Over four remarkable albums Mo’Ju has created remarkable music and stories, creations that have deep meaning and resonate significantly with fans and followers. Now they’ve shared many of those songs in new surroundings, performing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
A recording of their landmark show has just been released, Double J Live at the Wireless was recorded for the ABC digital channel. Mo’Ju spoke to Graeme Watson about making music, working with an orchestra and what they’re exploring for their next project.
Mo’Ju admits it’s odd talking about a show that actually happened two and half years ago with the performance at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall taking place in March 2023. Creating the orchestral versions of their works first came to life as part of WorldPride Celebrations earlier that same year.
“I feel like a lot happened in the world since then.” Mo’Ju said over a Zoom call.
The musician shares that at first they wondered if the moment to share the work had passed by, but eventually they decided it was the right time to put it out into the world, and revealed that they’d long toyed with the idea of transforming their songs for an orchestra.
“The first third of the show was a bit of a retrospective of everything I’d done before. And then the last two thirds of the show was just playing the new album Ora, Plata, Mata.
“I think I actually approached the orchestra before I’d even finished writing the material. That record has a soul funk, kind of live band thing, but then the production itself is very electronic, so there’s a lot of synths, and a hip hop, RnB, style production in the way we made it. So it doesn’t automatically give orchestral vibes, but to me, it did, in my brain.
Mo’Ju shares that they immediately though their newest music leant itself to an orchestral collaboration not because of how the finished record necessarily sounds, but because during it’s creation they and producer and musical collaborator Henry Jenkins had many discussions about pop opera and approaches to world building and storytelling.
“It kind of made sense to us. I don’t know if anyone else saw the vision” Mo’Ju said. “I reached out to the orchestra before we’d even finished the record and was like, ‘I think this is going to work really well.'”
For their next project Mo’Ju is taking a different approach. Earlier this year they were the recipient of a creative fellowship from The State Library of Victoria.
“I’m researching precolonial cultural and spiritual practices from the Philippines, and where they intersect with gender and sexuality.”
“I just wanted to look at the role of queer people and gender nonconforming people in these precolonial spaces, like precolonial culture of my own culture and get an understanding what that kind of lineage that I come from, and what kind of roles people like myself would have played.
“It’s getting an understanding of that history and what that looked like before these Western ideas of gender were forced upon us.” they shared.
Mo’Ju shared that their methodology for creating music involves lots of research and self examination.
“It has changed over time. I’ve always been a big fan of concept albums and and world building. My first solo album was very much this neo-noir world. I love all those old Humphrey Bogart films and Raymond Chandler books, but they’re really quite old fashioned in their the gender representation.
“It’s very misogynistic in ways, and you never see a person of color that’s not depicted in the role of a criminal or the help. So for me, it was about subverting those narratives and flipping that on its head.
Earlier in their career Mo’Ju didn’t feel as confident to talk about what they’d been thinking about and exploring in the creative process. Today that’s easier, partly because they’re more confident as an artists, but they also note that society is getting better at having these kind of conversations.
“There’s a better vocabulary for speaking about these things in a broader context, in society, people can kind of discuss these things more openly, and the discourse around it has changed a lot.
“For me at the time just being being visible was really important.” Mo’Ju said.
“My identity has always been politicised. I don’t really feel the need to politicise myself any further. I just want to do what I’m doing and the work speak for itself and kind of offer its own merit.
“My process was, I was reading all these books and watching these films, and sitting in front of my television watching these old noir films with the sound off. I had like a typewriter and I would sit there and write the lyrics.
For their highly acclaimed 2018 album Naitive Tongue Mo’Ju drew upon her own family history and culture.
“When I got to Native Tongue I was interviewing family members and documenting family history and telling stories.
“I wanted to tell these stories out of love for my grandparents and sort of watching them get older. And I’d lost two grandparents at that point. I was really wanting to tell stories of my family and document them and talk about the joys of all of that, but also all of the heartbreak and the pain around like disconnect from culture.
“When I look back, it was a research based approach to it, at every step of the way. My creative process has a slightly more scholarly approach to the work than people necessarily realised, or maybe even admitted to myself.
When it came time to create their most recent studio album Oro, PLata, Mata the pandemic lockdowns on 2020 gave Mo’Ju space to dive deep into exploring many different tangents of thought that the word took them down.
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s my best album. That’s the one I love the most, because I really feel like I actualised the vision and and I think I also had a more rigorous and developed process.”
The title track from Native Tongue made a big impact when it was released. The song’s opening lines declares, “I don’t speak my father’s native tongue. I was born under the Southern sun. I don’t know where I belong.”
While Mo’Ju explores their linkage to both Wiradjuri and Philippine culture, it allowed listeners to think about their own family trees, heritage and the importance of keeping culture alive.
“I’ve come to realise that that song has meant a lot, to a lot of people. And if that is my legacy, then I’m super proud of that. I’m really happy that so many people have connected with it, because that’s why you do it, right? That’s why – music.”
Mo’Ju’s Double J Live at the Wireless is available now.
