{"id":19048,"date":"2020-02-19T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19048"},"modified":"2020-02-27T09:24:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T17:24:05","slug":"polaris-music-prize-winner-haviah-mighty-finds-her-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/02\/19\/polaris-music-prize-winner-haviah-mighty-finds-her-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Polaris Music Prize winner Haviah Mighty finds her voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up in an area of 1990s Toronto enveloped by racism, hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty lived a somewhat sheltered upbringing. As a Black woman, she often couldn\u2019t walk down the street or play outside as a child at all; looking back, she says music was her solace. Mighty\u2014who is touring in support of 2019\u2019s 13th Floor<\/i>, and who recently won the Polaris Music Prize for that album\u2014eventually realized that rap would come with its own set of challenges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a stigma of what rap is, who creates rap, and what those people are like,\u201d says Mighty. \u201cIt\u2019s got such a bad <\/b>rap <\/b>in certain facets; it affects you protecting yourself with insurance and the types of shows that they\u2019ll cover. It gets pretty deep, so for me, as somebody who does rap… There are ways I\u2019ve tried to combat that in so many different parts of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Mighty has a voice in rap is indicative of social change, which she\u2019s hoping to remain a part of.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever that shift may look like with the music that I create, with the representation that I have, just as a woman of colour in the field that I\u2019m in, having a voice, and that void that I know is there that, by existing, I\u2019m filling,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Toronto hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty is touring in support of last year\u2019s 13th Floor album (photo by Matt Barnes).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reward in speaking about positivity, equality, and creating more space for those things in a world largely populated by people who oppose them is far bigger than any burden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept of it even being something that we can discuss, I think, is so much growth from what I know in my past,\u201d says Mighty, \u201cand just how dismissive of our own narratives we kind of had to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now there\u2019s laughter and listening in a way that allows people to safely speak to these things in a way that Mighty never felt she could have when she was growing up. That\u2019s progress, but Mighty says \u201can inability to process actualities and realities\u201d prevents people from finding their voice in the realm of social issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are preconceived notions that make it difficult for people to see somebody\u2019s experience, or maybe it\u2019s just the fact that they can\u2019t resonate with it, as they haven\u2019t felt it\u2014it\u2019s difficult to validate someone else\u2019s experience that might seem so far from your own reality,\u201d says Mighty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a lot of pushback from that lack of familiarity, but empathy can be found in music, and Mighty says she tries to apply it to other areas of her life where she might be ignorant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone was speaking to their experience, I might say, \u2018No, I don\u2019t think that that\u2019s how it goes,\u2019 yet I maybe don\u2019t have the jurisdiction to speak to that, and that\u2019s kind of what I think is happening in this [larger] conversation, and so I try to think from those perspectives with my own music,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to speak to the audience that doesn\u2019t get it yet. That\u2019s the whole point. And also increase the dialogue with those that do, so that you can help push that conversation along. So for me, it\u2019s important to understand the ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Mighty, it all centres around empathy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTrying to understand people who don\u2019t understand that, or don\u2019t resonate with that,\u201d she says, \u201cis of the utmost importance to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Haviah Mighty
\n8 pm Sunday, March 1
\n$18.50, Capital Ballroom
\nthecapitalballroom.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in an area of 1990s Toronto enveloped by racism, hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty lived a somewhat sheltered upbringing. As a Black woman, she often couldn\u2019t walk down the street or play outside as a child at all; looking back, she says music was her solace. Mighty\u2014who is touring in support of 2019\u2019s 13th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-february-19-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19050,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19048\/revisions\/19050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}