Adia Victoria: “The guitar is an outlet for me, a safe space to express a range of emotions that women – especially black women – aren't able to openly exhibit”

Adia Victoria got her first guitar at 21 years old and, ever since, has had a fruitful love affair with the six-string. Truly, hers is a deep connection with the instrument. When she got her first acoustic guitar, the soon-to-be prolific songwriter had always lacked what the guitar gave her: something of her own to wield in the world. 

Victoria, who grew up in a repressive religious environment in South Carolina, found in the guitar a way out. It was an object she could use to be both student and teacher, artist and narrative writer. It became her best friend to which she revealed her darkest secrets. It also became the window through which she saw the world in new and darkly historical ways. 

All of this passion and education is laid out on Victoria’s new 11-track LP, A Southern Gothic. For the 35-year-old artist, the guitar is a tool she can use to reveal stories long hidden about the black American experience, her own childhood and stories about subjects like the magnolia and its sordid symbolism. 

We caught up with Victoria to ask her about forging her bond with the guitar, how it influenced her musical sensibility and how it shaped her new LP.