Queendom Films

Sahra Indio is light, grace, beauty and fire. Indio is a reggae artist who lives in Hawaii, off-grid in the country, where she grows food, makes recycled art and writes songs of hope. She makes art and clothes from blending seeds, palm fiber and other natural objects, sometimes with manmade recycled materials that she finds. She has the radiance of someone who has fully embraced her inner child. She emits such joy in person that you leave convinced that she is connected to her own truth.

Since her arrival on the reggae scene in 2003, Sahra Indio has released five albums: “Good’s Gonna Happen” in 2003, “Change” in 2007, an EP entitled, “Marijuana Music” in 2009 and “Tru I” in 2012, a collection of heavyweight reggae & dub tracks from talented composers in: Hawaii, Jamaica, France, The UK, Italy, and Austria, and “Auntie Reggae Time” in 2015. She has toured many parts of the world and performs regularly in Hawaii, where she lives.

Indio embraces both her Native American and African American heritage. Both she and her husband Owen Moore, a former manager at UCLA’s Museum of Anthropology, met at a Pow Wow in Hawaii.

Sahra Indio at Pow Wow

Below is an excerpt from my recent interview

Karen: Have you always been involved in music or are you a visual artist? What are you most passionate about?

Sahra: I think life is art, so music, culinary dishes and also visual art, I think they are all related. There is music in everything for me. It’s there when I’m cooking and when I’m making art. I have not always been a musician. I started in 1993. People call me a late bloomer. I had not really been in a band before that.

I was a young mother who got married in my late teenage years, and then I was divorced. I was mainly raising children. I am from Philadelphia. I moved when I was twenty three to California to be with my brother who was in the military and stationed in California. From there, I moved to Hawaii. Why did I go there? Somebody gave me a free ticket to Hawaii when I was twenty five. And I said I won’t turn it down, but I don’t think I will like it! I got there and everything was just so green. I was from the ghetto, where it was just a few trees and that’s it. And so I got there and everything was abundant. Everything was green, every shade of green, and the people were so nice. When I got there, the person who gave me the ticket said “You can’t hitchhike here, it’s illegal. Don’t put your thumb out, but if you stand by the side of the road, someone will pick you up.”

I stood by the side of the road and within ten minutes people picked me up. I told them the Hawaiian name of where I was going and the people said okay. After we’d been riding for a little while, they said, “Do you know why we picked you up?” I got anxious. I remember I was sitting back and I sat up and said, “No.”

They said, “We picked you up because you’re popolo.”

I said, “What’s that?”

They said, “We picked you up because you’re black.”

I said, “You picked me up because I’m black?”

They go, “Yes. You’re just like us.” And they put their hand out (to show the similar shade). And right there, my heart just opened up. I said, “What country is this?” Because it wasn’t America! That’s what made me fall in love with Hawaii in the Seventies. They said, “You are just like us.” I’m like, who in my entire life did something kind because I am black!  I’m a light-skinned black woman but I’m black.

My eyes and my heart. I needed that healing. I lost my mother when I was four. My father was murdered when I was fourteen. I had had the typical East Coast horror story and then I got married as this teenager. So anyway, I go to Hawaii and I discover myself. I get to Hawaii and nature is prevalent and artists are everywhere. I started nurturing that side of me. That’s where I started singing, in Hawaii, and it was slow in coming. I had had this phobia about my voice because it was so heavy, and when I was young I was so skinny and people would tease me. I would just say that a lot of stuff was pushed back in me, without having a mother and father. I was twenty five when I went there so I feel like I grew up there. I unlearned the racism, the hatred and the hurt that I felt. And I began to nurture myself living in a rainforest, having guardians, taking care of plants.

So Hawaii was all Aloha spirit in the seventies. People never looked at your skin color, they looked at your need. When I had a kid and I needed a place. People said, you have one family, you need a one family apartment, my first place there.

Karen: Is it still like that now?

Sahra: Of course not, because everything changes. It’s still a beautiful state but we have ice and crack now. When Reagan came into office and his wife said, “Just say no” that was bad for Hawaii, because we were close to the Asian markets, where ice and meth was. Now we have the big pharmaceuticals and big homeless problem in Hawaii.

Karen: I heard it’s expensive.

