Lachi Chats with Diversability About Her New Project - Mad Different
Blue background, photo of Lachi wearing pink on the left. On the right, text reads “Highlights from an Interview with Lachi” and “Discussion on being Mad Different and her new creative series”. Diversability
Arielle Dance, Diversability
As a follow up to our highlight of Lachi’s latest work, we asked Lachi about her new project, Mad Different. Read the transcript for our chat below.
To learn more about Lachi’s music, visit her website and social platforms (@lachimusic). To experience her music, visit Lachi’s YouTube channel.
Diversability: What does being ‘mad different’ mean to you?
Lachi: Mad different to me means taking, accepting, and celebrating the most different parts of yourself, the deepest parts of yourself society encourages you to hide or may make you believe are limiting. And to recognize that all those different parts of your identity make up the unique, beautiful person that is you. Whether it is your blackness, your brownness, your girlness, your queerness, your disability. All of those parts of you are what make you shine. And the fact that you kind of have to overcompensate or navigate and be innovative and be adaptable and be resilient. That is what makes you the strong, dope you that you are. And so I'm here to celebrate my Mad Difference. Not to hide it, but to honor it.
Diversability: What was your most memorable moment during the production of this project?
Lachi: So, Mad Different is a series of four performance concerts done at Amazon Music Studios with the resultant songs being put out on Spotify. Each song celebrated a different part of my identity and was co-artisted with someone else in that community. It was such a beautiful process. One of my most favorite parts of filming the concert series for Mad Different, is that both behind the scenes and in front of the scenes, were folks with disabilities.
Our crew, cast, the artists, and the musicians, [consisted of] a lot of folks with disabilities. And so at every shoot date, we had access check-ins. An access check-in is before you shoot on a film, a studio project, you go in a circle and everybody says their name and a brief self- description. Like I would say, “Lachi, she/her, black woman, cornrows.” and briefly state what my access needs are. I could say, “I'm blind, so please let me know if I'm going to trip over a wire.” Somebody could say, “I was late, up late last night, so I'm going to be taking breaks.”
You don't have to have a disability to have access needs. That was actually the most beautiful thing. Every time we did an access check-in before shoot day, we had a very beautiful shoot day full of family, love, and people taking care of each other. I remember at one point, someone who would consider themselves non-disabled had problems with flashing lights. And at one point, the fire alarm went off and there were flashing lights. And so somebody covered that light, like with a jacket to support that person – without even asking. The person was so grateful.
Diversability: How do you believe this project will impact the disabled community and disability culture?
Lachi: One of the ultimate reasons for Mad Different, one of the ultimate reasons for everything I do, is to utilize pop culture and high quality art to elevate disability narratives to mainstream discussion and Mad Different is no different in that sense.
What I hope will happen is that we’re showing that you can have disability in the crew, the cast, as the artists, as the musicians, and as the subject matter. We're able to showcase access and accessibility as art. So in each of the performance videos, music video style, we opened each one with a celebrity audio description from really amazing leaders in the disability community.
We, also, were able to have sign language front and center with our sign language artist Indy Robinson. We even had COVID-cautious representation with Mercedes Lysaker on cello.
What I hope is to showcase to the world that we can have high quality competitive art about our stories that are fun, feel good, and elevate that joy as resistance. That's really what I hope to do. And lastly, I really hope to showcase that we can have people behind the scenes that deserve to be paid for their work.
Diversability: What would you say to your younger self or young disabled people about working to accomplish their dreams?
Lachi: A lot of people say, Just don't give up or You can do it, or Don't listen to the haters. I always tend to say, Make sure that you get really good at your craft or the thing that you want to compete in so that you're hired for your skill and not your disability. [This way] you're much more comfortable asking for accommodations and folks are much more comfortable giving them to you.
Although they should always just give it to you anyway, you know how it is. But I've actually come to find that our biggest issue is isolation. Yes, there's ableism. Yes, there's inaccess. But that internalized ableism festers and that's what our truest problem is. We can work on that by helping fix ableism. We can work on that by helping fix inaccess.
But if you want to work on yourself so that you can fight that isolation, find and build community. Find and build community. Find somebody you can talk and laugh with about all parts of your life. That you feel comfortable talking about your wins and woes with. That's how this starts. Build your disability community.
Diversability: Please share anything else you want about Mad Different, upcoming projects, or your advocacy on the disability community?
Lachi: With everything we do, we are using pop culture and high quality art to elevate disability discussion. Whether it's through music, storytelling, fashion, and advocacy. In music, it is creating our high quality art, our high quality music videos. It is working with the Recording Academy to make the Grammy’s accessible. It is working with household names to make songs that chart on the radio through Our storytelling, it is partnering with brands to do high quality activations and accessibility ads or hosting a PBS series about disabled heroes called Renegades, which you should go check out on pbs.com. It is touring the world globally and speaking to folks like Amazon, Google, and the United Nations about disability and accessibility. Through fashion, it is using my glam canes, which are bejeweled canes, and getting them out into the world to as many folks as possible, whether it is a walking cane, whether it is a blind cane, and it is also just dressing fab and looking dope and showcasing my joy through my fashion, through resistance.
Through advocacy, it is me running RAMPD, Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, where we work to bring competitive opportunities to creators and professionals with disabilities and neurodivergence, etc. So we are constantly pushing. We have so many cool things on the horizon and you can find out all about that at LachiMusic.com. Follow us on Lachi Music on socials and if you are a music creator or professional, that's really interested in benefiting from the opportunities I've ramped, hit us up at rampd.org. This is for you.
Diversability would like to thank Lachi for her continued support and amplifying disabled experiences in her art. You can watch the full video of Lachi’s responses on the Diversability YouTube Page.
About Lachi and MAD DIFFERENT: Lachi is a world-touring recording artist, personality, award-winning social entrepreneur, and a USA Today 2024 Woman of the Year honoree.
MAD DIFFERENT is a high-production content series of four acoustic concerts and accompanying interviews featuring Lachi in collaboration with notable co-artists and thought leaders intersecting with varying Counter-Cultures. Shot in Amazon Music studios and supported by Pop Culture Collaborative and New Music USA, Mad Different amplifies showing up authentically in a world hellbent on perfection.