, you’re trying to transcribe something into a box it won’t fit into because the rules that have been taught don’t apply. But you can make up your own ways to notate, you can make graphic scores, your own language. You could notate Armenian folk songs with quarter tones with Western notation, but you’re still looking at it through a certain lens. You have to immerse yourself fully into that culture, otherwise all that history and context is lost.”
C: “that reminds me of a quote about translating languages. I’m paraphrasing — but it goes something like, ‘translating is like pouring wine into another bottle. You’re not just transferring it. By moving the wine from the bottle to another container, you’ve aerated it, and it’ll go off. You’re taking everything about what it is and turning it into something it’s not’. That quote transformed my very limited understanding of cultures beyond my own.”
Sona is from Armenia, a country rooted in sacred folk music and its very own tonal system that uses ‘tetrachords’. Taught by a strict Russian piano teacher, Sona released a collection of seven lo-fi bedroom tracks, Pity Party in 2019, ‘embodying Koloyan’s relationship with herself as an ethnic Armenian who was born and raised in the Czech Republic’. Our conversation drifts to notation.
C: “As someone who isn’t classically trained, I’ve bought this jazz piano book. And with notation, I was really trying to force myself to understand it. Until I read this grade 8 guitarist straight up say, “I can’t do notation””
S: “that’s what I’m like. I would get in trouble all the time with my piano teacher because I would take the pieces home and I’d find them on YouTube, because my ear was pretty strong. I still really struggle with sheet music. I can’t sight-read at all”
C: “I’d say listening by ear is the most intuitive way to be a musician. It’s how everyone interacts with music”
S: “yeah, that’s what our ancestors did. It was passed down generation by generation. Notation is amazing because now we can preserve that information. There was an Armenian folklorist who studied music formally, and then was able to transcribe hundreds and hundreds of Armenian folk songs so we can have them all preserved, so we don’t lose them.
Sona is talking about Komitas, the founder of the Armenian national school of music and one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.
C: “that’s so true. I feel like I grew up, I mean, I hated notation anyway, so I was already cast out of the system in that way…but I remember we were always taught “this is music” about Western Music, we were never taught other methods of music or that it could be different. It never even crossed my mind that Western music is just one lens. Maybe later we were taught about other cultures, but always as if western music was the true way to measure music”
S: “the way of noting down music — it’s very simple and quick. There are five lines. It’s very effective, but it’s effective for what it’s effective for, if you know what I mean?”
C: “I just accepted there were eight notes in an octave, and that’s not simply true. I will never be able to fully comprehend more than eight notes, but in other cultures, there’s so much more.
Anyway, back to your music. How has it felt to release it?”
S: “Fine.”
We both laugh knowingly.
S: “The part I struggle with is marketing myself on social media, which has become to dominant way to release music. Before, you used to release your record and that was the way to measure your success, or how many people came to your shows.”
C: “and it’s really changed.”
S: “half of me likes the way it’s so easy to post something and reach people, but then half of me is really, really, incredibly angry over how it’s evolved to exploit people’s personal lives, and make people feel like they have to sell their personal lives. It’s stealing people’s free time”
C: “Totally agree. At one point, Sufjan Stevens just posted growing tomatoes. Which actually…brings me to my next question; you have influences spanning from Sufjan to Beyonce. What do you think the link is between all the artists you’re inspired by?”
S: “My biggest inspiration is the difference between the recording and the live version. For me, it’s so important to make that distinction. There’s an inherent difference between a live session and a song. A song is frozen in time, whereas a performance is a linear process — no one can skip through your performance.
“A song is frozen in time, whereas a performance is a linear process — no one can skip through your performance.”
If they’re there, they have to witness the whole thing. So what I like to avoid doing is having my live versions of the song be exactly the same as the recorded version. Those two things are on different planes of existence. A recording is considered, measured and crafted. A live performance is a method of communication, it’s an event with so many different participants. None of recording happens at the same time.”
“But I write these songs with the presumption that it’s happening all the time. The biggest thing for me is having that distinction. The reason I love those artists so much is that they put so much time and care into making the performance so effective. They’ll completely rewrite songs to fit a different narrative.
Beyonce has performed Crazy In Love a thousand times in her life, but every time she brings something new. There’s a different band, she’s older, she’s younger. Sufjan Stevens sometimes is solo, sometimes he has a whole marching band, sometimes it’s electronic. It’s always so well considered — he will rewrite entire sections, cut a song down, elongate another song. I think that’s the biggest, most mind blowing part of my music education. Seven Swans, for example. I fell in love with it, and then I found it live, and it was a completely different song.
