Neka & Kahlo
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Neka & Kahlo

Portland, Oregon, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2014

Portland, Oregon, United States
Established on Jan, 2014
Duo Hip Hop Pop

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"New Music Monday: KizMet interviews 7hirdwav3"

In 2012, I volunteered my time to help a woman named Jordan get a new kidney. Before the fundraiser, I had never met her, but once we met, we hit it off great. This connection led me look up her and her wife Neka’s music, particularly their project 7hirdwav3 (pronounced Thirdwave). It’s good shit. Like, really good shit. I’ll let them tell you a little bit more about it:

Neka and Jordan: 7hirdwav3 is a convergence of opposing forces. You know, the universe isn’t black and white — not everything has to be Pepsi or Coke. There’s a lot of grey in between, and a lot of color too, and those are the sort of things we want to showcase and express in our music. We not only want to transgress those boundaries of binary thinking musically, but politically and psychically as well.

Kiz: Interesting. What does a day in your life entail?

Jordan: That’s a good one, because honestly it varies from time to time, but we can say that it involves more study than gossip, more reading than watching tv, more play than work. Sometimes! I guess you can say since we’re married like any other couple we share the same goals, aspirations and visions but maybe we just go about things in a different way.

Neka: A typical day for me is basically going to school, where I study African History and Secondary Education. Then, I come home and care for all our animals: 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a duck. Yes, I did say a duck. However, I always find time to sit at my keyboard and attempt to finish up our upcoming EP.

Jordan: For me, since I stay at home all the time, I spend a lot of my time studying esoteric knowledge and plotting out our promotional strategies, always conceptualizing what we can do with the music that Neka creates. My evenings always involve me cooking dinner. We try to be mindful of what we eat and how that effects our physical and energetic bodies as well. We usually end the night on meditation — right now we’re working through Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga — but maybe, you know, after that we will watch some HBO, because its not TV. It’s HBO .

Kiz: Who are some of your Fav Queer Artists?

Jordan: Macklemore! Okay, just kidding,

Neka: For me, I love Frank Ocean…but I also love B. Slade and I’m a fan of Angel Haze. One of my biggest musical inspirations — and as a matter of fact, the reason I make 7hirdwav3 songs so epic and full of musical transitions — is because of Queen. Well, really, Freddie Mercury — he’s a huge inspiration.

Jordan: Is it a conflict of interest if I say you, Kiz? Because I love what you’re out there doing?

Kiz: That is no conflict of interest. In fact, I encourage it. Ok, now that the ice is broken, let’s get real — POC and queer people face oppression daily. What are some of the struggles you two have encountered being a queer multiracial married couple who are also in a band together?

Neka: Wow, that’s a loaded question.

Jordan: Well, when we first met neither of us were quite out of the closet, so there was that to contend with, on top of dealing with my family. It was just really new to them, so it took some time to adjust. There were huge cultural differences we had to navigate.

Neka: I think our struggles were not only made apparent by the exposure of our cultural diffrences, but just being out in public I started to noticed small things. For instance, white people — watiresses, check out stands, post office workers — seem to greet her quicker than they did me, if at all, or would constantly hand her the check after dinner even if I paid for it. You can read the card with my real name, Shanequa, and still they would pass everything to her! In fact, we still contend with this annoying issue. But sometimes, I think it’s one thing to be a lesbian couple — yeah, people are going to talk — but a lesbian interracial couple! Now you’re really turning heads! It also didn’t help that I came from a strict Christian family, where my mother is a minister and everyone else is a preacher of some sort, so my rigid religious up-bringing was tough to get through. Whereas [Jordan] comes from an Eastern European family, so you can just imagine the chasm of differences going on here! In terms of being in a band together, that’s where it becomes comical, mostly because I get the question all the time “are you the one rapping?” It truly makes me laugh. Some things you have to just shrug off and smile. But for the record: no, I don’t rap at all. I feel like the exact antithesis of what our society expects a black woman should be. I sing and play the music. Jordan is the hip hop head! All in all our relationship, our experiences gives us a lot to write about.

Kiz: You two have overcome a lot of obstacles together.

Neka: Everyone has obstacles, ours might just be pretty unique. When I first met Jordan and she told me about her kidney disease, I really had no clue what that meant until her kidneys failed at the end of 2011. I learned then what it meant to really stand by someone’s side. That phrase “Love will keep you together” really means more to me now than anyone will ever know.

Jordan: I’ve had to spend all my life being sick. My first heart operation was when I was born. Being sick to me was normal. It never really dawned on me what being sick would mean for the other person if I got married. But I don’t think I’d be here if I didn’t have a warrior spirit, and now that I’m a little bit healthier, I want to channel that energy into something meaningful. Music and song writing is my outlet for that.

Kiz: You two are so strong. Ok, business question, How do you feel about artists giving away their music for free? Does it make it harder for other musicians such as yourself to make money?

Jordan: I honestly think it’s part of the new bargain that we have in the industry. It used to be that an artist would end up having to give away almost all their royalties and mechanicals to major labels just to play a big show or have access to a worldwide audience. Now, with the internet, crowd sourcing and social media, you don’t need major labels to access those audiences or have that kind of weight world wide. However, the trade-off is that you’re not going to be able to sell a compact disc for 20 dollars a pop. In the end, you have to weigh out the options. If not making revenue on record sales is the price you pay for access to broader audiences and owning your own music… I’m okay with that. I think its a good thing that the corporations don’t have as much control as they used to. It just means that artists have to make their money on the strength of their live performances. That’s a good thing too, because it demands a level of authenticity from the artist. They can’t hide behind studio production and reverb, or god forbid, autotune!

Kiz: Hey hey now, auto tune can be used tastefully — it just doesn’t happen very often. In conclusion, tell us about ur new projct and how we can follow you.

Jordan: We are actually getting ready to put out our debut 7 track EP in March. It’ll give people a taste of a pyschonautical vision of the world as it really exists, but most people don’t want to acknowledge. This album will be a relflection of all the polarity and othering that we embody as a queer multiracial team. The overall picture you get from the music will highlight the things that unite us rather than divide.

Neka: Aside from the 7hirdwav3 projects, I produce on a number of other things — so on ocassion I will drop the mic and just stick with the keyboard. Do you know Luck-one?

Kiz: yes I do, he kills it.

Neka: Yeah, he is in New York now, but his new upcoming album Curse of the Pharaoh I acutally produced a couple of tracks for him on and one of them is the opening track to that album, so over all I keep busy with multiple new projects! As for us, people can always keep up with anything we’re doing on our Twitter, Facebook, or our actual website www.7hirdwav3.com. - PQ Monthly


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

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Bio

Ethereal trap, hip-pop inovators Neka & Kahlo are an out lesbian couple, singer-rapper duo from Portland, Oregon. We like to create moody melodies over ethereal synthscapes that can shape-shift without out notice into shimmering house-inspired drops, ambitious R&B ballad crescendos, and/or bouncy bass-syths for maximum effect.



Band Members