Free to be Me – Amilah Choudhury

Growing up in a South Asian household, I was used to the haldi-stained clothes and 1-hour long goodbyes after the FIFTH cup of chai… but I was also secretly fangirling over One Direction and intoxicated by Britney Spears! It was this constant battle of seeming too whitewashed around my Bengali family but too brown around my physics friends at university.

Moving from my bubble-wrapped, majority-brown world in Northwest London to the less than 10% South Asian population in Edinburgh, I noticed the cultural differences. My heritage had never been my unique identifier at school because all my friends were also Bengali, Indian, or Pakistani. But at university, I suddenly felt like the token brown girl in a sea of Caucasian male physics students. I think subconsciously this led me to hide parts of myself to fit the mould, clinging onto my rice cooker as my only connection to being South Asian. I never felt ashamed of my ethnicity or religion—just different.

I only began exploring my cultural heritage during my master’s in songwriting. I made a conscious effort to write about my identity, about racism, about the hijab and the modern-day Muslim woman (rather than the classic love songs I had written in high school). Through my art, it was liberating to have the creative freedom to express my South Asian experiences. These stories made my songs unique and were the ones I loved writing about.

Over the years, through my songwriting journey, I’ve learned that I don’t need to hide my ethnicity or cherry-pick parts of myself to put out on display. My unique experiences as a South Asian woman have become the heart of my art. Embracing these aspects of who I am has not only enriched my creative work but also deepened my connection to myself and to others.

Check out my songs on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0iT0SDzdbAyI1mkDf1yfQo?si=FuvajAw1SIWrqsy9aP3kqg