Kavisha Mazzella Transcript
Kavisha Mazzella:
(Singing).
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. I have in-depth conversations with a fascinating diversity of musicians worldwide, and I hope these personal stories highlight the incredible breadth and depth of a life in music. For listeners everywhere, you can listen to all these episodes on your favorite podcast player or on YouTube. My website is linked to the description for detailed show notes and links. Kavisha Mazzella is a renowned Australian songwriter and singer who has won both an ARIA Award and an Australia Day honor. We talked about her work through the lenses of social justice, community building, and the search for deeper meaning and connection.
This is a personal, in-depth conversation with lots of beautiful singing in both Italian and English. You can use the detailed timestamps to jump to a song or a topic, but I encourage you to listen through and listen to the stories behind "The Fearless Note".
I'm an independent podcaster who needs my listeners' help to keep this huge project going. Every dollar helps, and a link is in the description. Now, let's get to our conversation.
Hi Kavisha. Thanks so much for joining me here today. It's the morning for you and the evening for me.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, it's so lovely to be back.
Leah Roseman:
You were just saying it was the first day of winter in Australia as we record this.
Kavisha Mazzella:
I'm looking at what you're wearing. I'm going, "Oh, you lucky thing."
Leah Roseman:
There's so much to talk about. I know you're very well known in Australia, but worldwide people may not have heard of you. You just celebrated an important anniversary. Maybe we could start with the project with the Italian songs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, sure. Just last week, we celebrated 30 years of anniversary of a documentary film that I was involved with, which was about my very first Italian women's choir. I started it in... Well, basically at the end of '89, but the film was made in 1992 and premiered in 1993. It was really about, in a way, me making up for lost time, in the sense that I'd rejected my heritage as a child, or I felt embarrassed, really, that it was one of those things where you, as a child, you just want to fit in. If you are different, if you have different culture, sometimes at school you are made fun of, or made to feel that you are an outsider. Anyway, so I spent a lot of my school time trying to fit in and not liking the difference.
Then, after, when I was 21, I met a beautiful Sicilian guy and I also fell in love with the folk music and I went on a search to learn these songs. The way I did it was really through meeting people, listening to old recordings, I guess in a folkloric way, which I didn't realize that's what I was doing, but I was just following the seam of gold. It ended up that the very first concert that I did with this wonderful group of women who I met in Fremantle, the very first community concert we did, there was a filmmaker there. He said, "I'd love to make a documentary about these wonderful women, because my mother died when I was eight, and she sang those songs and I'd love to." I didn't really believe him, but in 1992, he came back and he had raised the money and everything, and we had an incredible five-week period making the film, which included going to Italy. It premiered in '93. We are celebrating, I can't believe it, the 30-year anniversary.
Leah Roseman:
Your relationship with these different choirs, it's evolved. You're worked with lots of people who don't have an Italian background to teach them songs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I grew up singing in school choirs. That was a big part of my music education. When I met the women, I went to art school. I didn't train in music. I tried to. I went to university, but I got kicked out for talking, but the ironic thing was I was complaining that they were talking too much about music instead of playing it. Anyway, I followed a folk path as opposed to a classical music path, although I did do classical piano while I was at school, and I loved it very much. My favorite thing was going in at lunchtime and just playing and getting lost in the music, getting away from all the demands of parents and teachers and all that. I was very much a musician in my soul. I didn't have quite any realization what I was doing. I was just immersing myself in beautiful piano music.
Leah Roseman:
Well, you were saying about... I'd asked about these community choirs, and then you were saying you grew up with choirs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Thank you for pulling me back on track. Yeah, I was singing in the school choir, and then when I met these women, I had just heard the incredible album, the Mysterious Voices of Bulgaria. Do you know that beautiful album? That seminal album that came out and everyone just went, "What are these voices doing and where are they coming from?" They're coming from this beautiful, the peasant culture, the earth. It was like the earth itself singing. When I heard these women singing, I thought, "That's the same sound, a similar sound, but much rougher." I thought, "I want to sing with them, and I want to learn the songs because I don't know these songs." I knew a couple of songs, I knew a few songs, but not what they knew.
Just basically with the local council, I went to the local arts office and said, "I found this secret society of women, and I'd love to do something with them." She said, "Well, yeah, let's do a little project." It was 12 weeks and different people brought little patches of songs, and we stuck them all together and we did a concert. The second part of that was me writing songs about them. In a way, they birthed me as a songwriter. It was this really incredible... In a way, the folk tradition, which is to sing songs as the social condition. They were teaching me those songs and I was writing about their life. It was a continuum.
Leah Roseman:
I believe you have kind of a sweet story about the first concert with those women when they got up on stage.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, well, see, not being a trained choir leader, I was just doing everything from instinct, enthusiasm, and they walked on stage and they were singing away. I thought, "They look a bit odd. What is it?" They all had their handbags on and I had forgotten to tell them that they could put their handbags at the side of the stage and then walk on. Yeah, that was pretty funny.
Leah Roseman:
Now, in terms of your project with the Italian songs, before we leave that, I know you were prepared to sing a few songs today. Is there some of that repertoire that you still include as part of your concerts or...
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Well, yes, I do. Yeah, one of them is a song. Do you want me to do that now or...
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, sure, if you feel like it.
Kavisha Mazzella:
I haven't really warmed up. It's nine o'clock in the morning here. I'll just see what happens. (Singing) I have had a bit of a cold, so I'm a bit husky. (Singing) Yeah, there we go. This song, this is one of the songs that... (Singing).
