Thinking about our artist and her image, I thought that it may be interesting to come up with her name during pre-production so that we might feature it in our music video.
Initially thinking of actual names our artist could have, Hannah came up with possibilities such as Val or Sienna. Inspired by this, I proposed Mary Jane given how it is both an actual, common name as well as the street name for the drug Marijuana — which would immediately connect our artist to illegal activities and connotations such as rebellion, anarchy, etc. Whilst we all loved the idea of giving our artist’s name a double meaning or something to set it apart from the ordinary, we thought ‘Mary Jane’ by itself was a little cliche. Consequently, Hannah and I started ‘storming up some possible surnames. Monroe, Amelia, Martin… Whilst we liked the use of the second M to create some alliteration and thus have the name flow better, such as with Mary Jane Martin, we thought three words was a little bit of a mouthful when our artist is meant to be slick and cool.
Realising this, we thought we should try again but with a different approach. Whatever name we ended up picking, it had to perfectly encapsulate the elements of youth, spontaneity and rebellion — given how that is what our artist’s image is. Hannah thought we might be able to abbreviate a name, for example, L. Scott, but I disagreed on account of its formality not suiting. In response, she came up with the names Minty, Tina, and Scarlett, and eventually gave me the idea of researching real-life gangsters’ wives for inspiration — Ramona, Goldi and Griselda being my top finds. However, nothing quite suited. As such, we returned to relating her name to drugs or drug use. Scar, Ice, Ganja, were all considered.
At this point Hannah suggested the name Yulia, and whilst I initially thought it was ‘too foreign’ for our artist, the suggestion caused massive development due to my realising of the fact that the actress playing our artist, Anjuli Vadera, is half-Indian half-German. We decided to play around with her unique heritage and take names inspired by these two very different nationalities but eventually decided that nothing quite fitted. Agreeing a stage name was more befitting of our artist then an actual name, I did a little bit of research.
Consequently, we decided to look at things which could have inspired our artist given similarities in what they represented. Playing with our actress’s German ancestry, I researched Norse gods and found ‘Freyja’ making the connection that war and death represented rebellion, and love, beauty and fertility represented youth which would make the goddess appealing to our artist. We considered giving her a surname (even though it wasn’t something we particularly liked), such as Freyja Rose or Freyja Thorn but eventually decided we could do even better.
Looking at some Hindu gods, I considered Shiva and Parvarti (for similar reasons as considering Freyja) but eventually decided to look elsewhere.
It was at this point which I played upon my belief that Anjuli looked somewhat Native American and could thus effectively pass off our artist as being (or at least of having such an ancestry). Researching Native American tribes, I found that of the “Sioux” tribe and immediately knew we had found our name. Not only does it look very visually interesting and perfect for our artist, but it’s pronunciation as ‘Sue’ gives the name the double-meaning we had hoped for. Equally, it’s historical context and occasional translation as being ‘little snakes’ gives us so much to play with for the website and album cover.
I showed both Hannah and Fran and both of them equally loved the name. As such, we decided it then and there. Our artist would be called ‘SIOUX’.
No comments:
Post a Comment