Sleeping like a starfish, (not) choosing your place, having your own bed in your own room. Before getting there, Imany went through “anger and rage”. Of her liberation from an oppressive relationship – “it’s super hard, lots of women can’t do it” – she made an album, Women Deserve Rage (Women have the right to rage), that of a woman who gives up her apron: household chores, children’s duties, career. From the manifesto which opens the concerts of his tour in France and Europe, we retain anger as the driving force against disappearance, and these words which slap like slaps: “Don’t be a bitch, be careful, you will displease. Be good (simply) and above all, shut up.”
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The singer-songwriter has come to the conclusion that love according to Disney or Netflix is a scam. “You can’t outsource to someone the love you lacked as a child.” The public’s reactions to his tour astonish him. “Before, my audience was 75% women. Now it’s 50-50. Men, even the oldest, understand that they would do better to support women, or at least not to stand in their way. Maya Angelou (American poet, editor’s note) says that a woman who frees herself frees all others. done, she frees everyone.”
In the sanctuary of Imany
With her deep blues singer’s voice, her lyrics in English, Imany would make the most dim street lamp dance. It’s with his hits in mind, Don’t Be So Shy – film soundtrack Under the girls’ skirts –, You Will Never Know, I Am Who I Amthat the doorbell of his house in the Paris suburbs rang. It was an artist in slippers and kneecaps who opened the door for us. By wisely taking off our sneakers in an almost eerie silence, we had the feeling of entering a sanctuary. On the shelves of the very well-stocked library, bell hooks, Maya Angelou. On a wall, a photo of Mohamed Ali. The one who defines herself as an activist artist, “otherwise, it’s entertainment”, made an impression at the 2017 Victoires de la Musique, with a speech against police violence.
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Tea? She pours a drink of thyme, cardamom, cinnamon, spices that come from her mother’s fields in the Comoros, passed down, like the family home, from mother to daughter. “When you get married, it’s the man who comes into your house. So, when things go wrong, he’s the one who gets out.”
Before we arrived, she was drawing. Can we see? On each page of a block organic lines intertwine, it looks like shamanic visions. Sometimes, songs are born entirely in his dreams, forgotten as soon as he wakes up. “Satisfaction was born from a dream of Keith Richards.”
A strict education
Number three in a large family, five girls and two boys, Nadia Mladjao, alias Imany, grew up in the south of France, in Istres (13), where her father is based, a firefighter in the air force. By “unilateral” decision, the girls were sent at the age of 9 to a single-sex military boarding school in Seine-et-Marne.
“My mother, a housewife, suffered from it, but he wanted to make sure we were well behaved.” This is the age when Imany discovered reading. “In the dormitory, when we had a nice boss, we could read under the blanket with a lamp.” Selected for the French high jump championships, she joined the La Bruyère public high school in Versailles, “with a very high level in literature”, to be able to practice after class. “It wasn’t super cool, I was the only black one in the school, among students like Catholics, scouts, etc. Neither they nor I wanted to be friends.”
As a teenager, she didn’t go out. “With such a strict upbringing, you don’t even ask.” In any case, she has no friends, except a friend who she always sees, and her brothers and sisters. Spotted at 17 in the metro for a radio gig, she was not selected. “The producers didn’t want black girls.”
Her modeling debut
After the baccalaureate and a year of history college, her father authorized her to take a gap year in New York to do modeling. It is shortly after September 11, she is represented by T-Models, Donald Trump’s agency, like Melania Knauss (current First Lady). One Christmas evening, the orange-skinned boss invites the girls to his home, in Trump Tower. Of that evening, she remembers “the megalomania” that exuded from the golden toilets.
A “middle-class model”, she struggles, runs to castings at 9 a.m. and then goes on to jobs as a hostess, waitress, manager, makeover, until 4 a.m. At one point, she says stop. Even if it means struggling, she might as well do what she wants to do: music. In those years, the title of a personal creative development book was whispered like a sesame among “wannabe” artists. The Artist’s Wayby Julia Cameron. “This book changed my life.”
She stayed eight years in New York, and experienced harassment. “As a model, we piss you off. We knew the problematic photographers, some of them are dead. The #MeToo of fashion hasn’t come out, it’s shocking.”