This is one of the first songs that I ever learned when I started this journey of rediscovering or discovering my musical heritage. I learned songs from all over Italy, and the women taught me some of those songs, and actually I taught them some songs they didn't know. It was this lovely two-way thing going on. I'll put it this way, how's the mic now? This is a migration song about a girl whose mother is combing her hair and the mother has dreams for her to be married and give her grandchildren and all those dreams, but the daughter, she wants to migrate like the rest of the people in the village. They're all going to America, to Canada, to Australia. It's a 19th century immigration song.
(Singing) The mother wants her to... She wants the money from the mother to go to Australia. Then, mother says, "I'll give you the money, but to Australia, no. You just want to go and seek your fortune and I'll never see you again." The brothers at the window, they say, "Mum, let her go." She goes, and there's a storm in the middle of the sea and the boat sinks and she drowns. The mum calls out to the fishermen, "Fishermen, fish the sea, drag your nets along the bottom and bring my daughter to me." The ghost of the girl sings, "The words of my mother were the truth." (Singing).
Thank you. Thank you. I really love that song, and what I love even more is because it's a song of a certain era. When you look into a crowd and you see the elderly Italians there, they know it and they join in and they cry because they remember their own mothers singing that song, our grandparents. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
As we record this, my episode with our Irish fiddler, Martin Hayes was recently released, and in that conversation we talked quite a bit about immigration and he was talking about what they called the American wake when people would emigrate and they would have a... People had hadn't died, but they were going to emigrate from Ireland. Then, we were talking about how for a lot of migrants now they can't afford... It's not safe for them to go back to where they came from. It's just like it was 150 years ago, when people would never see their parents again.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Migration is kind of a death, as you say. I migrated with my family when I was three, but I can still remember arriving in Australia and feeling, "Oh, how strange." Then, my first memory, I think, real conscious memory, I've got some visual memory, but audio memory is the sound of the Australian magpies, which I really love, but I'd never heard anything like that before because in England you have the beautiful European bird sounds, a different song. Then, coming to Australia, it was just a completely different music. I remember thinking, "Gosh, this is really strange, but I love it now."
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Your mom is Anglo Burmese, so she had met your dad in England?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, yeah. They were working together. My mum was a trainee nurse and my father was an orderly. They met in the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, which was a famous spinal hospital.
Leah Roseman:
He'd immigrated from Italy to England?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Now, it's interesting how history also plays a part of immigration in the sense that in World War II, when the Italians were taking over parts, they were allied with Germany, and also they were taking over parts of Africa. They wanted to, part of Mussolini's push to colonize Africa. My dad's uncle was captured in Africa. He was a soldier. He was captured in Africa by the British. The British said to the Italians, "You can either go to a prisoner of war camp or you can work on the farms in England." A lot of the Italian servicemen worked the farms in England. After the war, the British government let them stay. That's how our family made it across to England.
Leah Roseman:
Interesting.
Kavisha Mazzella:
My zia Francesca, my Nonna's sister, it was her dad that was captured. She went over to join her dad, and then she said to my dad, "Come over. There's plenty of work here." My poor dad, he just got off the boat to Calais. He went via France, and they said, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm going on holiday to see my auntie." They said, "Let's see what's in your suitcase." They opened this letter and the guy could speak Italian and went, "It says there's plenty of work here. Sorry, young man, you're going back." My poor dad got deported the first time. Of course, after, I think, a couple of years or a year of saving up to come back this time, they got the proper papers.
It was funny because when my dad met the guy, the same customs guy, the guy said to him, "You again." Then, my dad waved the papers, "I got the papers this time," and they just laughed. That's how our family got to England and I got to be born there after my parents met. Then, at that time, they left the hospital and set up a business, a hospitality business. They bought a little workers' cafe. My parents bought a little workers' cafe in Surbiton called the Penguin Lounge. Then, the rest of the family came over to England to all work in the cafe. It was very tribal.
My dad was a very open person in the sense he married an Anglo Burmese lady, which was a bit of a shock for my grandma because she thought my mom was Chinese. She goes, "Oh, you've brought home a Chinese." But eventually, all those differences, when they got to know each other, melted, and even the family from Burma came and visited and all worked in a cafe with the Italian family. It was real multicultural. We all lived upstairs. The cafe was on the ground floor, and then we lived upstairs. Then, the Australian government at that time was putting out advertisements to populate, come to Australia. It was a 10 pound ticket. You heard of this term, 10 pound poms. Have you heard of that?
Leah Roseman:
Nope.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Well, that was a special ticket you could buy if you were successful in your application to Australia for 10 quid adults and kids were free. We were free. My mom paid 10 pounds because of her Anglo Burmese, she was considered part of the commonwealth. She got the 10 pound ticket, and my dad had to pay the full amount, but we got on a boat to Australia. They said you could try it out for two years. You had to try out a business or do something for two years. They were trying to populate Australia.
Leah Roseman:
You've been involved in your social justice work with refugees and different migrants to Australia?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, I suppose because of my mom's refugee story. When she was little kid, the Japanese were bombing Rangoon and her family were living in Burma. My grandfather, her dad, was district commissioner of Northwest Burma near the upper Chindwin. He knew what was going on, and he warned my grandma. He says, "Something's coming. Something's coming. We have to get ready to flee. We have to get ready to go." They packed everything up and they went on this journey, which is now called the Trek, where millions of people headed on the road out of Burma, towards India. They came in through Nagaland on the east of India.
I think she was about eight years old when that happened, so 1942, when Japan bombed Burma, Rangoon. My grandma, who was a singer, she sang. They sang nursery rhymes all the way to India because they didn't want the kids to freak out. By the end of the journey, the men who were the bearers, carrying my mom on the sedan chair, they all knew all the songs by the time they got to India.
