The Making of a Miss Behave Collab: Bessie Smith by Nashira

I don’t want no drummer. I set the tempo. — Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues

Tell us a bit about Bessie Smith.

Bessie Smith, nicknamed “The Empress of Blues” was a legendary blues and jazz singer during the Harlem Renaissance. After being orphaned at 9, Bessie and her brother used street performing as a way to earn money to support their household. She was hired as a dancer and performed with the famed Ma Rainey before eventually forming her own solo act.

At the time virtually no Black artists were being recorded because white audiences didn’t typically listen to Black musicians. Black music was mostly consumed by white listeners through MInstrel shows where white performers wore blackface and portrayed Black people as lazy, ignorant, hypersexual, and superstitious. A new market emerged when Okeh Records was convinced to record a Black blues singer named Mamie. Mamie’s records became so popular amongst Black consumers that record labels couldn’t ignore the potential profit in marketing Black records. Labels soon began looking for other female blues singers to record “race records” for potential Black buyers.

Bessie eventually began recording with Columbia Records and her songs were immediate hits. With her increasing popularity Bessie became a headliner touring on the Black vaudeville circuit, where she often sold out shows. Bessie was an incredible talent with a rare, low contralto voice that captivated her audiences. The success of her records launched her fame, and she grew to be one of the most popular, highest paid Black music artists of her time. After being dropped from Columbia Records during the depression, continued sales of Bessie’s records contributed to keeping Columbia Records afloat. Bessie exuded glitz and wealth, while singing about pain and struggle. She has influenced some of the most well known artists in pop culture today. Many would call Bessie the first Black superstar.

Why did you choose Bessie Smith?

The Harlem Renaissance gave Black artists, authors, poets, and musicians the creative freedom and control over how the Black experience was portrayed. It set the groundwork for the civil rights movement, but even in times when radical shifts in political awareness were happening, women's voices were often suppressed. Bessie commanded her voice be heard. Through her music she discussed racism, sexism, prison labor, poverty, and the complicated highs and lows of love. Her songs encouraged women to explore independence, sexual freedom, and practice agency.

I chose Bessie Smith because her music was empowering to women who wanted to hear stories of our liberation. In many ways she made early protest music that challenged social norms. While certain critics labeled her as “rough”, I admire the way she didn’t soften her edges to be more palatable.

What was your vision for this fragrance?

I knew I wanted the fragrance to embody the feeling of an underground jazz club during The Harlem Renaissance. When I think of Bessie Smith I don't think of the popular Speakeasies that emerged during prohibition like The Cotton Club, where rich folks could listen to live jazz and blues. My vision was of the basement afterparty where you could find Bessie and other musicians post performance, or the underground jazz club where they’re running numbers in the back, or even the rent party where they’ve pushed all the furniture out of the way to make room for dancing.

What do you love most about this fragrance?

I’ve spent the last month or so taking myself back to a time that I never experienced. I’ve envisioned what it would be like to live in this place with people I’ve never met so I could translate that feeling to the Poesie team. So the thing I love most besides the perfect balance of sweet/smoky/boozy/ woodiness, is that when I smell this fragrance it transports me to the exact place I imagined.

What were the highlights of this process/collab?

Working with Joelle and Allie was such an amazing experience. Even now, after all is said and done I still can’t believe I was able to be a part of this process. I’ve been a fan of Poesie fragrances for awhile now, but to watch Joelle create different scents based on my ideas that at the time felt all over the place was so cool. Having a fragrance I can smell, that reflects an idea that I had, that embodies such an important woman in an important era is something I will cherish. To be able to share that with people through both the fragrance and this blog is really special to me.

Nashira

About Nashira

Nashira (pronounced na-shy-ra) is a fur mom who loves reading, and discovering new fragrances. As far back as she can remember, she’s always had a perfume collection. She loves the way fragrance is so closely tied to memory and emotion. To her, fragrance can transcend time and space. Nashira started creating TikTok videos to help with social anxiety. She says making fragrance content has helped introduce her to so many amazing people. When she started getting into indie perfume oils Poesie is one of the first brands she fell in love with; her favorites are Soft and Madar.

Miss, Behave! Mokarrameh Ghanbari

Last spring we gave you a collection inspired by the kind of women you want on your side, the kind of women you want to be. You loved it, and we loved making it. And that’s why our spring fragrance collection is inspired by 9 women artists. We know you’ll love these muses and their scents just as much as we do, and we’d like to share a few of their stories. Narrowing down the artists to feature in the collection wasn’t easy, but we knew we had to include Mokarrameh Ghanbari. Not only did we fall in love with her work, but the story of how this outsider artist came to painting so late in life, and the personal challenges and cultural hurdles she overcame to pursue her art is so inspiring we had to share it with you.

