Interview: Deva Mahal - Future Classic Vol II: Tour

Daughter of US blues legend Taj Mahal and sister of Zoe Moon, Deva Mahal has completed her Future Classic diptych with the launch of Vol II: Future. Interviewer Johnny Smith (Phys Ed / Washwerld Prod.) had an illuminating conversation with the Hawaii-born, Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based artist, in advance of her nationwide Future Classic Vol II: Tour with band — commencing this coming Friday...

UnderTheRadar proudly presents...

Deva Mahal
Future Classic Vol II: Tour

Friday 3rd April - Waiheke Jazz Festival, Waiheke Island*
Thursday 9th April - The Crown Hotel, Dunedin
Friday 10th April - Kinross Winery, Wānaka*
Saturday 11th April - Loons, Lyttelton
Thursday 16th April - Totara St, Mount Maunganui *
Friday 17th April - Paisley Stage, Napier
Saturday 18th April - Meow Nui, Wellington*
Saturday 2nd May - Double Whammy, Auckland

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR
*Tickets on sale via devamahal.com

Johnny Smith: I saw on your Instagram stories you've got a lot of emotions flowing through you this week?

Deva Mahal: Yeah, oh my god. I feel like my body can't really contain all the things that I'm feeling right now, to be honest.

It's human to put so much passion and love and soul into a project.

It's such a strange time in the world to put something out. I'm battling with it, because the world is in such a crazy place. I know that's the time people really need art, but it also feels strangely self-serving in a way that doesn't feel so great. You're like, I want to be super excited about this, but people are being bombed every second. Catastrophes are happening everywhere. To have all of that knowledge all at once and then being creative and putting things out. It's such a different time, as opposed to putting music out when I first started putting music out. And you're just focused on your community and you're focused on your dreams and stuff like that.

To be able to have the privilege to be able to put music out and to have support... to have the opportunity to share your art is such a blessing. But it feels kind of coloured in a different light, for me at the moment. I'm excited, but it's hard to access the joy at the moment. It feels a bit heavy.

It's also the fact that, the platforms in which you have to distribute and promote yourself on are the same platforms that everyone gets their news as well. It's a weird juxtaposition.

Yeah. These are also platforms that are investing in a lot of things that I don't support or believe in. It seems like every day you're getting notified that your freedoms and your privacy are being infringed upon by these resources that have become, intrinsic and integral to being able to reach your audiences and stuff like that. It feels like you're being held hostage a lot of times as an indie artist... I don't know about you. I'm resentful of the fact that I have to create like a persona for people to to be able to consume on a daily basis, instead of just your artistry. If you'd asked me another day, maybe I would have said something different, but today I feel really like: what is this industry that I'm putting music out into?

To be able to survive as an independent artist, you need to be able to access your markets in different places. And you have to be able to perform in different places. New Zealand, unfortunately, is not the place where you can have a completely self-sufficient music industry... You have to diversify so much. Which is an interesting thing in itself, because I think it breeds really like humble, really down to earth people, who understand that there's more to it than just getting out there and being famous or whatever.

But it just feels really crazy. I feel kind of mad, I guess. What the hell am I doing? But here I am. I had something to say. I had music to write, so now I'm putting it out.

On your previous Future Classic release (Vol 1 - Classic), you explored themes of love and growth and perseverance and racism and injustice. I was curious about how those themes have evolved to shape this second half of Future Classic?

Solange actually said this: "My work will always be through the lens of a black woman." The way that I experience the world and music and my career is always going to be that. I'm always writing from that perspective. When you get older... the realities of relationships and connection and the world that we live in is no longer shiny. It's kind of hazy, it's coloured, it's gritty, it's got teeth in it. You've got scars and you've been through shit at this point.

Starting with 'South Coast' — it starts with this voice note, which is actually a real message that I sent someone. I was like, I'm gonna keep leaning into the belief that being vulnerable is like real art. It's this beautiful, optimistic, loving message that I sent somebody. And then the song is like, actually it turns out this person wasn't brave enough. It talks about having scars and having wounds. Having to grow from that and hoping that somebody would also do the same and then they don't. Then you're like, okay I'm old enough now. I've got to be able to know when to call it.

