Hotstar: Say She She Brings The ‘Discodelic Soul’ To The Booty-Shaking Masses

Say She She are Brooklyn-based discodelic soul/funk trio Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik, and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham, three women of differing backgrounds whose seamless harmonies sound as if they knew each other prenatally. Filled with glitter ball grooves and dancefloor-ready beats, the group pay homage to Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards’ Chic (“C’est chic-chic”) while talking their groovy sound to uncharted territories along the astral plane. Speaking with Malik, the group’s firecracker connector, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the circuitous route by which the band formed, made friends and advocates and worked their way up the music biz’s perilous ladder.  

Say She She’s ascent involved a small village of boldface names whom Malik mentions: There’s British artist Cally Spooner; Sal. P from no wave dance-punk greats Liquid Liquid (who Malik played with); Chicano Batman and Portugal. The Man (as background vocalists and opening act) and Khruangbin (close friends); great retro-soul musical collaborators in Orgone and The Dap-Kings; a Venmo co-founder who put them on a bill with Nappy Roots at the Bowery Ballroom; KCRW DJ Novena Carmel, an early champion; and, of course, the good omen of having Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant show up to their first gig. Along the way, they played the Hollywood Bowl (opening for Portugal. The Man) and Coachella (when Brown and Malik were backing singers for Chicano Batman), Glastonbury and The Hollywood Bowl when they opened for Portugal. The Man.

“I don’t think I ever saw it as networking,” says Malik, who is from London and seems to possess a preternatural ability for meeting, connecting and collaborating with people and creating something spectacular, including forming Say She She while they all were amidst demanding NYC careers.

Malik, while working at the Institute for Children Poverty and Homelessness, first met Say She She’s Sabrina Mileo Cunningham, who was working in creative recruitment, in what seems an episode of “The Honeymooners.” As neighbors in a Lower East Side tenement, the duo could hear each other singing through the floorboards. They eventually transcended noise/sleep annoyances to become fast friends and singing collaborators. Malik would meet Nya Gazelle Brown, who worked in education, at a house party in Harlem. She joined the duo shortly after their first gig. 

Key to the self-managed band’s team is John Bongiorno, the band’s agent, a partner and co-founder of Arrival Artists. “Piya was in a band called the 79.5. And they did a few tours with my client, Chicano Batman. And then we did a Chicano Batman-Khruangbin co-headline tour, which are both mine. And she was the backup singer for Chicano Batman on that tour. She went from opening for Chicano Batman with her band to backup singer in Chicano Batman when they toured with Khruangbin, and that’s how she became friends with Khruangbin. … Because she is who she is, and she leaves an impression, we became friends.”

“He’s the best in the biz,” says Malik of Bongiorno, who’s friendship with him goes back a decade. She initially reached out to him for help in choosing between two competing agent offers. When Bongiorno finally saw Say She She perform, the decision was easy. “He came to the show and he was like, ‘I got you,’ and that was it.” 

In October 2022, Say She She released their debut, Prism, on Colemine Records with eight soul and funk jams gilded with a hodgepodge of classical, Bollywood, electronic ambience and opera sounds utterly unique unto themselves. No less a figure than KCRW “Morning Becomes Eclectic” co-host Carmel premiered their single “Forget Me Not,” a song inspired by NYC’s Guerilla Girls, while longtime DJ Jeremy Sole described it as “the funkiest sh*t I’ve heard in a while!”  

Silver dropped in late September 2023 and did even better: KCRW named it their No. 1 album of the year, among several year-end album lists. It contained some of their most powerful work with songs like “NORMA,” written in the wake of the Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade and “Echo Chamber,” written about gun violence.

The “Silver Tour” that followed included plays at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom, two nights at L.A.’s Lodge Room, and the Fillmore in San Francisco. Backing the group in the studio and on the road is Orgone, funk/soul virtuosos from Los Angeles who Bongiorno formerly worked with. 

“I know that Say She She wants to give as much credit to Orgone as they can, and I’m here to say that’s true,” Bongiorno says.  “Orgone is the secret sauce.” And he would know as their former agent who also went to their L.A. studio while they were recording the album. Led by guitarist Sergio Rios with Dan Hastie on keyboards, the group is one of the tightest funk-soul groups out there. “We’ve all become children of the extended Orgone family in a way,” Malik says. “We all look up to their musicianship.” 

In 2024 Say She She is playing bigger rooms with greater fan demand despite their record release a good half a year in the rear-view mirror. “I feel like we’re just getting started on this record,” Bongiorno says.  “We have a spring and summer full of festivals and headline shows and those headline shows are all selling better than they were in back in October and November. But it’s the same record and it’s six months later, with no new breakthroughs. There’s been no giant remix or collabs  since. It’s just the record’s been out there and people are slowly finding it and loving it.” 

The band is currently playing in Europe, returning Stateside in May when they’ll play a series of festivals including Napa’s BottleRock, Manchester, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo and Denver’s Outside Festival. 

“The success Say She She has and the foundation that they’ve built are going to put them in a better position and propel them to greater heights,” Bongiorno says when asked what lays ahead. “Ultimately, it’s going to come down to the songs. If the songs are amazing like they are on this record – and I do think the songs are absolutely amazing on this record, no doubt about it – I think there’s no end to it.”