Leah Roseman:
Did you learn any of those songs?
Kavisha Mazzella:
I've got a few of them, but I haven't really... (Singing)
Leah Roseman:
Nice. It's amazing how those things stay with people.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, yeah. My mom used to sing all those funny little songs and yeah.
Leah Roseman:
You sang with your brother growing up?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, I have four brothers, so my mom used to... My mom played guitar, and I remember when we were small at Christmastime, we had a little choir, if you like. There's five of us. And so we'd all be doo doo doo, bit like the Von Trapp family, singing for the neighbors.
Leah Roseman:
So is it your twin brother that you had sung professionally with?
Kavisha Mazzella:
No, my third brother. I've got four brothers. So the second youngest, he has the most amazing voice, and he was a child soprano in the cathedral choir in Perth, in St. Mary's Cathedral choir. When his voice broke, it was a terrible experience for him, because all of a sudden he wasn't a star anymore or wanted. And he was really kind of thrown on the heap. I guess in those days, no one prepared anyone, that you just had to suck it up. But his voice developed into this incredible... He can sing tenor and he can sing baritone, so he's got a beautiful range.
So in the film, "The Joys of the Women", one of the scenes is me playing with him, playing for the women. And another one of our friends, we were a trio called I Papaveri, which means The Poppies. And so we started learning all these beautiful Italian folk songs, mainly from the south. And that quite a lot of them would be considered early music, because the band we were learning them from were all students at the Early Music Department in the University of Napoli. And they had created a band called Nova Compagnia di Canto Populare, New Company of Popular Songs. And that, that's the recordings we learned off. They're the recordings we learned off. So my brother, having this sort of classical background, in a way, which he was singing Benjamin Britten and all sorts of amazing things, and they're also from the cathedral repertoire. And so this music felt really natural for us to progress to. I can send you a film of us singing.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I've seen a couple things on YouTube and of course in "The Joys of the Women". I saw that.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh yeah. Okay.
Leah Roseman:
Which I guess we'll be able to link that to this episode.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, great. That'd be fantastic.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, for sure. So we had sort of brushed over the... I mean, we circled around, but we were talking about migrants and working with refugees. Because I know that's something that you've done.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, sorry, I went on a big story about my mum, didn't I?
Leah Roseman:
Well, that's fantastic. No, it's good to hear that.
Kavisha Mazzella:
I guess because that's in my blood, when the refugee situation in Australia started being very apparent, particularly with Bosnia, the Bosnian refugees coming over, the Kosovo story, I was sharing a house with my best friend, who is an ESL teacher, English as a Second Language teacher. She was teaching a lot of refugees. So we collaborated together on some plays. It was a way of teaching English through telling their story and singing songs and getting them to sing along. We toured, we actually toured with the group of refugees from her class. We toured other English language schools with our little show. It was just fantastic. There is a kind of performing where you go to a very rarefied atmosphere and you're the star and you've got the crowds and all that.
I mean, that's lovely. Sure. It's lovely. But I just love people's stories, and I love through the art of theater and storytelling, how the pain of those stories gets transformed and there's a kind of healing that happens. Just getting up and staying their story in front of people and having people listen to you again, again, again, I could see how their confidence grew. They weren't sort of like this anymore. They'd opened up, and they were being celebrated for their courage. We would gather with people for a few weeks and create these shows and after a while we wouldn't see them again, but they carried... Any time they saw us on the street. "Oh, my friend." And people from all countries. Africa, Afghanistan, India, Burma, Nepal, everywhere. I love that kind of work.
Leah Roseman:
So Kavisha, were these adults and you were performing for school children?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Adults For adults. Yeah. Schools are a bit harder to get into these days. They called it incursion, which means you're interrupting them, even though you're bringing them something interesting, I hope. You have to be so you have to really have an in to schools. Though I've done a lot of school shows with a company, wonderful company called Music Aviva. Music Aviva in Australia, and their company brings classical music out to Australia, and they had a schools program. So I was part of a world music program called Journey Journey in the '90s, when I first arrived in Melbourne, I did a three year stint in schools. We had a suitcase. Again, the theme of travel, migration. Had a suitcase with all these objects from different countries, and then when we picked out the object, the kids had to guess which country it came from, then we'd play a song from there.
Yeah, it was really fun. It was so much fun. Also we wanted to show the kids there's songs about plays, not just love songs or pop songs that you hear on the radio. So you can write songs about your experience. Their favorite, favorite song was a song about Melbourne, written by a good friend of ours, Frank Jones, called My Brown Yarra. It's funny, when we arrived at the school, they said, "Can you play My Brown Yarra?" I said, "That's the final song in the show, because we wanted to say at the end of the show, wherever you come from, there's a song for that place." I'll just see if I can remember it.
[Singing].
And that's the song the kids Wanted to sing most of all, which was the saddest song of the whole show, and the final song. It was amazing because we asked the kids why they liked it, and they said, "Oh, it reminds me of my pet who died." Or "It reminds me of my grandma who's passed away." So it allowed them to feel that the sadness in a sweet and safe way. The same thing happened when we worked with the refugees and getting them to tell their story, because we were held in... We made a family of actors and musicians all together. It was safe, and they could tell their most painful story, and it was transformed. And they could have this. It was less traumatic. I guess you never get over the... There's always a trauma, but there was also a sense of, "Oh wow, we've survived. We've survived, and we've met all these wonderful Australians." Or people from all nations who live in Australia, a bit like Canada. And yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need my listeners' help. Please consider buying me a coffee. The link to my Kofi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much.