Everybody has more baggage, everybody's head has more stuff going on that they have to work through. You still have to figure out how to accept yourself and work through all of your fucking trauma. You get older and you get wiser and you can be more grown as a woman... No one's gonna rescue you either. So you've gotta figure it out, learn and figure out what you're putting into the mix as well.

In 'Sometimes Good', you have to learn those lessons. Because it's about time that I understood: "You're a bad man who's sometimes good." There's a difference between somebody who's a really good person who's done a few bad things, and a really shit person who's sometimes nice to you. It's interesting how the person who breadcrumbs you and gives you just these little morsels is the one that often people are drawn to. Because, we're always trying. I feel every human's trying to prove their worth in a relationship. It's not just any gender, I think everybody's looking for somebody to validate them. I definitely am not immune to that. It's looking at it, and you're like — wait, hold on. What am I consistently doing? Then acknowledging your own advocacy in that, because we all make choices... I think there's a knowing that shows itself in this album.

I think so too.

Writing 'Need', it was like, okay this is real. Everybody experiences need. I was rebelling against this whole narrative that only certain types of people are allowed to express it. I feel like we're leaning more into this restrictive, body controlled world again. Where everybody is only allowed to be desirable, or desire things, if you fit into the limitations of whatever is considered attractive to the masses. I think that people hold on to a lot of shame and fear and and hide who they really are, and feel like they're not allowed to express those feelings. So 'Need' was that for me. Because everyone, it doesn't matter what, where you come from, every body, like every cell, every creature, everything like has the need for whatever it takes to become more, to connect.

Molecules move towards each other. That's why people like to hug and that's why it heals you. Because your molecules actually move towards the other person and they like getting fed. And so as a person who doesn't operate inside the world of what is considered beauty, I'm always pushing against that. Because I'm like, fuck you. Fuck this shit. Fuck these standards. I exist and I'm human. My humanness also has need and desire and all these things like sensuality, being all of those things in one body. That body doesn't have to look like what you think it's supposed to. Who you love, it doesn't have to look like who it's supposed to. Like in the video, that can be two women. That can be a man and a woman. That could be bodies without gender. It could be just anything. That's all allowed. That is human.

I'm so sick of these fucking rules that we keep adhering to. I'm so over it. I keep talking about how humans are the fucking dumbest. We make all of these rules up to make our lives so much harder and full of shame. We're the only species that have figured out how to make living cost money. I just think it's bizarre. People are so adverse to emotional connection, I feel like the EQ of the human species is depreciating. So I'm going to rage against that... I always put that forward in my music. I think people need it. People need to feel connected and they long for it. It's not supported to connect in real life. Internet warriors, Instagram warriors, emoji warriors — it's leading to such a dark place, you know?

We need to fucking feel. We need to feel and we need to be connected. That's something that the universe gave me, my ancestry gave me. That my spirit has always known how to do is connect to people's emotions and connect to people's heart and open them up, like open the channel. That's what I want to do. That's what I wanted to do with this album. That's what I wanted to do. 'Slow Down” is exactly that. It's like slow down. Be in your life and find true connection, because we can't make it out without it.

Like you said, we crave that connection and now more than ever, with all these systems that are separating us.

We would wither and die without it. It actually makes people insane. All this insane shit that we're doing as a species, it's literally because people are totally disconnected from their empathy.

It's stuff like music and live shows that can slowly chip away at some of that. I'm excited to hear from you what you're excited to bring to your live show and hear a little bit about your band, and what you're excited to play out of this new EP live.

I'm really very excited to hear what 'Slow Down' sounds like in a room. It has this sickheck sub-frequency that I'm just really dying to hear live. To be surrounded by those backing vocals that I did, just also to make that connection. I have this visualisation of being a bunch of people with beams in their chests, connecting. I see that in my head — kind of like Care Bears, you know what I mean? Beaming light from our chests to try to overcome all the fucking madness that's happening.

I really am excited to play 'Till the Morning Comes'. I haven't written a song like that in a while. It showcases a different texture that some people don't necessarily know me for. When I was writing with Fredericks Brown, this is my duo that I had when I was living in New York, we had a lot more songs that fit in that space that's a little more indie. This one has like an '80s, indie vibe to it. I have a pretty good whistle, so that was really fun for me because I've always wanted to write something that I could whistle to. I'm stoked to play that live.

