Ananya – Peace. Energy. Music & Late-Night Visions
Has a dream ever changed the direction of your real-life journey?
In the past few years, Zimbabwean born Ananya Kouds has been working on turning her once childhood dreams of being a professional musician into a career.
Singles such as Marble Eyes, Shy Boy and features on the likes of Alber K’s Too Young have seen her chart in South Africa and Zimbabwe over the past three years. However, she began 2023 with a new plan that would eventually lead to the release of her debut project, I woke up one night on the 6th of October.
The project deals with stories from various emotional lenses. She sings about love, she works through heartbreak, she shows sadness and still somehow finds acceptance. The album showcases Ananya’s storytelling in diverse ways and follows the release of three popular singles already.
We speak to Ananya for the first time since the release of her project. She’s back in London, the weather is gloomy but her aura and general sense of energy aren’t dampened in the slightest. We discuss the music, the fashion and how this next chapter of her life and career looks set to be one of the most exciting ones yet. The most fascinating thing about it?
It all began with a dream.
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I always start every interview in the same way and with the same question, “How does it feel to be Ananya today?”
“I am just so grateful to be Ananya today. I get to sing, my body works, the sun’s not shining but it will one day [laughs] but I am grateful!”
At the time we are speaking, it’s the weekend immediately after her EP has just dropped. Understandably, she’s still finding the words to describe how she feels.
“It feels surreal. Like, it all still hasn’t sunk in, it doesn’t feel real just yet!”
And Then I woke Up is a catchy title that provokes a listener into wanting to find out more. We delve into how she discovered the inspiration that led to the prevailing concept of the album:
“Believe it or not, the main theme for this project actually started with my dreams. The first song I wrote from this EP was Bad For You, which was inspired by a dream that I had which actually revealed the truth about something which was going on. It’s crazy because I woke up and my stomach was in knots! My mind’s racing, I’m wondering ‘Is it true?’ ‘Is it not?’ – all before it turned out that it was actually true.”
“So, I called the EP I woke Up One Night because so much happens to me at night, so much comes to me at night, I am such a night owl! Sometimes whether I’m waking up from a nightmare, or a dream, or I’m journaling, sometimes I just get to the piano and I write. A lot happens for me at night, and it’s the starting point of everything.”
The album is a fun trip. Pop synths, indie-rock instrumentals along with interesting experimental sounds bring the work to life. Ananya is the only vocalist, but she makes the point in our chat to highlight the amazing collaborators she worked with on the production and writing of the project:
“I think it all started coming together in January when I spent some time in Cape Town. I had only been there once before and so it felt great to be back. I worked with Greg Abrahams, one of the most talented people I’ve ever met! It’s funny because on the way to Cape Town I was worried, thinking ‘What am I going to write about?’, we had studio projects booked etc. And then I kid you not, the night before I’m due to meet Greg to start working, I had a dream! And I was really inspired by the girl in the dream. She was me, but she was a different me and she was behaving in ways that I wish I could. She was happy, fearless, owned her choices and I brought all of this energy to the studio to co-write with Greg and that’s how Gone Forever Was born.”
Josh Berry, renowned for his expertise in Indie-Rock scenes in both London and Cape Town, also lent his ear to the project. She explains how he brought unpredictable elements to the table:
“Yes, he’s so incredible talented. I teamed up with up on my upcoming single from the EP, I’m Too Nice, which was really fun because there are a lot of sounds that you wouldn’t necessarily put into your average track. Like, when you listen to the complete song it all comes together but sometimes the sound you hear would be him saying ‘I need something that sounds like a table being dragged across the floor” and he makes it really fun to create”.
It makes sense that Ananya’s sound palette is diverse. Growing up in Zimbabwe during the early 00s, she explains that her mother was always keen on expanding the family’s taste in music.
“My diversity in sounds is the result of a lot of things that I didn’t realise at first but now I look back and it’s things like a rule my mom made in the house that we couldn’t put the same genre of music on twice. So, we heard different types of music, from Jazz, to classical, to pop, to French cafe musi, anything you can think of was always played in our house. That led to me growing an ear for music and eventually picking up the guitar and learning from the very talented Derek Moyo and I think that was the beginning of the journey.”
Is this around the time that your recent Instagram picture took place?
“[Laughs!] Yes, probably just before that picture was taken. I’m holding a chord already so maybe I wasn’t a total beginner here, but yet around that time!”
Ananya’s creativity has always existed beyond music. She’s also a Fashion Design graduate and it makes sense that her image is a big part of her identity as a performer.
“I really believe all creative things come together. With fashion and music, they are both languages [just without words]. With fashion, I find that when I feel good in an outfit, I perform better or I write better. It genuinely makes me more productive to be dressed at my best.”
I end off by asking how she thinks her teenage self (i.e. the one in the picture above!) would react if she travelled back in time to tell her: ‘I’ve just released a project, it’s on streaming platforms everywhere and people across the globe will be bumping it’
“I feel like she would just run and hug me to be honest! She would be in such disbelief, but hey, I think she’d find 2023-me to be really cool as well. Just because I am able to release music, back then it wasn’t so easy. Maybe she might not believe that it’s actually me! I really think it would be a dream come true”
Well if there’s one thing that we’ve seen and learned about Ananya, it’s that her dreams have a way of coming to life.