So Kavisha, you've performed all over and for small venues and huge venues, but I think when you started, you weren't so outgoing. It was harder for you on stage.
Kavisha Mazzella:
I couldn't speak. Of course, now you can't shut me up. Yeah. I was in a band with five guys, and I let them do all the talking. That was a band called Rich and Famous, of which we were neither, but we thought we'd just go straight to the top. So I started off in this band with the five guys. Oh, they were more experienced musicians than me, so they were very okay with the crowds and all that. I'd just say a thing or two here and there, but let them do the talking. And then when I left them and I came over to Melbourne and I was trying to get gigs, I realized if I didn't talk to the crowd, I wouldn't eat, basically.
So my first mentors in Melbourne were the aboriginal artists Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Kev Comedy, the Tittus. They were the people that I was connecting to. And I saw how they were with the crowd, and how comfortable. It was like the place was a big lounge room. They're all friends sitting around in the lounge room and they're just sharing stories. And I loved that. And I thought, "Well, that's what I want to develop." And that's what, I guess, happened.
Leah Roseman:
Many of your stories, sorry, songs you've written over the years are narratives, they're more like stories. And then you always have this great chorus that everyone can join in on. So I'm sure I'm one of your many listeners. If I'm in my car listening to a Kavisha album, I'm definitely singing along on the chorus.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, good on you. Excellent. Well, that's the idea. In a way, I probably overdo it, but I pretty well love getting people to sing from the first song, because I don't know if I'm doing it to make me feel comfortable or them. But anyway, that's what it is.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I'm sure you have a little list of songs you were thinking of singing. I mean, I had a couple that were my favorites, but-
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, which ones are they?
Leah Roseman:
Well, I really love Philosophy Man, which I know is about your partner.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh yeah, I definitely could do that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Do you want to say something about it?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Okay, yeah, sure. Well, this is a song I wrote for my husband, and it's a love song. And although, of course, I guess if I think about it, all my songs are love songs to a certain extent, but I could never really write a song that said, "I love you baby, la, la la la." Because it's all, to me, very cheesy. So when this song came, I was so delighted, because it is a love song celebrating our love story, but it's a bit quirky as well. I was very pleased it finally happened. And it happened, I think, nine years after we met. Took me nine years to cook up those emotions into a song.
My husband works in community mental health. He was made redundant. So he said, "Let's use this opportunity to go head to the country and live in the country. Countryside." And so we moved out of Melbourne and we went to live in a beautiful town of 7,000 people, 120 Ks northwest of Melbourne, up the Calder Highway, in what the indigenous people call Djadjawurrung country. It's like surrounded by forest, farms, and you've got your beautiful rivers and big, big, big sky. Because it was close enough to go to the city to do stuff and come back, often, you'd come back home and it was dark. And you get out of your car and you just go, "Oh my God. The stars are so beautiful." So I wanted to celebrate that as well.
[Singing]. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed that. I wasn't sure I was going to get the notes this morning, but somehow.
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking it's early for you and you're getting over this cold and your voice is so beautifully controlled despite all that. You have such-
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
It's not just the beauty of your sound, but you have this amazing control. And I was actually curious as a music teacher myself, you've worked with so many community choirs and actually, I wanted to ask you about, I think, is it Moon to Balloon? Is that one of the projects? So you've worked with people who can't necessarily match pitches or... I was curious how you do that with people.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Well, I play a few games with them. I think the thing is, a lot of people, quite a few people have suffered grumpy music teachers who told them to mime, but they're dying to sing. But they just needed a little bit of extra attention. Of course, the teacher couldn't do it, because they've got a tight schedule. They definitely couldn't afford private singing lessons. So I realized that there's this gap in people. I knew how to sing simply because my mom sang and my grandma sang. And then on my dad's side, his brother, he was a professional singer as well. So there was singing all around. So in a way, I feel I had no choice. It was just there.
But first thing I asked people, I said, "Did your parents sing to you?" They went, "No." I went, "Of course you can't sing. No one showed you. So don't feel bad." Because they kind of feel tense. They want to learn, and they feel embarrassed, almost, that they don't know how to do this thing. So we play some games where I get people in a circle. I say to this person, "Okay, you just sing a note and the next person has to listen and mimic what you do." I just say, "Mimic that person." So I don't put it in a musical term. You unmusicalize it. I said, "When you were a kid, you learned to speak for your mom, and she said a word and you said a word. So now this same game, this is the same game." So I've been able to help bridge that gap with just those little games.
I do need a strong singer or two in the group. And I say, "Listen to them, and do what they do." And then eventually, it takes a bit of time, but for example, I'm working in a wonderful program called Wild at Heart. Every Wednesday I teach musicians with disabilities, invisible and visible, and they're at an emerging state of their songwriting and so on. They're used to playing guitar and singing their own thing, but not in a choir. We've decided to try to introduce them to the idea of choir, which is listening to other people as well as yourself, and blending in. Last week was complete chaos. I was going, "I don't know if this is really going to work." And then this week, which was yesterday, they somehow got it. So you have to kind of allow chaos.
I think chaos, explained to me by... Is the guy who discovered TaKeTiNa. Have you heard of TaKeTiNa? TaKeTiNa is a rhythm and vocalizing system. It's a wonderful system of teaching percussion, but with the voice. I can't remember his name, I'm sorry. But he said at his workshop that I went to, that chaos is a very interesting state. It's very important for creativity, because chaos is when old knowledge has left, new knowledge hasn't come in, and there's this state of apparent confusion. But what is happening is your brain is rebooting, and then the new information can come. So they weren't used to my style of teaching. For me, it was like they were listening to a new language, and they had to get what I was on about, because I've just been brought into the program a few weeks ago. The boss of the program said, I really want people to do something that will bring them more together, because right now they're all in their little disparate projects with their mentors. Let's do something, and we can bring them all together. I said, well, I'll do a choir for you if you like. We do one hour every week, every Wednesday.
