Hello I'm Hadiza, and this is my newsletter. Stay a while!

I am an artist who makes music. This is the place where I share updates, thoughts/reflections (in written form), inspirations, and stories true and false.

What am I committing to? (and can I actually commit?)

Let’s see! If you’re receiving this, my apologies in advance. I exported my mailing list from my solo music bandcamp, so it means you’ve supported Diaspora Gothic music through bandcamp and thus, more than likely are familiar with me. (I’d hope). For those of you who don’t know, I am also 1/2 of an experimental electronic group called Collidescope.

Before I get into it further, I want to let y’all know about some especially exciting things happening between my two projects. First of all, later this month on Saturday, April 29th I will be performing at my first Open Studios as a Charlotte Street Resident at the Charlotte Street Foundation. It’ll be bare bones, I’m not going all out, just sharing all new music with my voice and keys. That will be at 5:30pm at 3333 Wyoming St for all of you in Kansas City.

Then immediately after I’m going to be joining the other half of Collidescope (Madi, also my best friend for those who didn’t know!), at the Stray Cat Film Center at 1662 Broadway Blvd, to open for the legendary HIRS Collective. We’ll be joining HXXS and Thonggag as the locals on that bill. ITS GONNA BE QUEER AS HELL. I’m so excited. April 29th is gonna be a crazy day and I can’t wait to talk about it.

Then on June 3rd, I’m so THRILLED to let y’all know I’ve been selected to perform a piece I submitted for the No Divide/Lyric Opera collaboration: Come as You Are. No Divide put out a call for vocal submissions and I wrote a score to a brand new song (also banged my head on the wall a lot) for it and I will get to perform that piece with a pianist so I do not have to think about singing and playing at the same time! Thank god! Because I don’t know why, but I definitely wrote that piece “above” my present “playing and singing under observation” ability (I will elaborate on that in a later post).

Then later that evening Collidescope will be at Farewell Cafe celebrating our debut album release. FINALLY. Listen this has been a long time coming. Honestly 2020 was going to be the release but the pandemic prevented in person recording and we moved on to new stuff through DEEP TAPE (which technically we have one outstanding visual project to finish with that still and I will tell you about that some time else, when I have something to show y’all lmao). We have had to start over, in order to take full control of the process and be especially clear on just who we’re working with and why We’ve gone mostly backwards and sideways, but finally we’re moving forward and it’s all finally coming to a close and I cannot wait for these songs to be out in the world. They’re so good godammit. That show is gonna feature our dear friends HXXS, Nightosphere and Les Izmore. This won’t be the last you hear of it.

Ok so back to the why (omg you’re still reading!!!!!):

If you cannot tell by now, this is my attempt to connect with y’all a little better. Let y’all in away from the algorithms and the casual onlookers. This is for the ones who really wanna know what’s going on. And when I know you actually want to know what’s up, I’m less inclined to give into the intrusive thoughts that tell me everyone is lying to me and that I don’t deserve to be here!

That’s my brain. It deals and has dealt with severe anxiety since before I can remember. There is also the ADHD which I am unsure if the anxiety is a symptom of but I will tell you now all the “afflictions” stem from trauma, passed down and lived. This is nothing unique. Some of it is mundane, some of it quite severe. I have been diving into the roots of this lately and have come up with some breakthroughs, especially as this relates to performing: new music in front of people, promotion online, saving face in costly and/or potentially dangerous situations. Specifically though, I want to share how this has come up in the context of performing completely new music under observation. I’ve been wanting to do this through instagram, since that is where the majority of people who are aware of me as a musician/artist are, and I kinda used to, but now I always get to a hard “no!” and delete the app for the 10th time in two weeks.

These algorithms want you on there all the time. These algorithms have perfectly targeted the artist producer turned consumer turned producer turned consumer again, and always just, a, consumer. They want you invested in this version of the game that doesn’t even have any money but now it has followers, likes, ratiooooooooooo…get that ratio RIGHT or you are not for real. Do what the algorithm wants and get your (relative, very very relative) mass appeal. The algorithm also brings people to you who may be watching but aren’t actually supporting and I’ve come to the point where I can no longer tolerate that in my life, even it’s just a digital platform that is “meaningless”. The truth is it isn’t. There may be no money in music, but there is certainly relevancy/clout/hyperlocalfame (social capital) to be gained and the beast continues to eat itself while creating arbitrary new rules that some people follow and others don’t, but for some reason, we are all giving power to it and thus being held to it. Those of us who don’t follow or can’t are banished to real time obscurity. Damn my bad, I missed this I was literally dissociating I’m trying to catch up now (lie some more). It’s fascinating and depressing. A source of inspiration and a trigger for deep spirals. I know for a fact I’m not alone in this. Let’s talk about this more.

Sharing these parts of me as an artist who, well let’s just say is not a white cis man with a name that people don’t immediately think means my sound is “world music!” (can someone tell me what the white man actually meant when he named the ‘genre’, I mean I already know but I’d love to hear his explanation for laffs), can make it so that what I share about myself and my art can be easily taken for whatever it is NOT, and I have much more autonomy over here. Especially if you’re opting in.

At the end of 2022 I released a music/dance video called Y2K and embedded it on a new website on neocities dot org, with the intention of finding ways to connect with the people who wish to support me in a more direct and authentic way. I’m gonna talk about that video and what went into it in a later post. But first I wanna see who all atually gonna be there, like I’m curious. I’ve been meaning to write a whole reflection thingy on it because it was a lot and I should do that because it was a timeline jump and will be extremely important for the future.

hadizabetween.neocities.org is where I’m housing everything I do musically and linking to places like this in which I can expand upon who I am and what the music is about. On that site you can find links to my solo music as well as Collidescope. I’m slowly building my coding skills and hope to make the site more interactive as time goes on. But we’ll see. Not that any of you could really tell, but I truly do too much.

K i will stop there. thanx fer reading, i do love you all and hope you’re doing decent.