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With such illustrious names as Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Nona Hendryx, Maxwell and Salif Keita on her resumé, New York-based singer, composer and performance artist M. Nahadr is poised to step into a spotlight of her own. “I’ve had experience doing typical New York session work, but when producers ask you things like, ‘Can you sing like Chaka or do this like Whitney?’ I go cross-eyed at what exactly they're looking for,” M. laughs, though she can easily leap from the throaty grit of ’70s funk to the sultry subtlety of a skilled jazz diva. “They would ask me to be completely not what I am, to remove any promise of anything that I am. I grew to understand at a deeper level, truly it is difference, not the albinism, not the gender. It is truly ‘you are not I, and therefore I am afraid.’

“So I learned how to play on my own,” she continues. “I and I get along fine. And when there is no band around, or company I might keep with wonderful others, I take me, myself, and I and we go to work on this thing,” i.e., doing her own late-night programming and recording. The “wonderful others” might include free-jazz musicians like Grammy-winning producer/engineer and bassist James P. Nichols, conservatory-trained trumpeter Meg Montgomery (known as “Electric Meg,” for her wild use of effects and pedals), bass “medicine man” David Beasley and electronic musician Quynton Wright, who also happens to be M.’s son.

M. has also created major multimedia installations, in particular her off-Broadway performance art piece “Madwoman: A Contemporary Opera,” and she consistently pushes herself to tap into unusually futuristic fusions of music, art, live performance and technology. An African-American albino whose striking looks have graced major magazines from National Geographic to Elle to Maxim, M. is a born star, but she also shuns identity politics altogether, choosing instead to cut straight to the soul of any matter. Her guiding philosophy is that everyone is unique and different—a universal truth that has always driven her tireless quest for self-expression.

M. Nahadr Interviewed In The Root Online

By John Murph Nahadr unapologetically embraces her identity as an albino, black American woman, what she calls her “uniqueness” or her “birth attribute.” Her powerful voice can be compared to Chaka Khan or Sandra St. Victor, and she has a knack for writing poignant, personal songs akin to those penned by Tracy Chapman, Nina Simone and Joan Armatrading. Read More

M. Nahadr LIVE at BAMcafe-FREE
June 4, 2010

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