I have to say last night, yesterday, I was so happy that the chaos moved to the next stage, but you have to go through the chaos. That's my advice is don't be worried about chaos. Because when you're a musician, you love to hear the beautiful sound, the fine sound, not the (vocal sound effect) before you get there. But it's just really about people relaxing. When they relax and you say, look, you got to listen to each other, listen to yourselves blending. It's really about becoming aware. I realize that music, the art of music, is turning yourself into a big ear. Your whole body must become the ear not just here. You become sensitive to what's going on around you, and you become... When people have mental health issues, there's a lot of noise going on. You have to take them out of the noise. I do that through chanting, things like, om, ah, oo, mm, ah, om, mm. Yesterday we did that chanting that, and I could feel all the mental noise just going down. And then I introduced the ideas of the music, and they could receive it better.
Leah Roseman:
Now you've practiced meditation in many different traditions and forms through much of your life. Do you want to share... I thought, in terms of your new work with Empty Sky album and those performances, or do you want to circle back to the beginning?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Well, I grew up in a Catholic sort of environment, and that's I guess where you could say that's where all the music was happening, because we were in choirs, and singing in church was wonderful. That was the best part for me. But in terms of the actual spirituality, that felt very superficial and I wanted more, something more. So I went to my first meditation retreat when I was 17, and since then... Which was of Apasana Buddhist retreat. And since then I've been always doing a lot of reading and searching, and especially this thing called Nada yoga, which is sound yoga.
And during the COVID era, COVID times of the recent years when I couldn't gig, I used that as a time to study sound healing. But I'd also started to develop this idea, which I had to find a name for it, called Empty Sky. Empty Sky really is the peaceful place in your heart. So when you sing a beautiful song or something that touches you, when it finishes, you go into a beautiful restful silence. So I wanted to celebrate the beautiful poetry of the Mystic Poets and bringing people together into silence as well, if you like sharing silence through song. And so the idea is we sit in a circle and I'll introduce a song which only has about four lines. It mustn't have too many lines in it, so it must be easy for people to grab onto.
And they sing it over and over. And it brings them into a very centered heart space. And then when the song finishes, we have silence for a few minutes, and then the next song will start and so on. And usually there's about five or six songs in an hour session. And so just before COVID, I made an album of these meditative songs, I guess you'd like to call them. And we never got to launch it because then COVID came along and everybody had to lock down. And then I went into study of the sound healing to make use of the time I couldn't get out and about.
Leah Roseman:
But now you do these special concerts where there's no applause, like everyone's participatory, and then everyone's...
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, you don't applaud. So I recently, actually, I did my singer/songwriter thing at the festivals, but I also had an opportunity to do the Empty Sky as well, which I was so excited about, because the festival director came up to me and said, oh, it is so good for people to share silence at a music festival. Because usually it's all, stimulation, stimulation, watch this, watch that. Oh, they're amazing. Oh, they're amazing. It's all about excitement. Whereas this is reversing that, and just kind of connecting with what music really brings us to, which is to our hearts, but really a dedicated listening. Yeah, great fun.
Leah Roseman:
When we had spoken before, you had told me a story about your mom and the priest, and her objection to you going...
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. My mother was a very devout Catholic. And when I announced that I was going to this 10-day silent Buddhist retreat, she was really, no, no, you can't go. You mustn't go. Because the Catholics are very anxious about what they perceive as a possible devil's playground situation. Where the devil will come and interfere with your mind, if you look inside. To my mind, and I apologize to any devout Catholics out there, but to my mind, it's very outer. They don't allow you to go inside yourself, and have your own relationship with the spirit or the divine, if you like.
So my mother was really upset about it. She goes, oh, I don't know what you're doing. This is terrible. You've got to go and see the... I said, no, I want to go. I want to go. She goes, okay, well, you have to see the priest. So, okay, I'll go and see the priest. And so I went to see the priest, and the priest is... I can't remember his name. But when I knocked on the door he said, come in, and went into his lounge room, and he immediately lit up a cigarette. And he had a glass of whiskey. So tell me, what's this about?
I said, "well, my mom doesn't want me to go to this meditation retreat. It's a 10-day silent Buddhist retreat." "Well, what's it about?" And I said," well, to be honest, I don't know that's why I'm going, but I want to learn how to meditate." And he goes, "well, do you have to go to this thing?" I said, no, I don't have to, but I really want to. He goes, "well, whatever you do, just observe. "And I thought that was pretty funny because the whole thing about Buddhism is just observing. So his way was saying, well, don't get involved, just observe. Stay on the outside of it all. There you go.
But it was a meditation retreat that changed my life. It really taught me and empowered me. It gave me an insight to how my mind was so busy and scattered, and it helped me really get very focused. And that really stood me so well in everything. Not that I'm incredibly focused all the time, but it means that I have an access to a tool I can use.
Leah Roseman:
Yo u mentioned Kavisha, that you went to an art school when you were young. I think at least one of your albums has your painting on it.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Which one is that?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Love and Sorrow.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Beautiful.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, thank you. I love painting. I really was crazy about art when I was... I didn't really think... Because we were singing all the time. We were in Stedfords. I was singing in a little folk band at lunchtime. I didn't think of it as a career as such, but I loved art, and I wanted to be an artist. And my father coming from Italy was very... My father really loved that idea, that I should be... And he even at one time wanted to send me to Florence to an art school, but it wasn't the right time for me to go.
