Usually, a career-spanning retrospective gets released in an artist’s twilight years. Not so with Mal Devisa, the genre-spanning project masterminded by Amherst, Massachusetts-based songwriter Deja Carr, who’s just 28. But then again, Carr started playing music at the age of 12 in a band called Who’da Funk It? with some school friends, before this solo project began in earnest.
Released on Topshelf Records—which started life as a predominantly emo/post-hardcore label, but has since diversified in terms of genre—Palimpsesa casts an eye over Carr’s output as Mal Devisa across 29 tracks, offering up some of her earlier songs alongside a whole new batch of previously unreleased material. It’s an incredible collection that reveals her profound depth as an artist, a thinker, and a human.
Here, Carr talks to FLOOD about what makes her who she is, and how this compilation serves as something very far from an ending.
“Mal Devisa” is your artist name, and you assert that that’s who you are a number of times on this collection. So, where is the line between Deja Carr and Mal Devisa?
Some days it feels like there’s a really big line, and some days there’s no line at all. I got the name in middle school. I’m not a voice-hearer in general, but I heard a voice say “Mal Devisa,” and I was like, “That’s what I’m going to name my project!” I feel like Deja is like a reflection of Mal Devisa, but also Mal Devisa is the person that I might be closer to when Mal Devisa ends—which I don’t think it’ll really end, because it’s a one-person band and I plan to be, like, 90 and still singing. Mal Devisa is much more graceful than Deja, for sure. It’s sort of like having a rope at the top of a building and looking up at yourself like, “Oh, man, I really want to be up there.” But I have to figure out how I’m going to get to be the person who my ancestors, parents, and friends see me as.
Was Mal Devisa something—or someone—you had to grow into, or was it pretty fully-formed?
I don’t know, I think I feel pretty settled in Mal Devisa right now. In the beginning stages, like coming up with the project and figuring out what I was going to do, it was less about identity and more about how I was going to sustain myself for the next 15 years. And I’ve only been doing it for maybe 10 or 11 years. When I started, I just dove in, because it was literally at the band practice when we ended Who’da Funk It? I stepped behind the drum kit with my friend’s bass and wrote “Dangerous,” and that was the first Mal Devisa song.
When I gained some independence, I knew that I wanted to have a project. I think the real thing was that I wanted to have a project that never ended. So Mal Devisa is just the project that I have that will grow with me and create a space where I can be my authentic self, no matter who’s watching or who’s listening. For a long time, I felt like—specifically where I was living—I had to perform this version of myself that wasn’t authentic. I’ve completely rid myself of that now.
“Mal Devisa is just the project that I have that will grow with me and create a space where I can be my authentic self, no matter who’s watching or who’s listening.”
A big part of that authentic self is being a Black woman, something that underlines many of these songs. There’s an incredibly powerful line on “Slept On”: “They will try and take the skin out of my songs.” Do you feel at risk of being whitewashed by the music industry?
I think I was speaking to the whole industry, because the industry is this really scary monster. I’m not the most professional person in the world in any sense, but I have a really good core. And I’ve worked with so many different kinds of people that I feel like, a lot of times, our differences are what made us stronger in terms of how we both related to the music. It can be a very isolating thing to be a Black artist in indie—I didn’t join indie to stay in indie, but I did join DIY to be DIY forever. I write the songs, I schlep the instruments, I figure out what Mal Devisa is going to be forever. Even if I had a manager or a touring agent, they wouldn’t be crafting Mal Devisa in the same way that I am.
There are many references to jazz musicians like Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Nina Simone in these songs. Was jazz your starting point, or is it something you got into later?
When I was in high school, Kalmia [Traver] from Rubblebucket gave me a free jazz tattoo. My grandfather’s name was Bruno Carr and he was a drummer for Roy Ayers and Herbie Mann and Ray Charles. There’s this story about him driving one of the jazz divas around, her getting out of the car and saying, “Bruno, you one driving motherfucker!” And I love that. I think it was Ella Fitzgerald, but I’m not really sure. But, yeah, my grandfather was a jazz musician, and I still have these recordings to listen to, but I never met him in person because he died of lung cancer before I was born.
America is a difficult place to exist within right now, though of course it always has been. Do you see your music as a response to this country, or is it more of a personal outlet?
I haven’t actually thought about that at all. I don’t think that politics really get through me as, like, a spiritual filter or vessel. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Palestine, and I’ve really been numb to everything. So everything that happens above my head and across the waters and within America has to, at some point, reach me emotionally before it can reach me in a creative way. I wrote a prayer for Palestine and posted it on Instagram, but that’s about as much as I did. I feel like the real task for myself is to become as knowledgeable as possible and then start to speak out. So I’ve been reading a lot—like, a lot—of books about spirituality, and I’ve rummaged through books about politics.
The concept of joy is equally important as resistance—both are essential in the struggle. That seems to be a balance you strike well.
I think music is more where you go when you have to shut off the news. I was talking to someone yesterday and I said something really controversial, that I don’t think Israel is going to occupy that land forever. And they looked at me as if I was immediately canceled, and I explained that in times like these the Palestinian people—as robust and beautiful a people as they are—do not need our doom. They need our joy, they need our glasses to be clean. They need people to believe that they’ll be triumphant in this absolute genocide and that they’re not powerless, but they’re also not people who will sit down and take the absolute war on their bodies and their minds and their spirits. They’re so strong, and they need us to be strong.
“I didn’t join indie to stay in indie, but I did join DIY to be DIY forever. I write the songs, I schlep the instruments, I figure out what Mal Devisa is going to be forever.”
Given what’s happened with Kneecap recently, as well as other artists who are speaking out about what’s happening in Gaza, are you worried as an artist that you’ll have a backlash like that?
Because I’m on Topshelf and they’re so amazing and outspoken, I don’t worry about it. And also I was taught to not stop speaking when the going gets rough. I think it’s definitely something that artists have had to deal with all over the world. I’m very privileged in a way to have people around me like Taul Katz, who’s an amazing sound artist. They’ve been one of my best friends for years, and they’re always speaking out against the machine in hopes that it’ll spread awareness and knowledge. I’ve learned a lot of great things about how to operate in the world through the people around me.
I think my next thing is that I need to move off of Instagram and into the real world in terms of making a difference. If the fall of capitalism was a house, I’m still in the basement learning and strategizing and healing my own fears of being visible in that way. But now is not the time for me to be respectable or for the politics of respectability. Part of me is like, “Yo, go crazy!” and the other part is just, “Be really tactful and have a plan and strengthen your community, so that when you fall someone is there to pick you up.” FL
