‘I was made to do this’: indie singer-songwriter Joya on performing at the 2023 Gay Games, being a source of healing for others, and the villain in a break-up

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) are notoriously male-dominated career fields, in which women may find it difficult to succeed without sacrifice. But 29-year-old Joya, who leads product strategy and communication for a Hong Kong-based technology company, seems to have cracked the code. “I’ve got, like, 10 Google calendars because there’s just so much going on,” she laughs. “But I think the stability of my job in tech actually allows me to be more selective with my creative projects and focus on art that’s very much my own.” Born and raised in Hong Kong, this indie-pop singer-songwriter, born Jodie Chan, has always been musically inclined. Her first stage performance came at the age of nine, when she sang with a mini-choir of children at a Teresa Carpio concert in Hong Kong. Then, as a teenager, she took part in various musical theatre productions outside school. Joya was writing songs when she was as young as 12 or 13, but did not stream her music until recent years. Naturally, she had other priorities: “Reality slipped in when I was about 18 years old – it was time to go study.” He ‘wanted to give up on music’ – now he writes songs for major K-pop acts With a degree in communications, media studies, political science and global health from Northwestern University, in the United States, she admits she once wanted to “work for the UN and save the world”. She has carried to fruition the idea of communicating with marginalised people who may be able to relate to her experience, whether as a Hong Kong Chinese person from a Christian family, or as part of the LGBTQ community. “I know a lot of people struggle with [being queer], especially in the religious community,” she says. “I am now married to a woman, but it has taken me a really long time to be so public and open about [my sexual orientation]. “Since that tipping point, I’ve integrated diversity, inclusion and women’s empowerment as much as I can into my [work].” She began to put out singles online in 2020, and released her debut EP, She is Joya, last year, on November 17, less than a week after performing at the closing ceremony of the Hong Kong-hosted 2023 Gay Games, a historic event for the LGBTQ community in Asia. “It felt like a full-circle moment from where I started. I felt this strong sense of, ‘I was made to do this’,” she says, adding that she is now in a new stage of her life where she wishes to introduce herself as Joya, the singer-songwriter “who’s come into her own”. “It is being able to learn what it means to navigate this incredibly and increasingly complex world as the person that I am today,” she says, “and hopefully present sources of healing and what it means to be authentic and honest, to help people feel seen and heard through my music.” Joya says her EP is “a foray into different shades of love”, starting with the first song, “Credit”, an upbeat composition “about learning to love myself and give myself a little more credit”. “I think it’s something many people can resonate with,” she says. “In general, my music is quite personal and honest; but at the end of the day, I want it to be shared and for the audience to feel as if it’s their story – it just happens to be my melody and lyrics.” The anthem to self-love is followed by the cheery yet somewhat sombre “Lost Boy, Lost City”, about that curious feeling of thinking back to an ex-love, years later, and who you both once were. The next track, “It’s Starting to Rain”, is a pained, slow jam chronicling the inevitability of heartache and the subsequent letting go. The fourth song on the EP is another melancholic tune, “If Ever She Goes”, which the musician reveals was written about her then girlfriend, now wife: “When you’re really in love with someone, your brain does funny things to make you almost imagine your life without them because you’re so scared to lose them.” With both the singer and the subject being female, the song also serves as a nod towards women who love women. “There are not a lot of songs talking about that,” she says. “Listeners have told me they liked the song because it’s subtle, but it’s for them.” Joya has been with her wife for more than four years, with the couple marrying in August 2022. The fifth number, “For What it’s Worth”, is a dreamy, joyous tribute to finding safety in a shared space and coming home to “a language of our own”. Wrapping up the EP is the mellow “The Villain”. The musician says the song is a reflection on previous relationships as well as how much change people around her have been through over the past two years. “I always thought it was ironic that there’s a good and a bad person in a break-up, which I never really agreed with,” she adds. “Call me the villain if you will, call me the villain if it helps you heal.” Joya says she composed the flow of the EP with the intent that it could be listened to front to back and back to front. “It depends on what kind of narrative you want. I wanted it to feel circular, in the sense that [the music] can meet people where they are, whether they want to start positively or not.”