But I had a little space in the... There was a chook shed that I... Empty chook shed, that when chooks were gone. But I just sort of cleared the space and I made a space to paint. And I didn't have oil paints at that stage, but I had gouache, loved painting with gouache. So I've always been into drawing. And even when I... And that's actually what happened. I started singing at a little wine bar to pay for my paints for art school. And then people kept asking me, oh, could you sing here? Could you sing there? And the music part grew, the art didn't, because I had an incident where one of the senior art lecturers... I was in a.... I'd entered my drawings into the University Guild of Undergraduates university drawing prize. And I won. To my surprise, I won. And I couldn't believe it.
And on the night they were announcing everything, this senior art lecturer came in very drunk, and he threw wine on my work. And he said, "that's shit. "And everyone laughed because he was a very powerful man. And at that point, I said to myself, "I don't want to be part of the art world. And I think I'll be a musician," because I always had a fight. Do I do music? Do I do art? What's my future going to be? In a way I have to thank him because he really made it clear. He just pushed me onto the music path and it's been great. And now I'm gradually, I'm coming back. But I held that trauma for a long time, and I never wanted to show people my work.
But remember when I told you we went to that lovely little country town that were full of artists and some really lovely people encouraged me to have an exhibition, which I did. And I nearly sold everything. I would've sold everything if I hadn't held back a few pieces that my husband said, "you're not selling that. I want that." " Okay, you can have that." But it was like a real healing. It was great. And I would love to do more.
Leah Roseman:
Wow. That's quite a story. Did you just leave the school after that and you didn't come back?
Kavisha Mazzella:
No, I continued because I loved art school so much. But the funny thing, what was even more painful I suppose about that, that guy, we all wanted to be in his painting class. And we talked about how wouldn't it be great if we could get into his painting class, because he has the secret of art, which I didn't realize what a horrible person he actually was. Well, he suffered a moment of jealousy. He was also a big drinker. He was an alcoholic, so he wasn't really a sane person. But when you're young and naive, you don't consider all those things. But it was what it was. And I've got over it, and it's fine.
Leah Roseman:
So one of the awards you've won is the ARIA Award, which is sort of the Australian Grammy, is that sort of...
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, for my second album, which was produced by a wonderful singer/songwriter, and he's also toured a lot overseas. His name's Mick Thomas. He had a band called "Weddings Parties Anything". And he's a marvelous story writer as well. And he was my musical director, if you like, for the second album, Fisherman's Daughter and that won an ARIA.
Leah Roseman:
Did that help your career in Australia a lot in terms of the type of concerts you could do?
Kavisha Mazzella:
I think all those things really do help. I mean, personally, sometimes I get dubious about awards. I wonder if they really do make a difference. But I have to say, I think you need to tell people if they don't know you. Someone says, "oh, she won an ARIA." All of a sudden they go, "oh, she must be serious then. "So it is useful. It is handy. And it did help. And I'm grateful.
Leah Roseman:
One of my other really favorite songs of yours is Sing for No One, Sing for Everyone.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh yeah, that's fun. I love that too. I wanted to write a song... I was thinking, in our materialistic world, being a musician, you feel a little bit like a freak. Because people who say are not fans of music or don't know much about music, go, well, what's your real job? Because music is ephemeral. It's this incredible thing. Well, you're in it, it's real. And then boom, it's gone. So unless you produce a CD or something, you don't exist in a way. So I wanted to write a song about being a musician and about music.
And again, this town that I'm telling you about, Castlemaine, which is full of artists. When we moved to Castlemaine, we moved into a rickety little minor's shack from 1907. It was on the hill with the most lamentable shambolic veranda that if you leaned on the balcony, you could fall into the garden. So you have to be careful. But it had the best view, had the best view of the stars, and you were a little bit up from the town. So you could see the lights of the town. It was a happy place. It was my happy place to sit and play guitar. So this is the first song I wrote on the veranda and Philosophy Man was the second song I wrote. (singing "Sing for No One, Sing for Everyone" by Kavisha Mazzella)
Leah Roseman:
Thank you so much.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
So a song like that, in terms of your creative process, did you get sort of the hook and then all the lyrics kind of came tumbling out afterwards? How does that work?
Kavisha Mazzella:
I think I write lyrics first, because the direction where the lyrics are going guides me. I kind of hear the music when I read the lyrics. I went, oh, that sounds kind of like... Well, it's my attempt at a gypsy jazz sort of style of a song. And it was the first song that I've really written like that. And I've written a few since then with that kind of style. And because I tend to write a lot of ballads, a lot of really sad ballads. And someone said to me once, you write epic songs, don't you ever write about tables and chairs or something.
Anyway, this is song just came... I could just kind of hear a very cool little gypsy jazz band playing it. And of course, I'm not a gypsy jazz band, but that was my attempt of evoking. So every little song is a little world, a little theater. And that's why I don't stick to one style. I look at the song and from the lyrics, I think... Though, every now and then I'll get a melody. But for me, it's harder to do it the other way around. Fit words into a melody, then the other way around.
Leah Roseman:
And do you find that you're being steeped in a lot of the Italian song that that's influenced a little bit of your melodic writing?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Definitely. Because I find the one... What they call it? One, four, five or whatever you call it, I don't know, the patterning of the chords, the one, four, one, five, one, four. A lot of pop songs are got this very patterned. I find it utterly boring. But I had the benefit of, in my musical DNA, of having all these incredibly beautiful melodic cordal changes that are just...(music)
Stuff like that, which is, I suppose a bit of Spanish feeling in there. But that's Neapolitan music with the big Spanish influence, because Spain was taking over Naples for 300 years. So there's all this... Well, there's this (music)Arabic influence too.(music) That's more modal.