C: “I remember you showed me the Austin City Limits performance. It connected me so much to him, because I can see that he’s an awkward human being, and I love artists who are awkward human beings. This all brings me to another question about your music — some of it is improvised live, right?”
S: “the form is written, but some parts are improvised. I wouldn’t have it any other way, because there’s so many talented people in my band, and I want to use them for what they can do. Mat Roberts arranged string parts for two songs, including Under My Own Gaze. Mat, Evie and Anne have played together for such a long time that they’re so in tune with each other. I kind of leave them to their devices, their brain waves converge into one thing. They just know what the other is gonna do. They’re in perfect harmony with each other”
C: “I remember they all did a bedroom gig — Evie sang folk songs, Mat played his own songs and Anne played violin through max MSP. It was incredible”
S: “When they’re on stage with me, it’s just like, what is this calibre?!”
C: “Yeah, but that makes sense with you. The way you all play together…I bet you’re in harmony with them.”
S: “When we start improvising, I let them take the lead, and I follow. There’s this song we do live, “Please Say Hello To Me”, and because it’s such a short song, we let it have a really, really long improvised outro. I just kind of told them…“do what you want”. Let’s just try it. I lead the song at first, then when we go into that section, I follow them. It’s so much fun for me because I want to experience my music, you know? I want to be at my gig”
“I want to experience my music, you know? I want to be at my gig””
C: “that’s what skilled musicians do. You trust the other musicians. I’m so jealous of improvising, it’s such a skill. That’s when real magic happens. I’m trying to learn it properly, now.”
S: “it was interesting recording it, because we’d have to choose the improvisations. The days they were in the studio were my favourite. It’s always so calm in the studio, Harri would always calm us down. He’d say, it’s not that deep, we’re just having fun.”
C: “I bet they really appreciated being left to their own thing. I think it’s so nice when you’re a musician and you feel trusted. Everything in your music is like a jig-saw puzzle, everything makes sense. Everything just flows. You can tell everyone know what they’re doing — most of all you. Your knowledge of music is really apparent in everything you write”
S: “because my band’s so big, we’re not always available at the same time. Some days there’s no string section, sometimes the band is just the string section. So I have to rewrite my set constantly, in a way that makes sense. I also like to make it fun for all of us and bring something special to the gig. We’re never gonna do that gig again. Sufjan Stevens was the biggest inspiration for that. The big moment for me in the Austin City Limits gig is “good man is hard to find”. It’s such a beautiful song on the record anyway, it’s one of my most listened to songs. But in the live session, he has a ten piece string ensemble — a whole brass ensemble, the lady from My Brightest Diamond.”
C: “a supergroup. I love mistakes in performances, and how people recover. If you laugh, the audience will laugh with you. They’ll think, hey, you’re human, like me. It’s when the audience can go on a journey with you.”
And yet the way people consume music has changed drastically, even in the five-ten years between arriving bright-eyed and young at London, to now, with tiktok and social media dominating the world. While it’s a direct way to reach fans, in particular for women and non-binary people who don’t get on festival bills or through the physical, male-dominated mechanics of the music industry as easily, it has its draw-backs. We speak about the platform transforming how music is used and even thought about; personal soundtracks for people’s lives, but fickle, fleeting careers for artists, easily accessible music but no one ever remembering artist names, just the sound of the song itself, sped up and repurposed. We talk about Fiona Apple deleting all her music off tiktok when she saw someone do a dance to one of her songs.
C: “How do you think people can create a community in music?”
S: “creating an actual DIY community with pillars of values we need to follow is so important, because you can’t be a selfish artist. No one achieves anything alone. If you don’t help someone out, they’re never going to help you out. I feel really passionately about this. Others might disagree, but for me, if someone asks you for help, you say yes, knowing they’ll help you. That’s how diasporas create community. People survive in hostile environments because you do something for someone knowing they’ll do something for you when you need it.”
“That’s how diasporas create community. People survive in hostile environments because you do something for someone knowing they’ll do something for you when you need it.”
Sona’s country went to war in 2020, resulting in roughly six thousand Armenian casualties, although figures have never been confirmed by any government. Not only did she have to deal with a pandemic, she had to live in constant fear for her family’s safety back home in a whole other, more violent way. You can hear this disconnection and chaos filtered through an incredibly personal lens in all these beautifully crafted, painfully poetic songs. With support from Arts Council England and Help Musicians UK, Sona has achieved the impossible — creating relatable music about an experience most here can’t relate to.
S: “And it won’t be a transaction, it’s just to help”,
she finishes.
Photo by Abi Sinclair
Sona’s bandcamp — please support ❤
