Mem Nahadr
Performance Artist. Vocalist. Author. Composer. Filmmaker. Human Rights Activist.
Mem Nahadr (pronounced mem na-HAHD), also known as M. Nahadr and simply “M”, is an American performance artist and multi-octave vocalist best known for the performance of the song “Butterfly”, composed by Yoko Kanno and lyricized by Chris Mosdell for Cowboy Bebop. She is also an author, composer, poet, filmmaker, and human rights activist.
In 2008, she presented her off-Broadway theatrical production, Madwoman: A Contemporary Opera – produced by Mem Nahadr, Grammy Award winner James P. Nichols, and Harvard LOEB Theater director, Claude E. Sloan, Jr.
Nahadr, an African-American living with albinism, was requested in 2004 by National Geographic Magazine to have a portrait made of her by renowned photojournalist Robert Clark, to be included in an article on genetic inheritance, ideas of diversity and acceptance of difference. Later that year, the portrait and some of Nahadr’s artistic work were included in the magazine’s “Best of the Year” collection of images.