Kavisha Mazzella:
That's more modal, so there's all this stuff going on, and so I'm all over the place with my musical influences. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And speaking of modal, I'm sure you've crossed paths with Linsey Pollack, who I featured last year.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, I love Linsey. Actually, Linsey was a big influence on me because he really helped me. I don't know. He's like a spiritual guide, in a way, to a lot of musicians in Australia without promoting himself as such, but the fact that he was with the one, he was the Australian that went overseas. He lived with the Macedonian gypsies. He brought back this incredible Macedonian music, introduced it to a lot of us, and that was the time when I was just learning all the Italian things, and he was just encouraging me, "Go for it. Keep doing it. What you're doing is good," and it is really important for us to encourage each other rather than compete with each other, and he's one of those encouraging persons who is very collaborative, and he is like one of my musical gods.
Leah Roseman:
Well, we met on social media because I had posted his episode last year, and you had commented on it.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And then I had looked you up.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yes. Yeah, that's a nice link. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
But just to set the record straight, so he'd gone to Macedonia and studied this music, but when he came back, he realized there was this incredible Macedonian community, and he tells a story about that.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yes, yes, yes.
Leah Roseman:
So if people want to check out that episode, they should.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, yeah. He's one of our legendary musicians, because he's always exploring. He's endlessly creative, and he creates new instruments, which I just totally admire, from things like rubber gloves and plastic tubes. He is one of our country's national treasures, I have to say, and I'm very fortunate that in the early 80s, that's when he lived in our town at that time, and I got to know him a bit. He used to come to our house, and we used to have jam sessions, and it was wonderful.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah. In 2007, you were commissioned to write this anthem to celebrate the women's right to vote in the province that you were living in?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. In Victoria, 100 years of the vote. Yes. That was a really epic commission. I thought, "How the hell am I going to write about this? Oh my God." How do you write about women? It's a massive story, but the Victorian Women's Trust commissioned me. Mary Crooks of the Victorian Women's Trust commissioned me, and she, in a way, became my sub-editor, and I wasn't used to working with a sub-editor as such. So I'd write, and she'd go, "Oh. Why'd you write that word there?"
And I went, "Oh. No one's ever kind of done this to me before." I wasn't not comfortable to "Oh. This is my art. Leave my art alone," and then I went, "Get over yourself, Kavisha. This is a commission. She's commissioning you, and it's a fair enough question."
So I had to really think, and in the end, I just loved the process, because I had to kind of respond, but at the same time, I had to realize what my response, the energy, where it was taking the song. She guided me without too much - She didn't say, "Oh. Change that." She goes, "It sounds like you are saying this," and I realized that every little letter was really important, the way it was done. So I had a big learning process with that song, which started, I thought, "I need a way in. I need a line which is going to express the philosophy, if you like, of this song," because when you write an anthem, you need to have a philosophy. Where is it coming from?
I knew I had to have a visual line that would show people where this was going. We were in India, having our honeymoon. We were watching TV, the local TV, and on the TV came an ad about micro financing women in jobs to create their own businesses and so on, and it was a marvelous ad. It was these women coming over the hill, and they either had a child on their hip, they had a jar of water, or some work that they had been doing. They were holding that work, and they eyeballed the camera, and they said, "Women have the power." That's it. That's all they said, and then the next woman would come over the hill and say, "Women have the power." And I'm going, "I have never seen anything like this. This ad would never be allowed in the west."
We think it's repressive over there, but there's repression here in other ways. I thought, "That's it, and that's my line. That's my line. That's my angle. That's my philosophy. Okay. I won't use those words, but how can I bring that philosophy into the song?" So Victoria, being a gold mining, have this huge history of gold mining, and the effect of people running off to search for gold had a huge effect on our state. It affected families. It affected children. There was a lot of fathers abandoning their families. There was a lot of terrible side of that, so the line I came up with from that ad was, "Women are the real gold for all of us to treasure." That was my first line. And once I got that, then I ran with the song.
We had 642 women. 42 women were smuggled in. We were only legally allowed to have 600, but we couldn't turn the 42 away. So we workshopped the song. I sent out, I recorded all the parts, sent them out to all different choirs around the state, and who wanted to be part of it. The Victorian Women's Trust were fantastic, because I said, "I don't want to do any administration. Please don't give me administration. I just want to do the music," so they backed me up. We hired the town hall, the Northgate town hall for the month up to the projects. Everyone had rehearsed everything, but people would bust in. They had crêche's organized, and for four weeks, we had four Saturdays, and then boom. We did it, and it was unbelievable. One of my best ever jobs.
Leah Roseman:
What a beautiful project. People can see that on YouTube.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah, yeah. The Women's Anthem, Love and Justice. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
There was another song of yours. I was hoping you would sing the Fearless Note, which must be one of your most requested songs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, wow. Wow. I better drink some more coffee then.
Leah Roseman:
You can say no.
Kavisha Mazzella:
I'm going to take the challenge. It's another song about what you do as a musician, and it comes from me sitting in a bar in Ireland and sitting next to the great Liam Clancy singer, wonderful singer. He, with his brothers and Tommy Mason in the 60s, they were famous for wearing their white fishermen's jumpers, singing Irish songs, and bringing Irish music in a new wave of Irish songs to America in the 60s. This was back in maybe early-2000s. I was in a bar with singing with some friends, and we were jamming and all that kind of stuff.
I thought, "Oh my gosh. I'm next to one of the major singers of the Irish tradition," and I thought, "I've got to ask him something. I've got to ask him a question about music, because I'll lose my opportunity if I don't do it."
