Page 15 - Vo Vo | FIX MY HEAD #6: QTPOC PUNK ARTISTS

How did the band start?
SBSM
The band started when Rosie and Sep decided they wanted to play music together, having loved a lot of the same bands and hosting a radio show together. Rola moved into a house S&R were living in in 2012, and expressed interest in playing music as well so that’s how the band started. All the songs came together unconventionally, but we knew we wanted to sound a certain way it just took a lot of experimentation to get there. One time Sep got asked to perform her solo project and signed us up instead - that was our first show. We played our electronics on the floor (we upgraded to a table since).
Were there intentional politics involved at all in the formation of the band? Or that evolved over time? How do those politics affect where and who with that you play/work with? And what conceptual or creative origins did you have?
Sep: To be good to each other, I think there’s a politic in treating your friends with care and respect, the world is trying to consume you and destroy you all the time, we need
each other for protection, and to encourage each other’s mobility, autonomy, and safety. With that said, we’re all QPOC, our anger, sadness, and tragedies inform a lot
of what we stand for. The band is a form of expression, and sometimes maybe a weapon to combat the horrors of our realities. The evolution of all this is that I’ve just been able to reflect my ideas on the people I trust most, and I learn a lot through being wrong and being okay about being critical of what I’ve hegemonically consid- ered my truths. I’ve always been a queer performer and whatever music or art I’ve done has always alluded to my experiences as a trans-girl. In this band, I get to explore my diaspora as an Iranian immigrant, mostly because I don’t feel like my creative efforts have to be in response to whiteness, to fit in with or accommodate whiteness.
I am a queer freak, but with SBSM the point is to add the dimension that I also have a very different history than most of the punks around. The ideal now is to find more people with these similar experiences and book shows that eliminate the boring old narratives expected from punk.