Five or six years ago, when the members of didi began writing the songs that would become new album Feel It Enough, the musicians were grappling with everything from the reality that the U.S. political and economic systems relentlessly grind down on our most vulnerable populations to the evils perpetrated in service of a foreign policy that too often leaves an extended trail of destruction in its wake.
Now, with the album finally set to surface on Monday, July 1, the specific instances that inspired some of the songs might feel distant, but the larger concepts at their core, if anything, have only evolved and further cemented themselves. As one example, singer/guitarist Kevin Bilapka Arbeláez pointed to “Ludum Dare,” a song he initially wrote about former President Donald Trump and the myriad damaging policies he enacted during his term, and which culminates with Bilapka Arbeláez singing, “Que muera este pais” (“Let this country die”). When he revisits the song these days, however, it conjures a wealth of new terrors.
“When I sing that now, I am absolutely thinking about Palestine. And I am absolutely thinking about the fact that it doesn’t matter who’s in power. As a country, it feels like we exist to harm others,” said Bilapka Arbeláez, who earlier this year released a pair of instrumental tracks designed to raise awareness of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, proceeds from which were donated to purchase eSIM cards for Palestinians. “So, that song in particular, it very much used to be a different kind of anger, where now it’s abject horror.”
Guitarist and singer Meg Zakany expanded on Bilapka Arbeláez’s point, sharing that the song reflects a range of global tragedies currently unfolding in countries as far-flung as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Haiti, among others. “There are all of these things happening now right before our eyes,” continued Zakany, who wrote album closer “You Were Here” in the aftermath of Columbus police shooting and killing Donovan Lewis in August 2022. “And it’s difficult to know what you as an individual can do to make any sort of change.”
Rather than throwing up their hands, Feel It Enough finds the members of didi engaging the fight in the same way they approach making music: by pulling closer to one another and leaning on the power of the collective. In addition to making music, all of the band members have long engaged in various community service organizations, including the harm reduction collective Mutual Aid Street Solidarity (MASS Ohio) and TEMPO Music and Arts Camp, which offers workshops and technical training for girls, trans and nonbinary youth.
“The times that we all bring community together and we get to witness that and feel that, it has been life-giving,” said Zakany, who joined Bilapka Arbeláez, drummer Sheena McGrath and bassist Haru Shimizu for a late June interview. (The band members also recently locked in a local album release show for Feel It Enough, which will take place at Natalie’s Grandview on Saturday, Aug. 24.)
“Being able to stay connected reminds me of the title of this harm reduction book, Saving Our Own Lives, which came out recently,” McGrath said. “You kind of have to be involved in your own struggle, but collectively. Then you can really feel empowered and get outside of yourself while still nourishing the parts of you that keep you going and active.”
Even the album art captures this idea, the front cover consisting of a photograph of aquarium pebbles shot through with light and the back depicting these same stones interlaced with totems important to each band member. “So, in having that, it’s like, ‘We’re trapped in here,’” Bilapka Arbeláez said. “But what are the things that bring us meaning? And I think community and relationships are definitely number one. They’re almost the only thing that matters, and the only thing that can keep you going.”
This reality surfaces most cleanly on “Twin Harmony,” a chiming, loosely swaggering guitar tune on which the narrator bends and shifts alongside a partner, the two making consistent subtle adjustments to better move forward in unison. “All I want is to feel alive,” Zakany sings. “A love like ours, it only grows.”
The pandemic, in a way, served to reinforce a similar bond between the four. But not before first testing the band members’ resilience as they temporarily stepped back from making music, and then presenting new challenges once they regrouped and started to take writing and recording more seriously two years ago. “We maintained our rapport, but we had to get reacquainted with our instruments,” McGrath said. “I went two years without working, where I was basically a wife and stayed at home. So, I got really weak, and I could barely play drums. Since I started working, I can play drums with more stamina. But I had to get my body back to do it.”
McGrath also shared that there were mental hurdles she had to overcome from having music ripped away by Covid, the shutdown landing at a time when she had just started drumming in a promising band in Austin, Texas. “I’ve completely restructured my life around playing music since I was 14 years old, and I started working shitty kitchen jobs so that I could go on tour after I started high school,” McGrath said. “I’m still trying to figure it out, personally. I don’t know how my life is going to look now. … But it’s going to look a little different than I thought it might as a teenager and in my 20s.”
In the practice space, working through songs such as the driving, anthemic “Abomination” and the ecstatically melodic guitar jam “Float,” the internal struggles and compounding outward fears experienced collectively by the bandmates don’t evaporate but rather press to the surface, affording the musicians a needed opportunity to process everything that they’re feeling.
“When we’re playing music, we’re not talking. … We don’t have to verbalize our traumas or our grief or anything,” Shimizu said. “But it’s palpable in the room, and you can feel the emotions in the room. And that’s a space that I need very deeply, because I don’t get that feeling anywhere else. … It’s not escapism, though. Yes, sometimes I’m suspending belief of what’s happening in the world outside and all of the harm that’s there. But we’re not shutting out the things that are affecting us. We’re feeling them together.”
