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`Our sounds are underground'
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Dr. Floy is part of an all-woman music collective in Paris that abhors all stereotypes and straightjackets
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A NAME like Dr. Floy doesn't prepare you for the person you meet: a funky-haired young woman with a bass guitar slung across her shoulders. You wonder how this member of an all-woman music collective from Paris ended up with a name that conjures up images of a bearded old man with bifocals. She laughs, and attempts an explanation in halting English: "Floy is my name. And... doctor is what some people call me... a nice way to call someone who knows things or something like that?"
Gender theme
In Bangalore on an artist-in-residence project, Floy put together Sakhiri, an electro-acoustic performance on gender issues and rights of sexual minorities, in collaboration with Sumathi, Tejal Shah, and Natasha Mendonca. Her band back in France, Mafucage, also explores similar themes. The name of the band derives from a legend the band itself has invented: of an androgynous, mad monkey called Mafu who has been caged by a king and is frantically trying to liberate him/herself. The myth, Floy says, raises many fundamental questions about the definitions of "normal" and "mad", their relation to power, the many roles we are all caged in, and so on. "Gender itself is a cage, no?" asks Floy. "All that's binary is a cage, no?" The androgynous monkey represents a refusal to accept gender straightjackets.
Even as it rejects stereotypes, Mafucage does see gender as a rallying point, though not in terms of a clearly defined political ideology. But the projects by the three-member group point to a broad ideological position. Their DNA (which expands to Digital Nomadic Art) project, for instance, was around the theme of how there are really no races in the world and all DNA configurations lead to some 28 families in the world. "Our positions are more philosophical than political," says Floy. "But we definitely refuse any ideology that's separatist and fascist. We stand for providing space to multiple voices." They are constantly tying up with women artistes and writers from various countries on projects aimed at "artistic transfiguration of thought". The group has done exciting things like giving a series of performances punctuating a Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing train trip which led them to the Fourth International Conference of Women. They have performed extensively at festivals and free parties and kept their spirits up for 10 long years.
But doesn't one hear a little too often of girl bands breaking up? "I don't think girl bands break up any more often than boy bands?" says Floy. And then, more importantly, a band such as Mafucage isn't the league of Spice Girls. "Bands formatted by business interests break up quickly, but not bands that have come together like ours," says Floy. "Our sounds are underground and we are with it for the last 10 years."
Building bridges
And this underground, away-from-the-mainstream quality of her music allows Floy to build bridges to reach similar voices in other cultures. Like she did with the gender and sexual minority issue in her project in Bangalore. But aren't notions of gender and sexuality too radically transformed by specific cultural contexts? "Yes, I don't want to simplify and say it's all the same. I can't live their reality and they can't live mine. But there is a process of sharing experiences," says Floy. And adds after a thoughtful moment, caressing her guitar strings: "There is an infra language at work, no?"
BAGESHREE S.
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