(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
HANA FLEUR: (Singing) I tried it for you, and I tried it for me. I tried it for us. I tried it...
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
California-based, Wisconsin-raised - musician Hana Fleur sings about life, even the difficult parts.
FLEUR: I make folk-Americana music that comes from living life itself. It's an authentic expression of being open to the world and open to the experience of what my life is.
RASCOE: That's probably why it came as a surprise to her friends, and even herself, when she entered this song, "Love A Woman," into this year's Tiny Desk contest.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
FLEUR: (Singing) But I want to love a woman. I want to feel her hair in my hands. Don't want to feel...
RASCOE: Fleur's voice is pained and haunting as she describes the moment she realized that she was falling in love with another woman. It was one thing about herself she never really shared widely.
FLEUR: The song is about, yeah, dating men and wanting to date women and having some of my first experiences with women, and the profound discovery of that and who it was and how long I had been locking that up inside of me was really moving at the time. And to write that song was almost like a surrender into a deeper version of who I was and who I could be and not wanting to hide it anymore and not wanting to reason with it anymore and just accept that about myself.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
FLEUR: (Singing) I want to feel her hair in my hands. Don't want to feel like I'm trying to be something that I'm not.
RASCOE: Fleur says, if she had to put a label on it, she'd say she's bisexual or queer. Although most of her closest confidants already knew, and although she's been playing the song a lot on tour lately, many in her own family still don't know this part of her.
FLEUR: And if they do know, it's not really something celebrated, I guess. And so we don't talk about it. And that's fine, honestly. I've come to terms with, you know, what people are comfortable with, and my family is my family, and I love them, and I get to be however I want, you know? So I have that full expression.
RASCOE: And Fleur says she's never felt freer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
FLEUR: (Singing) In my hands, I want to feel...
RASCOE: It all started some years ago when she finally used her voice to admit all of this to herself.
FLEUR: I think the first time I remember saying out loud, like, and I might be gay. Like, I remember saying that out loud when I was, I think - I'm 28 now, and so I think I was, like, 22 or 23.
(SOUNDBITE OF HANA FLEUR SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
FLEUR: And I remember saying that to somebody and also saying, but I can't be, and I'll never come out.
RASCOE: Well, she could be, and she did. And Hana Fleur says she has no regrets about it. Still, she says, as much as she never wants to put this part of herself back inside a closet, she wants people to know she contains multitudes as a person and as an artist.
FLEUR: I also don't want to, I guess, box myself in in any one direction.
RASCOE: That's folk artist Hana Fleur. Her song is "Love A Woman."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE A WOMAN")
FLEUR: (Singing) Her hair in my hands. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