I really want to play both EPs. So when you come to the show, I want people to witness the Future Classic experience. They're timeless songs. That was the goal. To have the songwriting be paramount and then, feel like you could feel them in the future and you could feel them in the past.

I have such a cool band... I was like, let me find the best players that can figure out how to do this as just the four of us and create as much sound as possible, and really, really, be able to captivate the audiences. I also think that's a forward progressive way of organising a band. We have to be able to make it happen. Right now, I've got three other players. I'm playing with Darren Mathiassen, he's really holding down a lot. He is a fucking legend, I've played with him since forever, he's like family. Then Jules Blumen is playing guitar, and he adds this extra texture. Then we have Johnny Lawrence on the bass. He's such a solid, heavy bass player who gets the textures of the music. He has the language that's needed for the music. So that's going to be really cool.

Then we have James Goldsmith on the sound. I've been making it a thing that I travel with my own sound engineer, so that we can really protect the sound of the band, because that's so important. That's what's going to happen. I want people to come and just be ready to fucking cry and laugh and dance and... just connect and come out fed. I want people to feel fed after the show.

I'm excited to hear that you're playing, or potentially looking to play some of Future Classic Vol. 1.

Oh yeah, I want to play both EPs.

I wanted to give you a moment just to touch on the final track of the EP, 'Someone's Daughter'. Just give you the space to talk about what it means to you.

Absolutely. Especially at the moment. I saw the other day the judge was considering dropping the charges against some of the police officers that murdered her [Update: the charges have been dismissed]. And it just like hit. It feels like the inspiration for that song keeps showing itself and keeps being relevant. It's so fucking frustrating for me. But, being here and then watching the Black Lives Matter movement happen in response to so many police murders... The inspiration of this song happened when Breonna Taylor died, but then it just kept happening.

I hadn't formed the whole song, but it was inspired by her. And then another girl was just shot, executed, and I just was fucking over it. I sat and I started producing and writing, I wrote that whole song like in the middle of the night, just like crying. There's a sample also, of my vocal from a different song in it that I was working on. I decided that we were gonna make a sample out of that. Then also me singing those opera vocals in the background, because I wanted it to feel haunting and I wanted it to be to myself as well, it could have been me. It could be any black girl. That's because we're just like numbers.

Then after writing it, I was thinking about all of the fucking women and children in Palestine. How they're just spoken of as numbers and bodies. It was just wild to watch how people could just instantly switch from seeing their own selves as people. They're people who... suddenly they decided didn't have any value and are dehumanised as just these numbers. Then you cut to the US where they're calling people bodies in internment camps. They're not even calling them humans, they're calling them bodies. I was just like, this is fucking wild. Maybe it was burning down the disillusion that humans actually believe that other humans' lives are as equal, are equally valuable. But it is a reminder that they're not. That it's so relative and people's perspective on the value of human life can totally be manipulated and shaped into this really dark way.

This song is about the death and murder of black women's lives. There's so many black women and girls that go missing every day that it's insane. But then it seems the value of women all over the globe in so many places is really just is being exposed, with things like the Epstein files and all these atrocious things that you keep hearing that are happening in real life. That, for the average person sounds insane, but it's real. We're not just bodies. We're not just numbers. We're someone whose life could have led to all of these beautiful things that you robbed them of. That is what that song is about.

I will never forget either, and I will never forgive. To be honest, we can't. In this crazy fucking world, where I'm still having to prove that I'm equal no matter the colour of my skin, for me personally. That's what's in the song. But it's who you worship, where you're fucking born, how much money you have, what gender you are. Whether it's who you love, all these things. I'm always simultaneously amazed and deeply disappointed by our human species. This song is really to speak up for the young black women that are just not seen as human, and also experiencing that. Every girl is someone's daughter. Every woman is someone's daughter. It doesn't matter where they came from. They're not just a thing. They're part of someone's family. They are human. So I was like, fuck you, I'm gonna make you cry at the end of this album.

'Future Classic Vol ll: Future' is out now on major streaming platforms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.