The Wake

Indigo.

There is nothing unreal about this girl. In fact, it seems as though everything that could possibly be real about this world shines forcefully through her solid eyes.

With a smooth tone of voice and a pleasingly liquid hip-hop drawl, Leah Bartizal informs me that she was given the name Indigo by a friend in her 16th year of life. While trying to help her through an insanely unpleasant mushroom trip, this friend stated simply that she had always thought of Leah as “Indigo.” Leah describes Indigo as depth; “it’s deep and dark and profound. It’s when the sun goes down, that vibrant dark-blue color where the trees stand out black against it.” This explanation of the idea of “Indigo” makes it clear to me why the name fits her so well — black and blue but painfully beautiful despite.

She sets me straight and lets me know that her art is not poetry, not spoken word. She writes raps. She is an emcee, like Mos Def (her admitted favorite). I’ve seen her perform once, at the Minneapolis Hip Hop Festival in June. Incredible presence. Incredible intensity of mind, apparent in strings of elegant words on top of bass-driven beats – but what caught me was how she managed to let her words so brightly outshine even those beautiful sounds.

That intensity again manifests itself as I ask her for an example of her words. “Living lucid, reality is mine. I have no resistance developing my mind,” she raps, looking down at the floor with a sort of strange hunger in her eyes — perhaps a hunger that all artists feel when they want the world to share their thoughts. The words are too quick and fluid to do them justice on paper, but her facility with language is palpable in the 30 seconds of freestyle she gives me.

There seems to be an honest innocence about her. But perhaps I’ve erroneously judged her honest humility for honest innocence. By the end of the interview, I realize just what kind of mistake it was. She’s been through a lot. Shit – she’s the embodiment of the starving artist. Except she also has a child (22-month-old Elijah One) to take care of, and she does. It seems that she does it with grace that can only become reality when one realizes that trials give way to strength. She puts Eli first, and her art second. “I see all of the choices I have made in my life, and whether or not they seemed good at the time, those choices brought me to this exact place.” She doesn’t speak much of her son’s father except to mention that he is a fellow artist. She instead emphasizes that her son provided the gift of getting sober. She performed her first show at one week pregnant.

These days, she’s seriously pissed off at the current administration. She comes from that group of strong, real people that work ’til their bones show – the people that survive only because of the kind of programs that the Bush regime seeks to destroy. She wonders why the word “God” is still used, as it has been so fouled by people. She’s on welfare and she works two jobs that give her just enough to get by each month. She still feels guilty spending $10 on dinner. She doesn’t have a demo yet, “’cause you have to pay money to go be in the studio, you know? That’s how it is. It’s hard.” Slug, from Atmosphere, once told her not to rap. “They always say, you know, it’s really hard to make this your life. But who are they to fuckin’ say anything to me? I don’t let anybody else take me down.”

Indigo’s got the ability to put things in perspective for those she speaks to. At the end of our interview, she hands me a CD of a few of her songs. “Lots of words, you know? Lots of words. I hope you like ‘em.”

You can reach Leah at indigosky@mail.com. She would love for people to stop by and say what’s up – she serves as a production assistant for Ron Essex studios (ronessexstudios.com) and slings sandwiches at Acme Deli in St. Paul. Look her up. She’ll tell you when she’s performing, and maybe she can explain her indigo skies to you.