Sahra: Hawaii is one of the most expensive places. I think it’s close to New York, because they are selling paradise. I got there in the seventies and I was fortunate enough to purchase five acres of land in the eighties. I’m giving blessings to that. So we are on five acres of land on the big island. We have trees, a lot of avocado trees, mango, breadfruit, soursop, and we have gardens.

I love flowers. My grandmother loved flowers. We might have lived in the ghetto in Philadelphia but my grandmother had a rose garden in the back yard. Egg shells and tobacco and coffee grinds was her fertilizer. If you came in the house in the summertime, this big bouquet would be on the living room table and it just lifted the whole house.

I heard that my grandfather was from Jamaica. He was from Kingston. He was-my husband calls him-the obeah man. My grandfather had a black doctor’s bag, a crystal ball and a wand. And he had herbs that he collected from Fairmont Park that he dried in jars in the dining room. He gave readings and he had clients. He told me that he was sensitive and that he could feel people and he would prescribe herbs for them. That was pretty cool. So, I got that in me.

We are part Cherokee. There’s a photograph of my great great-grandmother and she was a full blood Cherokee medicine woman. My grandmother said she was Irish, Black and Creek Indian. She was 4′ 11″. My grandmother taught us to fish. We would go to Fairmont Park with her and she would collect worms. We would walk around with our little fishing rods, going up to 33^rd and Diamond to go fishing. We would catch these boney fish called Sunnies, and crayfish we’d throw back. We didn’t like those fish but we liked the act of fishing with her. So this instilled a lot in me and Hawaii brought those things out in me.

I am fully blown now. I am an artist. I think that life is art and everybody should have some expression, whether they paint or they sculpt or they do something. We are more than just one thing. We are multi-faceted. I feel more fulfilled when I’m doing a few things rather than just one. I can’t even control it. My husband says you’d probably be more successful if you just concentrated on one thing, but I’m not able. I am Aries and also, in Chinese Astrology a Water Dragon. I just have a lot of interests.

I love recycling. Where we grew up, my grandparents didn’t waste anything. My grandmother and grandfather had eleven children, so they had to be thrifty. They actually were tailor and seamstress. They made overcoats for their children.

Karen: Did you make those clothes?

Sahra: I did. I was in a trash fashion show and you have to make your own costume.It was fun. My outfit was a fusion of green waste and found objects from the highway. My skirt was made from palm fiber. The sleeves were landscape design plans found on the highway. And I actually found this little duster out there, like a doctor’s coat. So I was able to sew the sleeves to that. That hat was made from egg cartons and found objects. The cape is packaging cardboard and old Tom’s eco shoes are covered in Palm fiber and decorated with roadkill Peacock feathers!

Sahra’s hat made from packing paper, acrylic paint and crayon.

Karen: Do you ever make art from recycling, like installations?

Sahra: No, I haven’t. I make little things that I take to kids at schools and I make some dolls that I use to teach children about sustainable living: living on an island, our resources are unique and limited, so that when these kids grow up they have a little care and concern for the environment.

Karen: Tell me about these pieces of your work?

The masks are designed from the inflorescence of a flowering fruit. I first saw that they could be turned into a vessel and collected two dozen of them with intentions of making 24 bowl like items, when a voice inside my head said, “Save one to make something other than the little containers.” I listened and the next day I picked up the leaf-like object and asked what it wanted to become. At that moment, I placed it over my face and saw it could be a mask!

I have learned to be patient as they develop or come to life. It’s all about connecting to nature and listening to what they want to express in their next incarnation. Sometimes, I take walks with one I’m working with to find their nose or hair or whatever else they need to complete their identity!

Photo by Funky Hula Gurl Photography

“Woody,” is a piece of wood found traveling inter-island! I like souvenirs from places I go! He’s intended as an outside piece to welcome visitors.

Because, I Upcycle I’m always looking to repurpose things.

Photo by Funky Hula Gurl Photography

“Irie Roots” and “Stone Face,” are a few of the collection. It’s definitely a call and response type of creation!

Photo by Funky Hula Gurl Photography

The purse! It’s called “bagged” and is designed from packing paper, newsprint and shopping bag cording. It has a Levi jean fastener and is wearable art! It holds my cell phone, and other evening bag items.

To learn more about Sahra Indio. See: www.sahraindio.com