Name: Annahstasia Enuke aka Annahstasia
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Nationality: American
Current release: Annahstasia's Revival EP is out via Sacred Bull.
Recommendations: The work of Magdalena Abakanowicz specifically her Abakans; “Peace” by Dave Bixby

If you enjoyed this Annahstasia interview and would like to stay up to date with and find out more about her music, visit her on Instagram, twitter, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

When I listen to music I feel my blood rise to the surface of my skin. I become very aware of the back of my neck and the air as a medium around me.

I listen with my eyes open and watch the music caress over the memory I’m swiftly forming.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

My first steps in music were quite triumphant. In the sense that in my lack of expectation I was presently surprised by the kernel of talent I found there. I already knew I liked being on stage but I didn’t feel a strong reason why until I sang on a stage by myself for the first time. From there music and I got to know each other slowly. I learned little kernels of her and she gave me words in return.

Gains of experience are satisfying and you feel a grand sense of will power but the gains and discoveries made in nativity are what make creativity exciting. The experience just tells you the general direction in which to look. But I’m always open to being surprised.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

A lot changed for me in the window in terms of what I was listening to. At 13 I was listening to Disney channel, whatever came on the radio and the CDs I was gifted for holidays and birthdays. There wasn’t much curation, and music was mostly secondary in my life, I enjoyed it but I enjoyed almost anything I heard.

But then I had the chance to go on tour with a family member over summer break when I was 14 and to watch a group of people live in music was a great cognitive shift in the significance of sound, the magic in it. That same family member gave me an iPod full of music and from 15-16 I listened to those records on repeat. That was my introduction to soul, folk, rock, Motown, etc.

That’s when I found Bill Withers and Nina Simone and fell in love with their expression and started to desire developing that type of expression in myself.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Storytelling, chord books, YouTube, lessons from friends and teachers, the education in the song as a delivery method for personal truths. At first I saw my limited musical resources as a forest of weeds, that I had to hack my way blindly through just to get at what I was trying to express.

But as I’ve grown, that same aimless hacking is now a joyful journey of meeting songs as a vessel for them not as their sole creator.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I meet every song like a wild animal, I don’t try to tame it, or polish it too much. It’s this barely corporeal thing and I try to capture the sense of its message while still maintaining the freedom it came to me with.

This informs my production process as well because I deal more so with energy and passion than with the technicalities of theory because at the moment that is my most fluent language between the two.

The motivation I suppose is that challenge of carefully and artfully taming those morsels of information into music. It’s delicate and internal work.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I listen to how the song makes me feel and where in my body I feel it. My personal sound is very natural, of the body and human.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

My favorite non-human sound is wind. How it makes all sorts of melodies as it rushes past different surfaces and material. It makes the world sing.

I’ve had many moments alone with wind that having been moving to me. The feeling though is always the same, the feeling of smallness, but like you’re a child of the planet and the mother is caressing you cheek as a way of reminding you that she’s there. And sometime the violent wind is more like being caught in the earths scream, and you become the rock as it thrashes against and around you and you feel like you’re still so small but this time you’re holding some minuscule part of that mothers hand as she cries.

All those stories illicit music.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

The response is in the tug and pull between the two. I paint in both to create contrast and reveal a clearer picture for the heart.

No way to tell the whole story without the before. During and after.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I like to start with the song composition and structure first. Then the arrangement. Then at the very end I’ll consider genre of it didn’t already arrive at one.

Each song needs something different so for me it’s best to start with the element that is the most true.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

For my song “power”, its first iteration was a jazz leaning record. It had a different feel and I wrote it in college when I barely understood what I was saying. However what I was going thru at the time spoke to the narrative of the song. I barely knew how to play the guitar and so the song sat in my mind for a while after the first version.

Then I brushed it off to play with a punk band later in college, then I made a funk version, then a neo-soul version. All over the course of years. The song and its refrain and message stuck with me but the right voicing was elusive. But there was no urgency or rush to find it. When I started work on revival I brought this song to the table and it was perfect combination of people that led to the version of power that is on the record.

But strangely it feels like it wants to keep evolving. I perform it a capella sometimes and it moves in such interesting ways. It might pop up on other records in the future as different inversions. Whatever it needs.

The songs come to me to be expressed I believe. Like spirits. At least for now that’s how I choose to write. I can of-course be more clinical and exact but it never comes out as pure.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

I do but more so in using my fascination with biology and physics, meta physics, philosophy, brain science etc. To inform my poetry, to understand the micro systems and use that to understand the macro ones and also to expand my descriptive language vocabulary.

But also along this line of thought, I’d say that Art is Science and vice versa. I always knew I'd be a scientist of some sort. I happened to land in art. But it's the same side of the brain. Problem solving and having a hypothesis that you then explore the possible answers to through trial and error. They are twin disciplines.  

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I make my music with a respect for serendipity. Fate has its own timing and I try to strike a balance between will power and chance. Those same guiding principles guide my own life. It takes a lot of doing all the necessary work to maintain an open channel within myself through which the music can flow. I’m not always successful of course and when Im not it directly affects my ability to create. So music is my life and my life is my music. They aren’t separate at all for me.

I'm reading a book right now called The Mysticism of Sound and Music: the Sufi teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, in this book Khan speaks about how Harmony is the root of all creation. On even the most minute quantum level we're looking at harmony manifest into the physical. He teaches that sound is the medium through which we commune with the divine chaos that forms reality.

I think understanding music and engaging with it on a deeper level gives us access to other tools with which we can navigate the simulations we find ourselves in.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Maybe in the way that a cup of coffee is satisfying to consume once it's freshly brewed. Nothing compares to hearing a new song played back to you into your headphones. But it is not the same in that writing is not always casual and not always easy.

In Music I can express the most dual-sided and nuanced feelings. There isn’t a “is it or isn’t it” dilemma in a song. It can express the moment in-between and still be satisfying.

I doubt stopping at grinding the coffee beans would provide that same satisfaction.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

“I put a spell on You” by Alice Smith. Every time I sit and listen to it, it’s an experience and brings me to tears.



Loving music is one thing in this world that lacks explanation. It’s subliminal and primal. Older than language or math.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I would hope that music retains its material value again. The advent of streaming and data storage tech has completely devalued music as a physical thing that took time and labor and resources. Because it is so accessible it is easy to forget that what went into the making of it was not free and those artists need some reciprocity in order to live comfortably. There is no reason musicians should have to pursue super stardom in order to have a chance at living from their work.

I hope that through musicality we can learn to step away from capitalism and into collective forms of support and care. The reason music suffers so much from the current model of the world is because unlike a painting or a sculpture, music cannot be acquired and bragged upon, it cannot be a tax shelter, it cannot be presented in museum collections for all to ogle at. It is a living breathing and non-corporeal organism.

If we take a look at what our society values currently and what music is, it shows why musicians specifically suffer under the foot of capitalism. I wish in the future that our world aligns more with music, harmony, and love as the abundant forms of wealth that we value.