When we work on an imaginary, thinking about one or more mediums is necessary to begin working and to build a house that stands on rock and not on sand.
Mary Ocher, originally Mariya Ocheretianskaya, has already been in Portugal a few times. We remember fondly her intimate concert on Sonoscopia at May of 2017, with people sitting on the floor, on the chairs designed for children or just standing back to the walls of the room to listen to themes that wandered through the traditional folk and the 60’s garage. A concert that was stripped of artifices and vanity and that gradually created the communication between Mary and her listeners. It was there that we watched the multitalented vanguard artist that in a provocative posture, painted her very distinctive world filled with ethereal vocals and abstracts synths, guitars and other instruments like she visited several places within her nomadic music house.
Mary Ocher was born in Russia, and we can consider her an activist that fights extremist ideologies through her lyrics, written essays, films; as an example there is War Songs — an album that comprises 13 apocalyptic themes about war, crime and other related themes, issues that have been dealt with all along her four albums, the home recordings anthology, the two ep’s and two remixes compilations.
Born of Jewish Ukrainian parents, Mary lived in Tel Aviv and now resides in Berlin. Now back to Portugal, Mary Ocher breaks (in the good sense) the confinement rules to perform in a concert that is set to be memorable. The concert is in the context of the event Culture in Expansion (Cultura em Expansão) that will take place in the Associação de Moradores da Bouça.
- Hello Mary, how have you been dealing with the pandemic?
Hi! Trying to stay busy instead of worrying. I have two new records waiting to be released, can't really plan releases, can't really plan tours, and we don't know how long this might last, but we're all in this together. It's better to count your blessings than worry about the future right now.
I think the artist should be free to work with whatever they like, we have no duties nor responsibilities. In many ways that is quite an antisocial practice, in case the work does not appeal to an audience (of society, if you will) anymore.
- How did you introduce to the work of the great mentor Robbie Basho. The version you played of Blue Crystal Fire has the collaboration of Julia Kent and we must admit that it is an equally haunting version.
Thank you. Years ago someone told me about Basho after a show in Hamburg, they thought I was already familiar with his work, but it was quite new then. The version is nowhere near the original, I hope that listeners will dig deeper and find it if they are not yet familiar with it.
- We are glad that Folk is not dead. Just like yourself, there are several musicians playing the more primitive kind of folk. In these confusing times, where we are constantly distracted by a huge amount of visual and sonic pollution and mass opinions, do you think that folk, while a genre that is immune to artifices, can lead us to the purity of the senses, bringing back a pathway to the more conscious and contemplative way of thinking – a clear direction away from idleness?
I have no idea, i'm not focused on folk or acoustic music in particular, but I agree that it may have a certain timeless quality when done right.
- You are of jewish descent, you grew up in Tel Aviv, how do you look at the ascension of people connected to the extreme right in Europe?
Perhaps most people have not experienced prosecution and discrimination and are unable to relate to others who have and/or still do... though some who have experienced those may still prosecute others, the state of Israel for instance. I grew up with unapologetic blatant hate and xenophobia that was taught at school and present all around. It is terrifying to see that even Germany, the country I moved to at the age of 20 (because I could not bare to live where I grew up), Germany which internalized a certain national shame (the opposite of a national pride), is now joining the rest of them, with fits of racial and cultural intolerance.
I'm very disappointed with certain leftwing tendencies and policies, among them these (as well as self censorship, the policing of language...), we are becoming dogmatic, unreflected, superficial.
- Not everyone knows how the idea of the Kibbutz(im) was born, the collectives that are spread across Israel. Do you believe the world would be a better place if there was really a communal and egalitarian sense of help?
My parents escaped the soviet regime a moment before its formal collapse. Like most Soviets they grew to resent the regime, in a careful private form - they never formally opposed it. I've been living in collectives all of my adult life though, it can create a sense of not being alone, but in a time like this you realize that these people are not really your family and living with many people is actually riskier right now. It really isn't for everyone and the older we get, the more set in our ways and less open to others we become.
- In the essay The West Against the People you state: I do believe there is a hierarchy of discriminations, are you referring to the several layers of discrimination, you compare the white woman that has suffered several discriminations within the workplace, as well in society and also dealing with several types of violence that occur at home and work, to the black woman, that besides suffering the same discriminations, also suffers from racial exclusion. It would be important to stop and think about the different types of discrimination and to think that those who discriminate are filled with ignorance in order to treat the problem as a whole?
The very fashionable identity politics of the recent years has created such a divide within communities, instead of uniting for a common goal, we are now each pulling the blanket away from the other, trying to prove that we have suffered more - what for? to get the most pity? the most encouragement? shouldn't we rather support one another and not turn against one another in creating further and further divisions? I'm very disappointed with certain leftwing tendencies and policies, among them these (as well as self censorship, the policing of language...), we are becoming dogmatic, unreflected, superficial.
- Your lyrics are conscientious and worked as poems and sung in spoken word, you do not only invite the listener to dive in your sonic world, but also, through the lyrics, you engage them in a direct and activist way that awakens the laziest of minds. Do you consider that the artist’s biggest role is to awaken people’s minds to contemporary problems?
I think the artist should be free to work with whatever they like, we have no duties nor responsibilities. In many ways that is quite an antisocial practice, in case the work does not appeal to an audience (of society, if you will) anymore.
- Mary, how do you envision the future?
Science Fiction, perhaps something between the paranoia of Black Mirror and Ray Kurzweil's optimism in The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Text: Priscilla Fontoura
Interviewee: Mary Ocher
Translation: Cláudia Zafre