Welcome to a raw, deeply resonant conversation with I Ya Toyah. Her profound sonic worlds prove that true strength and supreme vulnerability are never mutually exclusive.
In this intimate interview, the visionary artist opens up about the weight of absolute creative independence, the dark origins of her powerful soundscapes, and why she refuses to numb herself to make existing in this world easier. From tearing down invisible emotional masks to finding shared liberation on stage alongside legendary collaborators like John Fryer and Stabbing Westward, I Ya Toyah reminds us that music isn’t just an escape—it’s a lifeline where complete strangers finally meet.
Step inside her world as we explore what it means to feel everything, drop the “I’m fine” facade, and realize you don’t have to reach your breaking point to be heard.
Your name translates to “It’s just me” and “I am who I am.” What is something about yourself that you hid for a long time before you were finally able to embrace it?
My sensitivity. For a long time, I thought it was something I needed to overcome. I feel things intensely, sometimes to an almost ridiculous degree. Other people’s pain, injustice, the smallest changes in someone’s behavior. Things that others can simply brush off tend to stay with me.
I spent years trying to toughen up, to become less affected by the world. Especially as a woman, you learn pretty quickly that being sensitive can be mistaken for being weak.
Eventually, I realized that this very thing I was trying to suppress was responsible for so much of what I create. I don’t want to become numb just to make existing in this world easier. I’d rather feel too much than too little. Even when it hurts.
You mentioned that White Walls was born on a day when the darkness felt almost unbearable. When pain becomes too heavy to carry, what is the exact moment you know it’s time to turn it into sound?
I don’t think there’s a conscious moment when I decide to make art out of pain. It would be lovely if suffering arrived with some kind of creative schedule, but unfortunately, it doesn’t.
With WHITE WALLS, I was in a place where I could barely make sense of what I was feeling. And sometimes words, ordinary spoken words, are simply not enough. They can’t hold the weight of what’s happening inside you.
Music gives those feelings somewhere to exist outside of my body. It doesn’t necessarily make them disappear, but it changes my relationship with them. Something that felt impossible to explain suddenly has a voice. I think the moment I reach for music is often the moment I realize I can no longer keep everything inside.
What does your own “I’m fine” mask look like, and how can the people who love you tell when you’re actually behind a white wall?
Oh, I’m pretty good at that mask. Haha. I can be incredibly productive when something is wrong. I’ll work, make plans, organize things, create, take care of responsibilities. From the outside, everything looks perfectly functional. And that’s part of what makes the mask so convincing.
I think the people closest to me notice when my curiosity disappears. I’m normally excited about something, always exploring, questioning, dreaming up another ridiculous project. When that excitement goes quiet, that’s usually a sign.
The difficult part is that sometimes I don’t even recognize my own walls until I’ve been living behind them for a while.
You wrote that people in dark places often just need to be “truly seen—not rescued, not fixed.” What does “being seen” actually look or feel like for you?
It’s being allowed to exist exactly as you are in a particular moment, without somebody immediately trying to change it. We have this strange habit of treating sadness like a problem that needs an urgent solution. Someone says they’re struggling, and suddenly everyone is offering advice, looking for explanations, trying to convince them to cheer up.
But sometimes I don’t need an answer. I need someone who can sit with the uncomfortable truth of what I’m feeling without being frightened by it. Being seen is when someone notices the difference between my smile and my happiness. When I don’t have to justify my emotions or make them more convenient for someone else.
You control every detail of your craft. Does carrying absolute control ever feel like its own weight, or is it where you find your freedom?
Both. Absolutely both. Independence is a beautiful, exhausting creature. Haha.
I have a very specific vision, and it’s not limited to music. The visuals, the stage, the smallest details of a physical release — they’re all connected. I don’t see them as separate products. They’re different ways of communicating the same thought. And yes, carrying that responsibility can become overwhelming. Sometimes I wish I could switch my brain off and let somebody else make decisions. But the alternative, having to compromise something essential to what I’m trying to say, would be far more exhausting.
How do you find the space within such a powerful, dark and heavy sound to show genuine softness and vulnerability?
I don’t think heaviness and vulnerability are opposites. Sometimes the heaviest sounds come from the most delicate places inside us.
And I love contrasts. A fragile voice surrounded by something almost violent. A small, intimate thought inside an enormous wall of sound. It reminds me of how people really are. We can be strong and terrified at the same time. Angry and loving. Completely broken in one moment and laughing at something absurd in the next.
I don’t want to make darkness pretty just to make it easier to consume. But I do want people to recognize that there is a beating heart somewhere inside all that noise.
You collaborate with huge names like John Fryer, Stabbing Westward, and The Joy Thieves. What has working with other artists taught you about letting people into your world?
That letting someone into your world doesn’t have to mean giving up ownership of it.
I’m very protective of what I create because it’s personal. There are pieces of my life in these songs that I wouldn’t necessarily know how to share in an ordinary conversation.
Working with artists like John Fryer, Stabbing Westward, and The Joy Thieves has reinforced how valuable another creative perspective can be. Someone can hear something you didn’t hear, understand a part of your work differently, or push an idea somewhere unexpected.
When you stand on stage in front of a crowd, do you feel like you are stepping out from behind your “white walls,” or are you building a safe space for everyone else to do the same?
I think we’re doing it together. There’s a strange contradiction in performing. You’re completely exposed, yet there’s something incredibly liberating about standing in front of strangers and expressing things you might struggle to say to someone sitting right next to you.
On stage, I don’t have to make myself smaller. I can be angry, vulnerable, feminine, confrontational, joyful, whatever is true in that moment. And when I look into the audience and see somebody singing words that came from a very private place inside me, something beautiful happens. Those feelings no longer belong only to me.
I hope the audience feels that same permission. To take off whatever mask the world has demanded they wear.
If someone is listening to your music right now while standing behind their own white wall, what is the one thing you want them to know?
You don’t have to earn the right to be heard by reaching your breaking point.
I think so many of us minimize our own suffering because someone else has it worse, or because our lives look perfectly fine from the outside. We convince ourselves that what we’re feeling isn’t serious enough to deserve attention. But pain isn’t a competition. You are allowed to speak before everything falls apart. You are allowed to ask for someone to stay, to listen, to help you find your way through.
And if my music can make you feel a little less alone, even for a few minutes, then there’s already something connecting us through those walls.
Looking back at how far you’ve come as an artist and human being: what does reaching another person through your music give back to you?
A sense that all of this means something beyond me.
Being an independent artist can be an incredibly lonely journey. You spend so much time creating, questioning yourself, putting pieces of your inner world out there without knowing whether anybody will understand them.
And then someone writes to you and tells you that a song helped them put words to something they’d been carrying for years. Or that they finally felt understood. Those moments stay with me.
And maybe that’s what music gives back to me. The realization that even the most isolating experiences can become a place where two complete strangers meet.