Crazy parties, drunkenness, drugs everywhere and an empty fridge, New York is dizzying. “I wasn’t taking anything, I tried pot, I don’t like the state it puts you in. Being in control, it’s in my nature.” And then, “sobriety is cool, being really there, it’s powerful, rare.” She knows what she’s talking about. Suffering from endometriosis, she abused painkillers. “After a while, you start taking it even though you’re not in pain. Because it slides more easily when you have the in-laws over. Because you go through interviews, planes, you have the impression that you’re going to die. It’s generated a lot of problems. Suddenly, I did… how do you say in French? Cold turkey!” A brutal withdrawal. Three days ago, she sprained her knee on stage, not even a Doliprane.
“If you leave the floodgates open, the messages come”
Every morning, from 5:30 a.m., she meditates and does breathing exercises after writing pages in her notebook. Every evening she reads poetry, these days by Lucas Jones, a young British author. For her, the songs, the poems, “it comes from above, it is of the order of the divine”. She believes in God but distrusts dogma. Connected to the invisible – “animism is part of my culture” – she draws cards, oracles or tarot cards, and invokes spirits. “Every evening, I draw a card. What does the universe want to tell me today?” Cartomancy involves the same process as creation. “If you leave the floodgates open, the messages come.”Â
That’s a song Shape of a Broken Heartabout Africa, is an ode to his grandmother. “Africa is this woman, married at 9, who lost all her children between the ages of 0 and 6, apart from my mother. Since then, she has always been there, with me, guide and caring ancestor.” Chef of her little symbolic kitchen, Imany also invokes artists. “Tracy Chapman, if I need her authenticity, Nina Simone and her madness. Bob Dylan, for his writing dexterity.” On stage, these days, she relies on Sade. “She sings, straight as an i, without a gesture, we are all suspended.” It’s 1:30 a.m., Imany gets up in 4 hours, the night closes.
All tour dates can be found online on the website tix.to/imanytour
13 questions from after midnight
Marie Claire : Do you sleep at night?
Faith : I stopped sleeping well at 16-17 years old. And, with my children, I didn’t sleep for six years. So no, not very good.
Did your mother kiss you at bedtime?
Yes. She said a little prayer and kissed us.
Do you have a good star?
Yes, kind ancestors who guide me.
Your nightly drinks and food?
Thyme herbal tea. If I’m hungry in the middle of the night, I reach straight for chocolate.
What’s on your nightstand?
Full of mess. There are novels, poetry, my notebook for my morning writing pages, my card game, at the moment, that of African Goddesses. No telephone or television in the room, it prevents you from sleeping.
Do you sleep alone or in pairs?
Alone, as a starfish.
Your after-midnight fuel? Alcohol ? Xanax? Sex? Drug ? Sugar ?
Rum, but I drink very little, I drive everyone back. Xanax, not at all. Drugs, no. Sex, yes, it wakes you up. Sugar can actually help me stay upright.
Mirror ball?
The nightclubs, the parties, it was especially in New York. When you were a model, you got free everywhere, we party with the big rappers, producers, singers of the time. You might not have money to pay your rent but, in the end, you paid nothing. I was annoying, the one who never wanted to go out, because once I go out, I’m the one who closes the bar. And so, it’s going to take me several days to get over it. But I love dancing: 85% of problems are solved by dancing.
The craziest night of your life?
My 21st birthday, in New York. I was a hostess in a restaurant and I had to work, which I hated on my birthday. A friend is coming to pick me up. We find ourselves in a huge apartment, all in white, weird. Me, dressed like a hostess. It looked like an ambush. Puff Daddy isn’t around at all anymore, but back then, he’s God. He comes out in his bathrobe and asks: “Who’s the birthday girl ?” He gives me a hug. And takes us to the Eugene club for the evening. The VIP area was a glass cube in the middle of the club, with all the people looking at us. The cakes, the drinks, everything happens, it’s crazy. The guy, he paid with a wad like that, and at 7 a.m., put us in a limousine to take us back to Harlem.
The trashiest at night?
Arguing, spending the night yelling at each other with your ex on the phone.
What do you like most at night?
The silence.
Words of the night?
The magic phrase that I say to my two children in the evening, at bedtime: “You’re strong, you’re smart, you’re kind, you’re brave, you’re beautiful, you’re cool, I love you.” Then I translate it into French for them, “You’re strong, you’re smart, you’re kind, you’re cool, and I love you endlessly.”
The hit of the night?
Shellsby Andrea Laszlo De Simone.
This article was originally published in issue 886 of Marie Claire.
