Growing up in an area of 1990s Toronto enveloped by racism, hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty lived a somewhat sheltered upbringing. As a Black woman, she often couldn’t walk down the street or play outside as a child at all; looking back, she says music was her solace. Mighty—who is touring in support of 2019’s 13th Floor, and who recently won the Polaris Music Prize for that album—eventually realized that rap would come with its own set of challenges.
“There is a stigma of what rap is, who creates rap, and what those people are like,” says Mighty. “It’s got such a bad rap in certain facets; it affects you protecting yourself with insurance and the types of shows that they’ll cover. It gets pretty deep, so for me, as somebody who does rap… There are ways I’ve tried to combat that in so many different parts of my life.”
That Mighty has a voice in rap is indicative of social change, which she’s hoping to remain a part of.
“Whatever that shift may look like with the music that I create, with the representation that I have, just as a woman of colour in the field that I’m in, having a voice, and that void that I know is there that, by existing, I’m filling,” she says.
The reward in speaking about positivity, equality, and creating more space for those things in a world largely populated by people who oppose them is far bigger than any burden.
“The concept of it even being something that we can discuss, I think, is so much growth from what I know in my past,” says Mighty, “and just how dismissive of our own narratives we kind of had to be.”
But now there’s laughter and listening in a way that allows people to safely speak to these things in a way that Mighty never felt she could have when she was growing up. That’s progress, but Mighty says “an inability to process actualities and realities” prevents people from finding their voice in the realm of social issues.
“I think there are preconceived notions that make it difficult for people to see somebody’s experience, or maybe it’s just the fact that they can’t resonate with it, as they haven’t felt it—it’s difficult to validate someone else’s experience that might seem so far from your own reality,” says Mighty.
There’s still a lot of pushback from that lack of familiarity, but empathy can be found in music, and Mighty says she tries to apply it to other areas of her life where she might be ignorant.
“If someone was speaking to their experience, I might say, ‘No, I don’t think that that’s how it goes,’ yet I maybe don’t have the jurisdiction to speak to that, and that’s kind of what I think is happening in this [larger] conversation, and so I try to think from those perspectives with my own music,” she says. “I’m hoping to speak to the audience that doesn’t get it yet. That’s the whole point. And also increase the dialogue with those that do, so that you can help push that conversation along. So for me, it’s important to understand the ignorance.”
For Mighty, it all centres around empathy.
“Trying to understand people who don’t understand that, or don’t resonate with that,” she says, “is of the utmost importance to me.”
Haviah Mighty
8 pm Sunday, March 1
$18.50, Capital Ballroom
thecapitalballroom.com