Singer-songwriter Jo Mango has teamed up with an array of songwriters, academic researchers and sustainability organisations to create the When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday project. The project’s aim is to bring together academic, musical, artistic and practical knowledge to imagine a future in a more sustainable world. They will be releasing three download tracks along with a video documentary to help promote the cause.
Mango collaborated with a number of artists (Adem, Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow and Craig Beaton of The Unwinding Hours), researchers (University of the West of Scotland’s Jo Collison Scott, the University of Manchester’s Angela Connelly, the University of Edinburgh’s Matt Brennan and Creative Carbon Scotland’s Gemma Lawrence) as well as organisations Manchester: A Certain Future and Julie’s Bicycle to create a project that would allow art to explore the emotional connections to nature and create a platform for change.
In this interview feature, we chat with Jo about When Tomorrow Becomes Yesterday, influences, the digital music world and more.
Full Q&A, links, and a video can be found below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
I learnt a lot from the few years that I was privileged enough to tour with Vashti Bunyan. I met so many incredible musicians on the fringes of what was being called the ‘nu folk’ movement – or ‘New Weird America’. And I got to hear an incredibly diverse range of different folk-inspired musics. I think this is what really helped me hone my sound or style into what it is today. That and the many amazing collaborations I’ve been able to be part of. But there’s also my natural creative process, which involves adventurousness and exploration of different instruments. This adds to the multi-instrumental nature of our sound and style I reckon.
What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?
I grew up in a church environment (my Dad was a minister) so I was always surrounded by music of some sort – especially singing. I didn’t actually think it was something I wanted until my brother formed a high school band for a talent competition and was looking for a singer (and ended up with me as a last resort). Discovering the joy of playing that music made me want to pick up the guitar and write something. I think I also owe a lot to my older sister who was a John Peel Session obsessive and taped them all. I heard a lot of intriguing and inspiring (and terrifying!) things coming from her side of our shared-bedroom over the years. And once I had a guitar in my hands I realized that that was something I could aspire to myself. Making some of those intriguing midnight sounds…
What drives me to push it out to the public?
That’s something I’ve often wondered. It really is a drive… I think it’s the way that a song comes alive when you play it to people. There’s nothing to rival that. So I’ll always want to be creating things (I never feel as alive as when I’m creating something) and those things seem like half-things unless they are shared in some way.
Most recently, social concerns have led me to want to create music and release it as widely as I can. My last two releases have really focused on the environment and our relationship to the environment as musicians and music fans. I think it’s such an important issue, and one that music can create a safe space to explore (away from guilt-inducing statistics or political debates and more in the realm of emotion and heart).
Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?
I think the two key influences on my lyrical creativity are nature and literature. There’s so much to understand via the natural world and its inhabitants… and I’m an avid reader and taker-in of books and poetry and arts in general. In terms of the music, I tend to get inspired by collecting different instruments and learning how to use them. This is how omnichords and otamatones and kalimbas and organ pedals came to be wound up in my sound. I need to stop collecting them soon though… or I’ll need a bigger house!
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
Yes definitely. We were trying to explore how music could help us imagine the future. It’s something we seem to find hard to do as a society – it’s easier to focus on our needs now than on the needs of people who don’t exist yet. But it’s becoming more and more apparent that thinking about the future seriously is something that is absolutely crucial (in the light of the huge environmental and social challenges we now face). So we wanted to see what the creative process and the songwriting journey would bring us in terms of understanding of the future and our relationship to it. The Arts and Humanities Research Council gave us funding so we could meet and speak with experts on future planning and climate change from around the UK and hear their thoughts. And we tried to feed that in to our creative decisions – I hope you can hear it in the music and the lyrics and the atmosphere that the songs create.
What was the last song you listened to?
Skin by Marika Hackman. I’m loving this album a lot. But this being the last song I listened to was purely a product of a big shuffle between new albums by Regina Spektor, Kyle Morton, Angel Olsen, Frankie Cosmos…
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Vinyl.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Bandcamp. It’s just such an artist friendly format, that gets moreso over time. It’s been very good to me.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?
Not having enough time!!! There are just so many ways to do that now that keeping on top of it seems overwhelming if you also want to spend enough time working on creating the best music you can. And in some senses, there has been a devaluing of personal relationships or connections with fans via some of those means, because some artists merely use that connection to try and sell things or for marketing purposes. So it’s even harder to try and make real connections in that sense.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?
http://jomango.bandcamp.com/ or www.facebook.com/jomangoofficial and signing the mailing list.