Mokarrameh Ghanbari (1928-2005) born Darikandeh, Iran

Forced into a marriage at a young age and never given the opportunity for an education, before she became a painter Mokarrameh Ghanbari raised nine children, farmed, and worked variously as a healer, seamstress, and makeup artist. One of three wives, by her own account her marriage was an unhappy one. (Tellingly, she never included her late husband in her paintings.) It was not until she was 64 that Ghanbari took up painting, for which she never received any formal training.

Ghanbari came to painting as a way to express her feelings when her children, concerned for her health, would no longer allow her the farm work and cow herding she enjoyed. In the agrarian Caspian plains of northern Iran where Ghanbari was born and lived, women often have strong attachments to the cows for which they care. The widowed Ghanbari, then in her early sixties, spent her time caring for the cows that she loved and doing farm work, until she became very ill and had to go to Tehran for medical care. While she was sick in bed, her children, who were concerned about her health, sold the cows in order to reduce her workload. But their well-meaning act sent her into a depression. Her first painting was a portrait of one of the cows she missed so much.

A friend gave her paper and colored pencil to express herself, and Ghanbari immediately began to draw obsessively. For four years, she kept her art a secret out of fear of what her neighbors would think. She was an illiterate farmer and a woman -- what right did she have to put brush to paper? She painted late at night and hid her work if anyone came into her home, lying about the paint on her hands. But her creative spirit would not be suppressed. Her work found its way onto the walls of her home, her stove, and the backs of discarded wallpaper.  When he discovered her new passion, her son brought Ghanbari 50 sheets of paper and she soon covered both sides of them all, making her own paint of natural dyes when she ran out of the store-bought kind.

Interior of Ghanbari's home and wall detail

At first, her neighbors were shocked and opposed to her newfound creative outlet. Not only was it unheard of for an uneducated farmer to paint, but strict Islam forbids the use of human figures in art. Ghandbari never felt her art conflicted with her faith. When asked about it, she said, “I didn’t go to school and I am not literate so I do not know enough,  and I only looked at a few pages of the Qur’an as an inspiration, but I cannot really read the Qur’an. I don’t lie. I don’t think Islam says that drawing shouldn’t be done. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”Ghandbari’s paintings, which have been compared with Chagall and look like something out of a colorful dream, are peopled with the stories that she heard told at night, stories from the Quran, the Christian Old Testament and Persian folktales. Marvelous figures peer from every corner of her small home, Adam and Eve, Jesus, and a pair of young Persian lovers mingling freely. Eventually, her fame spread and  the revolutionary guards heard rumors about the paintings. They came to question her, but never stopped her.

Ghanbari's colorful, dreamlike paintings drew on inspiration from stories she heard.

Before she  passed away in 2005 at the age of 77, Mokarammeh Ghanbari’s work won over more than just her neighbors. There was an exhibit of her work in the capital of Tehran, a documentary was made about her, and people came from across the globe to meet her. There were rumors of a Hollywood biopic. Mother Mokarrameh, as she was known, has been called “Iran’s own Picasso.” Today, her small house is a museum. And the neighbors paint their own front doors and walls, in her memory and in hopes that future artists will not go unseen.

TLDR version: Not to be stopped by a forced marriage, lack of education, or societal disapproval, Mokarrameh Ghanbari picked up a paintbrush at the age of 64, and never looked back.

Mâdar, the scent inspired by Mokarrameh Ghanbari, features creamy, comforting Basmati rice pudding flavored with orange flower water, saffron, cinnamon. Rice pudding is a comfort food in many cultures, and Iran, where it is called Sheer Bernj, is no exception. There, it is typically spiced and flavored with rose water or orange flower water, and garnished with pistachios. In fact, the Caspian plain where Ghanbari lived is famous for its rice and for its orange farms. The area is on the shores of the Caspian sea, and during the spring the air is redolent of orange blossoms. We like to think that she made this pudding for her nine children, and that when she did, her kitchen smelled just like Mâdar, which is the Persian word for “mother.”

If you’d like to know more about Mokarrameh Ghanbari, there are a limited number of English language resources. Adventure Divas by Holly Morris contains a half chapter about her, which has the benefit of including some of Ghanbari’s own words, as the author actually interviewed her. We were unable to source an English copy of the documentary by Ebrahim Mokhtari, Mokarrameh, Her Memories and Dreams, however there are two shorter videos available on YouTube: Mokarrameh Ghanbari AKA Mother Mokarrameh and Mokarrameh Ghanbari directed by Majid Mahichi. The quality isn’t great, but if you can deal with that, you’ll find a fascinating glimpse of the artist and her work.