“I was always into music, I always sang. But I was afraid of it.”
W1ze is one of the most promising new artists to hit the Viennese music scene for many reasons but most notably for her voice and what she has to say when she sings.
This summer, W1ze, who also goes by ‘Angel’ sat down during a creative retreat outside of the city to write her very first song which differed until now from all of her others: it was a song written to herself. The song, Angel’s Lullaby, is the first time that she comes to terms with her “inner child”.
And such a fitting genre for someone soothing a hurt and trying to put it to rest.
Just a few months before she wrote this song, she was violently attacked whilst she was with a friend on their way to a video shoot in Vienna. She was pushed and punched and at one point a knife was pulled out on the two friends. Angel has a blank expression on her face as she recalls the incident and then says calmly, ‘Sometimes I just think: what if he had decided to pull the knife first?’
“He had such a distaste for me”- the words ring across the room and sink in as bitterly as they sound. She goes on to explain her experience passing as increasingly feminine and how a kind of, in her words, “fear of the feminine” made her realise the privilege cis and specifically people who pass as men have in comparison. But it is deeper than appearances. People also sensed her confidence, her strength, that is her feminine. And as for fear, here was an artist who quickly realised that fear is not inherent to her but a result of others’ projections. This was the hardest truth she had to swallow but the biggest lesson she learned.
Her closest circle of friends around her was her refuge during such a crucial point in her life: “those people around me knew and felt me and saw me for who I was but on the outside it was different” she describes, “it was easier to blend in rather than stand out with your strength. I never felt so myself but I also never felt so hidden”. Angel’s Lullaby came at the most crucial time for the singer/songwriter. For her, it was the closing of a chapter after years of processing and learning how to be and how to heal.
Talking to Angel, it becomes clear that fear has been a recurrent theme in her musical journey to date: fear of pursuing a musical path, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough. These are not uncommon denominators in any creative’s career path, yet, something Angel says about fear rings loud and clear: she is not subject to it. On the contrary, she is full of strength, full of life and all for living it fully. “We just gotta find a way to survive,” she says. And for her as an artist, as W1ze, that way is undoubtedly her music. “On stage I find my space – everything else is gone for a moment and there are people who want to listen to me. We are each other’s ears and comfort.”
Angel’s songwriting has been a key factor in her own liberation. She is unabashedly writing about everything on her mind and she can do and be it all: from her self soothing lullaby to songs about sexting and intimacy to lines where she claims with her chest, quite rightly, that ‘boys suck’.
How her experience impacts her music is hard to miss: all of the influences she has had until now are there. As someone who grew up in a religious family, for example, we see why ‘Angel’ is so important for herself more than anyone else. She is her own guardian angel and kind of follows her own way of thinking which broke away from the traditional religiosity of her childhood: “I believe in bad omens and stuff that can go wrong and in the power in words and actions. You can be your own hell and heaven and depression can be a demon. I do pray, I find myself praying”. The fact that she made peace with her own spirituality and challenges the church is clear also in her songs. In her music you hear gospel-like layering, moments of church hall acapella riffs and vocal play from someone who definitely saaang in the church choir. Her latest single released on 9th December ‘Bless’ goes from cussing out haters who need a ‘whole resurrection’ to also “tryna get the Porsche, Lord willin’”- a prayer well placed.
W1ze’s sound is quite broad and encompassing a lot of different genres. She experiments with sound to find a voice yet her voice fits quite effortlessly into various styles. She herself describes this as a “chameleonic” quality she wishes to hone in her music. Nowadays it is moving from her more early catchy pop of ‘Gahd Dayum” to a more teenage angsty, singer Pink Pantheress reminiscent of a more punky pop – and what is setting her apart in her sound is power and realness behind it. But then she flips to trap and a little drill too she shows in some of her still unreleased works.
Although her Lullaby to herself will undoubtedly be one of her most personal tracks, Angel’s strength is that she also writes for those who need to hear a voice and message like hers. Those who understand what she has been through. In that role as someone others seek to hear from she balances gracefully between humility and high self esteem – and both qualities make her, respectively, both relatable and empowering for those who listen.
W1ze has had an impressive come up within the course of only a year. Having performed for the first time only a year ago in 2021 at her own launch supported by local Viennese collective Sounds of Blackness she has made many key appearances including for Fem*Friday and a main stage performance during Dalia Ahmed’s curation of Popfest Wien in 2022. And that is no easy feat for any new artist on these cliquey, Viennese streets: be it from the same winners of the Amadeus Awards to same line ups at annual festivals – something with W1ze amongst other (queer, BIPOC) creatives have to speak out against all too often.
In stark contrast to the lack of representation in the industry she talks about, she finds herself in contexts many artists would dream to be in. Her regular recording studio is located in her record label, Sony, and is your standard, classic record label setting. Take the lift up to the fourth floor of a shiny building of Vienna’s main shopping street ‘Mariahilfestraße’ and one is greeted by a receptionist who will lead you through glass doors, plaques and awards and into a white-walled meeting room with a fridge stocked full of fizzy drinks in one corner and a photo studio in another.
She attaches a kind of nonchalance but also surety to the fact that she has been signed by a major record label. Her strength is palpable and yet there is also a vulnerability and softness, and maybe even shyness, which makes the whole formality of the scene fall into a comforting sense of normality and ease. And that is again part of this humility I sense before, and maybe it is because of how she got here: Angel wasn’t always focussed on music so she instead pursued other interests and passions – she was enrolled in culinary school when she first moved to Austria in 2015. “In culinary school I would randomly sing and people would notice. I was a good cook, I was academic too, everyone had the feeling that cooking wasn’t my calling”.
Before she moved to Vienna from Zimbabwe she says, “there were a lot of circumstances that I couldn’t control that dictated a lot of what happened in my life at that stage”. She talks of a teachers strike in Zimbabwe messing up a lot of her regular schooling classes for example. Her parents’ separation also meant a huge shift in her life which solidified a familial penchant for music. She nonetheless worked alongside her studies to be able to pay for them herself and finish them. And music always found its way to her – even when she worked as a waitress, she would get one of her first gigs back home in that same bar. From that, Angel took back control of her next steps, and with a little push from some friends who saw talent in her, she started to embark on the journey that would solidify her music career in Vienna.
“I got signed up by my aunt to a singing competition in 2017 which I wasn’t gonna do but was persuaded and won. A Sony A&R rep was there and took my details, and it wasn’t until 2019 I heard back from them via email to do a writing session and work with different producers and work out whether I could write”. Sony liked what they heard and saw, and they signed Angel in 2019. “They recognised something in my voice and the way I sang and that I had something to say”.
And the best part is W1ze continues to say and do it all so fearlessly feminine.
Tonica Hunter
“Bless” released December 9th: listen/watch here.