‘You can’t get what you want if you don’t want it in the first place’ - the director’s advice on what a girl needs to do to overcome patriarchy and make a name for herself.
Sofia Ashraf grew up in an orthodox Muslim household, where she was always told that her only goal in life was to be a homemaker with her greatest career possibility being earning some “pocket money” if her husband so allowed. She is now a Rapper, Writer, Filmmaker, and Director. Today I have the unique opportunity to share with you the journey of just how that came to be, where it may go, and a little bit about you too could get there.
What’s A Girl To Do?
As noted previously Sofia grew up in a largely traditional Muslim Malyali Household, yet as she herself notes she did come from a life of privilege. Sofia shared the interesting phenomena of The U- that can be seen in women in the workforce. She herself fell on the extremely privileged end of the curve, where the family sees no need to make the women in their family work- it was expected that the father or a husband would always be the one providing the income, as long as you do what he would ask of you. Growing up her mother raised her with this ideology in mind- she told Sofia to have fun for now before the inevitable conclusion where she spends her days tending to her husband’s house. So she took to the stage.
“For me that notion of ‘I want to go out there and get people's attention’ was kinda what led me in a way to where I am”, she said.
That want for external validation led her to doing just about anything- dancing, elocution, theatre, music, just anything under the sun. It was also just around this time that rap hit the cultural consciousness of Indians, a very white-washed version to be sure, but it still caught the eye of a college-aged Sofia. Who had a sense of rhythm, a love for writing and a complete inability to hold a note- rap thus was the perfect avenue for her.
A girl standing on her college stage covered head to toe in a black burka - she performed, it went well, really well. The young Sofia finally got a taste of a type of acceptance she’d never known before, so she chased it.
Her life in Chennai and relationship with her religion had started to feel stifling at this point. She decided to leave behind Chennai and set her eyes on the bustling city of Mumbai.
“That’s the audacity of youth. It wasn’t bravery, It was naivety”, she says, looking back on the decision now.
Yet, it paid off, she got a house, a job in advertising and her passion for writing was satiated. From here her passion for the rap led her to the organisation justice rocks from where she only went higher and higher, getting to work with her idols, eventually moving from there to comedy show writing.
Art For Activism
Sofia early in her career was approached to do a gig for an organisation called Youths For Social Change, they had been impressed by her rap about her experience as a hijabi. Their goal was to empower youngsters and spread their anti-establishment message. That first year the topic of discussion was The Bhopal Gas Tragedy. In the 30 years since the incident the government had still been relentless in burying its effects and events. The concert was directed towards engineering students, urging them not to work for the people who caused this disaster in the first place. Sofia decided to convey this message through the medium of a theatrical rap battle between the company and Bhopal.
After her performance she was approached by audience members that were actually from Bhopal who shared their appreciation for her performance and how it made them feel less alone. This is what Sofia cites to be the moment she realised the power of her words. From there she has continued to use her voice to spread awareness about various social issues.
While she doesn’t believe every piece of art must have a moral, as such there is no denying that a large portion of her artistic portfolio does involve activism. She kept coming back and working with this group, in around 2015 they asked her to try something new, to use the new platform of social media, specifically they asked that she make a song for YouTube. She wrote for this project a spoof song of Anaconda by Nicki Minaj. The song had a line that sounded a little skinny shaming so, Sofia thought “Why skinny shame when you can corporate shame?” and wrote ‘Kodaikanal Won't’ a song that now sits at 4.2 million views on the platform, with many of its top comments being from audiences outside of India as well.
“The start of that woke culture was happening, suddenly when people saw this girl who wasn’t like bootylicious, who didn’t have too much makeup on, who was just herself rapping about something everyone could understand which was environmental justice” Sofia says, to explain the rise to virality of the video.
This song was what raised the discourse to the height that finally got Unilever to take accountability for their action. She shared a story of a mother she had spoken to, that had unintentionally sent her son off to get mercury poisoning which eventually led to his passing and she was finally compensated due to the impact of her campaign.
A man called her to thank her telling her, “Over five hundred families are indebted to the work you’ve done”. This moment has really stuck with Sofia, in fact, she recounts it as the very height of her accomplishments
“We don't do this for those moments but the fact that it happened and it happened because of that community that worked together I don’t think anything in my life could ever compare.”
It is not only her rap that she uses to spread her message, she also utilises that incredibly effective medium of comedy. It started with her watching a performance from Maya Rudolph (who she got to work alongside on BigMouth!) on SNL. Watching her performance is when Sofia first realised that women can be funny in the same way that a man can, they don’t have to do what she referred to as ‘pretty funny’ - they too could be goofy and funny faces and just have some fun with it.
She once wrote a song called Good News that parodied the tendency of Indian mothers and grandmothers to only want a very specific type of news from their daughters (marriage and children) and disregard any thing else they accomplish. The song was received incredibly with many women relating to the situation. Sofia also explained this through the lens of the parallel experience she had when she made her first and only diss track- noting that Good News was the one with the larger impact.
“Humour is just something that I felt worked better for me to get that message out. Anger is necessary. I needed to get angry about what my grandmother said but how I channeled that rage into comedy - I realised that comedy really worked for me”.
The Path Of Creation
At one point in her career, Sofia found herself unable to define what exactly she is - a rapper? a writer? Something else entirely?
The answer came to her from her idol, who she had the unique opportunity to have been working with. He pushed her to practise and learn various editing and filming software. Then one day, he introduced Sofia as a director. That single introduction made something click. It included all of the things she loved and she felt the same acceptance she had felt on that stage all the years ago that brought her where she was now, and she felt it with directing.
“I joke about this- about how I was walking and I tripped and fell and became a director”.
She notes that the most important thing is that a creator has their own voice. Sofia feels that the looming threat that creators face from the algorithm is a huge disservice to creation. It demands that one puts out art every single day to maintain a certain level of engagement, which just isn’t viable for artists. “Creation is like a bowl - you need to fill it with experience and then you empty it.”
At one point in the interview we asked Sofia who her biggest inspiration was.
"Can I say me?” was her immediate response, followed by a light chuckle.
“Somewhere I am still trying to impress ten year old Sophie, because I think that’s when I was truly - ten year old me didn’t understand that there are people out there better than me” . She explained, “ ten year old me was a baller, I wanna live up to that ten year old me”
Throughout our interview Sofia shared quite a few tricks of her trade and how she makes what she makes. Something she always keeps in mind is to work from the mind of the audience, because that is how you can connect with people and spread your message. This sentiment is plainly seen through her work, which is always so relatable and enjoyable. She also believes that art need not be done all on your own. While working with only yourself is useful and necessary to build your own creative voice, it is important to build a community that can build off of each other.
Her final piece of advice I could never explain in better words than she did herself - “Writing from the heart is good, writing from the head is good- but writing from the mouth? That is better”. Explaining, she shared that the trick to good writing is to make sure that it sounds almost like a conversation.
Written by Tista Sengupta
Tista wrote this article as a participant of the Media-Makers Fellowship's July'24 cohort.
This article was adjudged the 'Best Feature Article' created in Week 5 of the program.
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