"When you're a singer, what is it that makes the great performance?" That's, I think, more my question.
Okay. We had been sitting in the there for a few hours. It was really flowing by now. He says, "Well, first of all, you've got to tell the critic to fuck off, and then you've got to see the song inside yourself. Then, when you see the song inside yourself, the audience will see the song."
That was a very important teaching for me. Very important, because I was very nervous, often a lot of mental noise and all that stuff with self-critical think thoughts and all that. He gave me permission to just let that all go and really get into that interior world of performing, so then I was doing a support for Luka Bloom, and in Fremantle, Luka Bloom is the brother of the great singer, Christy Moore. He came into the dressing room, and his dressing room had heaps of flowers, sandwiches, and everything, and I was a support act, so I had nothing in there. It was like a nun cell, and he said, "How are you?"
I said, "Oh. I'm really, really sketch at this."
He goes, "Kavisha, now listen to me. When you go on that stage, you take the stage. It's your stage, not my stage. When I went and toured with the Pogues, there was seven of them and only one of me, and I worked as hard as the seven of them, so you go out there and you take the stage." Then, another amazing teaching is that every artist, no matter how small, whatever, that moment on the stage, that's your stage now. The moment you walk off no longer belongs to you, and that's right. So own it. Take the space. Create with your energy, your music, and don't be afraid. Then, a little later, a few years later, I was doing another support for another Irish band, and this was in down in St. Kilda, and this was a band called Kila, K-I-L-A, Kila.
Ronan Ó Snodaigh is the lead man. He plays the bodhrán, and he asked me, "How you going, Kavsha?"
I said, "Oh. I don't know. I think I worn too many colors. Everyone's wearing black out there. I feel really nervous."
He goes, "Kavisha, you've got to sing the fearless note."
I went, "Holy shit." Anyway, so my Irish masters give me the spiritual teaching of music. So this, I put it all together in this song called The Fearless Note. I'll just tune up. Here we go.(music)
Well, I met you in Paris in the Bon Couscous Cafe. You told me your girlfriend was jealous, and it's hard to live that way. When I was young, you were a legend, playing the blues in our little town. Now you're out here on the edge, trying to get a gig somehow. You play the splendid chord that unifies all things. You sing your song for you belong. Where the fearless note, shall ring Well out on the hills on Montmatre We watched the sun go down, I heard a sweet voice ringing through the thrum of the tourist crowd.There with small change at your table.You played a beaten up guitar. You sang your lost songs for Algeria with the voice of Aznavour. You play the splendid chord that unifies all things. You sing your song for you belong. Where the fearless note, shall ring.Here's my love song to you all. You moths who live by night. You servants of the song who take dictation by moonlight. Your words heal me deeper than any drug will go. Your song rings on forever down the hallways of my soul. Not rich and famous are you but your eyes, they shine so bright when you pick up your old guitar. It makes this crazy world come right. You play the splendid chord that unifies all things You sing your song. for You belong where the fearless note shall ring.The Money men will laugh at me for not owning house nor land, yet I have precious treasure given me by my mother's hand.So let the troubadour take to the road once,more like a bird to roam. Wherever there's a listener, my song shall find a home. We play the splendid chord that unifies all things. We sing our song where we belong. Where the fearless note shall ring.!
Leah Roseman:
That was so incredibly moving. Thank you so much.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I've told other guests, when I get these, what feels like a private concert, of course, it's going to go out to the world, and I love the intimacy of podcasts and how someone could be going for a walk in their forest and listening to Kavisha, and maybe they've never heard your voice, and it's going to be such a revelation to hear your songs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, thank you so much, and I really appreciate, I have to say, I just love what you are doing, because as I said before, you do feel a bit like a weirdo when you're a musician in this very materialistic world, and perhaps maybe because our western world has kind of lost its sort of way a bit. It used to, in a way, understand music, and I think it understands music less because it's just so commodified, and it's been so commercialized. I guess I'm always seeking for that deeper.
That's the thing that I thirst for, and that's why I love what you are doing, because you are talking to people about what is it that they're actually doing. That's nothing to do with them record sales and promotion. I mean, of course it's promoting in the sense of, but you are sharing and you are creating community by doing this, and that's what I love. I'm a really big fan of people who create community, so it's an honor to be on your show and be in company with other amazing musician, people I've never heard of, so it's so great to hear about what they're doing through your work, so thank you for having me.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, be well, and have a lovely day ahead of you.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
We'll be in touch. I was going to ask you if you have another album coming out soon?
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh, yeah. I've been saving up. I think I've got enough money now to start. I had to do a few paid gigs to get things out rolling. I can actually see now, it's a possibility. A few months ago, I was feeling pretty bleak, but no, I think it's going to happen.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It was hard getting out of the pandemic and getting enough gigs.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Yeah. Yes, that's it. That's it. But things are starting to slowly crank up.
Leah Roseman:
Well, let's be in touch. When you're ready to release your album, maybe we can put out a little bonus and steer people.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Oh. Thank you so much.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Thank you, and go well, yourself, with all your beautiful music you are making. Someone should interview you.
Leah Roseman:
Actually, yes. I've just been invited to be on a couple of really nice podcasts, so I'm very happy about that.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Great. Well, maybe on your show, though, you could get one of your friends to interview you, be you.
Leah Roseman:
A couple of people suggested this. Maybe that would happen in the future. Okay.
Kavisha Mazzella:
Okay. Thank you so much.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I've lots more episodes coming in this season three, with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Have a great week. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need my listener's help. Please consider buying me a Ko-fi. The link to my Ko-fi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much.
