Jo Mango: The singer songwriter with paperclips, sand & no oversized sunglasses

Friday 21st September 2007

Tony Cummings quizzed the critically acclaimed singer/songwriter JO MANGO about her music & faith



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Jo: I have just arrived back from London where I have recorded three new songs for an EP. I've been working with the extraordinary Adem Ilhan - bassist in the band Fridge, label and bandmate of Kieran Hebden of Fourtet and singer/songwriter going under his first name Adem - and he has been producing and playing on it. I met Adem on the Zero Degrees Of Separation UK tour and at the Carnegie Hall show and we get on wonderfully. He's got a fantastically zany sensibility about him that attracted me immediately - first time I saw him he had on a white T-shirt printed with fake blood pouring from both armpits - and his musicianship is extraordinary. Obviously the musicianship is more important than the fake blood. But well, both are good! So I'm really excited. The EP should hopefully be out before the end of the year and then the album next year. I'm toying with the idea of making the album a concept album this time with the theme of going missing. But we'll have to wait and see what transpires. It's just something I've thought about a lot over the years - where do all the missing people go? What has happened to them? What does it feel like to return home after a long disappearance? I also think it has a myriad of spiritual connotations and connected metaphors. One thing is for sure - it's going to sound different! 'Paperclips And Sand' was a collection of songs that I had written over a seven year period and some of them are very early songs. But these new recordings are just that - entirely new - coming after a lot more experience in the industry and many more months of playing different types of music with musicians from all over the world, so they do sound a lot different as you might expect. I think the main difference is that the emotion is subtler but much deeper and my singing style has developed somewhat. The instrumentation is also more complex. But it retains a definite Jo Mango sound and that slightly innocent sensibility that is perhaps a characteristic.

Tony: If there is one spiritual lesson you have learned in recent times, what is it?

Jo: I think God has been teaching me the importance of not putting on any kind of permanent pretence - either a spiritual one or an artistic one. As E E Cummings says, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." So many people who pour themselves into the creative arts somehow lose themselves along the way and become the person that their audience expects of them or makes them out to be. And it's so easy to do! But the fear is that you end up becoming nothing but the carefully thought out clothes you stand in and the songs/poems/plays you wrote about some person who you hope still exists somewhere. The same goes for those in the spiritual eye and/or those respected in the Church. Sometimes they just become the words they say about what they believe and don't actually embody it any more. It happens so slowly sometimes that you don't realise it's happening until you wake up one morning and ask yourself. . . all these things I'm saying and doing. . . the person who everyone seems to think I am. . . are they really me? That's when you urgently need to go back to basics and spend some major time looking at God and what he thinks of you. "A man looking at the word is like a man looking in a mirror." You can't find your identity in the eyes of other people. But it's for this reason that fame or notoriety can really ruin a person - because your success to some extent does depend upon what other people think of you and if this is combined with your internal identity being dependent on other people's affirmation, then you have a problem. I'm watching it happen at the moment to an incredibly original, unique and talented young guy I know. He's just lost himself in other people's need of his charisma and is slowly withering away. It's really sad to see. But at the same time very understandable in the circumstances!

So yes, the importance of honesty and truthfulness in your own being has been a big lesson for me - even if it is not what people want to see. And never becoming the kind of person who wears oversized sunglasses and six inch heels to go to the corner shop. CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
About Tony Cummings
Tony CummingsTony Cummings is the music editor for Cross Rhythms website and attends Grace Church in Stoke-on-Trent.


 
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