Ashni Davé is a musician of today – supported by a studied background in classical music and Kathak dance, her music is trained but her aspirations have an unrestrained DIY energy. Her melodies and vocals are beautifully solid while her visuals take on the flighty airiness of someone who leverages the space around her, everything is a container for her work but also nothing can contain her. Her latest video, “Weave,” which premiered this week in Indie Current, shows all of this.
Before the music even starts, a dancer raises her arm silently and the camera sweeps across a sparse studio draped in soft pink light. Then the piano comes in. Dancers swirl in the slow, calming beat, more rapid than the music requires. Their movement adds electric energy to steady notes, again a marriage of dichotomies. The screen splits in two, the dancers with Ashni occupy the left side, imbuing the song with even more tranquility through careful fluid motions, and a frenzied changing landscape sits to the right. “Weave” is cracked in two, letting both our manic and languid sides emerge.
“The video highlights community–women of color in particular–to explore the self, the systems we are raised in and how we communicate within, across, and in spite of them,” Ashni told Indie Current.
We contain multitudes. “Weave” is only one of those selves.