Offering Rain
Words by Erika Nathanielsz
Photography by Amira Green
I think we can all relate to the moment when an unfamiliar artist or album somehow makes its way through the endless internet and ends up in our hands. Our curiosity is peaked, and we take a step further to click play. On even rarer occasions, we are instant fans.
That was my serendipitous experience with Melika's music, who goes by the moniker Offering Rain. Diving into their 2022 self-titled album, I played the first track on the record, inner vox, nodded my head to the soft bells, tapped my foot to the drums, and then I heard their voice, and I was hooked.
O: I think my origin story really starts with my parents.
E: Oh, I love an origin story.
O: My dad is an artist, a painter. He was born in India, he came to the US to pursue art, and he met my mom in Brooklyn. She's from Ecuador.
I wrote this in a note earlier, but essentially I'm very proudly their love child. So it kind of begins with them. My mom's also an artist in her own right. I don't think she would self-identify as such. My dad waited 13 years to get into an artist complex, which is where we both [reside] right now. And that's where I grew up. I grew up in a building filled with artists, painters, musicians, writers, and actors. Some are notable, and some are super talented but don't have as much recognition. So it was a very interesting upbringing.
E: Wow, that's very rich culturally and creatively. Amazing. Does your dad still paint?
O: He is still painting. While I was away, I noticed that he had been working on a new painting. Before I left, it was mostly all red, but now I see this splurge of blue. He has an ebb and flow of going in and out of painting. He's 75, so it’s nice to see him still doing it.
E: That's beautiful. Was painting your first medium?
O: I mean, arguably, yes, but I was always running around singing and writing little poems for as long as I can remember. My dad was a single parent, which meant that I spent a lot of my time alone in my own world, and so I found ways to occupy my time.
E: What would you consider your introduction to music?
O: I was introduced to Bollywood at a young age, which was an interesting introduction to music and media. A lot of Bollywood films are musicals, and those films are really colorful, really entertaining, really dramatic, really romantic, and sometimes really toxic. So that was kind of introduction to music or to understanding the range of sounds, and that also spiraled into other things.
E: Right, right. I noticed with your music, there's such a convergence of different sounds happening. It's like a little r&b, a little soundscape, a little house etc. I like the mixture of things, they feel really good together. What does your process look like?
O: It certainly varies. I think I'm also at a point now where I'm really feeling my limitations, and I want to really challenge myself to push those bounds. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but that's my current work in progress. A lot of the time, my process has been throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, and I feel like I've had to do this dance of when am I producing, when am I songwriting, when am I writing poetry, and how do those things come together?
I'll produce something first, and then I'll just do a bunch of freestyles on it, and then I'll cut that up and arrange it like, okay, this is the chorus, or this is a bridge, or whatever. And it's been a lot of that, and I'm sure that will kind of hold me down for the time to come. But I also do love the magic that happens when I'm in a room with other musicians, and we're just jamming and there’s no agenda. Just music coming from the spirit. That is becoming more and more interesting to me and that's where I want to focus my time and attention.
E: Thank you for explaining that. I really enjoy listening to a song and wondering how did that person make that? I was curious about your name Offering Rain, and how you came to that.
O: I think in 2021 or so, I wrote a poem in my notebook while I was on the train, I was feeling really existential, this was deep in the pandemic. And I wrote this poem, I think it's about self mothering, which is a theme that's reemerging for me now. I was trying to write from the point of view of a higher being. I just let whatever come out, and one line in that poem is “I'm an offering rain.” And that thought was about moment on earth in my imagination where it's so dry, and we're in deep need of nourishment, and the idea is that the Gods have blessed us with this beautiful rain that will nourish us and make us grow, and all this stuff. So that's kind of the idea.
I think I'm reaching this point, or it feels like I'm at a crossroads where I'm like, I don't want to compromise my desire anymore.
E: Wow, I love that. That's beautiful. I understand that moment of mid pandemic reflection too. Can we talk about the residency that you just completed? How was it?
O: It was exactly what I needed, and I'm so grateful. I’ll share the name of the residency too, it’s called Ma’s House. I've been going through personal loss, and I am currently doing a lot of grieving. I think being there and being away from the day-to-day routine, going to the beach and biking around, and being in a place I've never been before, especially being in nature for me, is really nourishing for my soul. And I just cried a bunch, and I painted, I worked on one song that I love, and then there's a few other songs where I'm like, they're all right.
What I thought was really synchronistic was that Robin Wall Kimmerer, who authored Braiding Sweetgrass, did an event at Ma’s House while I was there. I have been reading that book—it's on my bedside—and I was so happy to be in her presence and hear her speak. I even asked her a question about grief, just looking for insight. It was really cool to hear her talk about her experience.
E: That’s amazing you got to meet her. What amazing timing, especially during a time when you are grieving. I feel like I’ve almost been going through growing pains. Maneuvering through loss as it compounds the older I get. Do you find that creating or making feels kind of self-soothing in a way, or therapeutic?
O: I think when I'm improvising and jamming with other people, that process is really therapeutic for me because I think being on the computer, I don't feel like I'm engaging with the outer world. I think in order to move through grief and loss and even joy, for that matter, it's better to share sorrow and share joy than to keep it to ourselves. So, I find that being with other people in a musical setting and singing with them is very therapeutic for me.
E: Absolutely. Big on sharing space and grief when you can. I love that addition about joy too. Where do you see your music guiding you?
O: I think right now, my main aspiration is to truly follow my heart, and it feels like such a new idea to integrate. I feel like there's a part of me that follows my heart. Just follow my heart. There's a part of me that knows that. But to fully believe and embody that is another practice entirely, and I think I'm reaching this point, or it feels like I'm at a crossroads where I don't want to compromise my desire anymore. There is a voice telling me that I'm meant to sing, and I'm going to do everything in my power to protect this voice, nurture this voice, and give it what it's asking for. I think this is also an area where I have to challenge a lot of my fear-based beliefs, such as how I am going to make money and all this stuff. But I think that I want to give myself the opportunity to move purely out of love for this thing. I'm very lucky to lean on my dad for the time being and be back in the home where I grew up.
I don't think I've ever granted myself the mindset of being doubt free about music and doing music, and I'm just really going to bet on myself.
E: Yes, yes, and please continue betting on yourself. I listened to wolves+spirals recently. I love how soft and playful this song is. It sounds like a little love song, or like asking questions if it could be something.
O: Yeah. It's supposed to be this flirtatious song, and then it turns into something else, and I don’t know what it's turned into, to be honest. I don't smoke, but when I was writing I thought it would be fun to be like “do you have a light?” I was thinking, that's a quintessential pickup line. You got a light, someone's outside talking to someone. So I kind of played off of that, and it was more about, do you have that internal light and are we going to be a flame or, it's kind of playing on that idea.
E: Cute.
O: Yeah, so it's just like, are we going to pursue this or what?