Interview: Papa Shango
Music and theatre have a lot in common. And this goes beyond the term performance. I got the chance to talk to someone who can tell us a lot about performing arts - Papa Shango!
Hello and thank you for taking your time
for this interview.
Searching for your music, I also came across American wrestler Charles Wright
who used Papa Shango as one of his stage names. Is there any further connection
between your band and the wrestler apart from the name?
Charles is friends with us on social media
and frequently checks in and says hi. When he first contacted us we genuinely
thought he was going to come to each of our houses and murder us in our beds
because he is a big terrifying wrestling man but actually he’s been really
supportive of the band and clearly has a sense of humour. We’d really like to
meet up in person one day at one of the many conventions he does in the UK in
the future and Papa Rob would also like to wrestle him for the WWE
Intercontinental Championship in the main event at Wrestlemania on the grandest
stage of them all (or if not at one of their smaller Pay per Views like
Fastlane or Backlash)
Your music is a versatile mix of genres
and styles. How would you describe your music yourselves if you had to give it
a label?
Repetitive rock riffs and beats with
juvenile lyrics. It’s genre-less. We are
the absolute top band in the UK doing this sort of thing, we are also the only
band doing this sort of thing.
Your live shows are very eccentric and
memorable. Would you rather say that you are stage actors who play music, or
are you musicians who love acting?
Papa Steve
our Guitarist is a trained actor and studied at the Helikos International
School of theatre in Italy when he was young. We base all of our live performances around
classic theatrical performance and we are particularly influenced by the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players who
performed in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne.
There is much to enjoy on the
surface for those audience members that get involved in the show but if you
take a step back you’ll see there is a lot more going. When the Papettes are squirting cream into peoples mouths they
may just be making a statement about greed in the 21st century and
when Papa Rob is deliberately forgetting his lyrics and falling off stage he
might be just be reminding you of the grip of existential madness and futility
that lurks within us all. After all at the end of the day……are we not all
actors?
On stage you are accompanied by plenty
of dancers. Are they band members as well?
No – we barely know them. It’s very
distressing.
What percentage of your song writing is
claimed by the realization on stage? Or do you write the music first and plan
the circus show afterwards?
‘Writing’ and ‘planning’ are two very
important and serious words when it comes to creating art and wouldn’t feel
comfortable using them in context with what we do as a band. We prefer to say
that when we start a new project we enter into an ‘enforced gestation period of
random haphazardness’.
The contemporary global situation is
doing a better job in killing live music than the internet did. How does the
pandemic affect you? And how do you cope with that?
Yes the internet killed live music a while
back, I am so glad you recognise that we’ve been saying it for years. The only
positive from the pandemic is that it has galvanised us to finish off our next
album (entitled Risk Assessment). Although
recording remotely has its problems. For example our drummer Papa Barry lives
on a small farm with his partner and 7 children. This makes recording drums
almost impossible because of the noise of the children and all of the animals.
Papa Dale is stuck at boarding school at the moment (he’s only 15 years old) so
we are waiting for the pandemic to ease so we can get him into a studio as the
School are very strict about guitars and rock music.
But from a touring perspective we do miss
being bamboozled by promoters around the UK and of course we all miss each
other.
Your stage performances and several of
your lyrics playfully ridicule patriarch and sexist ideals. What role do gender
and sexism play for you as band?
Yes we have some very sexy ideas in our
lyrics and we are all very sexy boys and girls. I think a lot of people are
attuned to that.
Have there been occasions when you were
confronted with sexist behaviour during shows or on the internet?
Our audiences are usually too bewildered,
confused or angry to indulge themselves in unpleasant sexist behaviour. Online
people are very supportive and respectful and are very much in on the joke. We
are lucky to have some superfans who give us great feedback on social media and
come to as many gigs as we can. One fan has been a supporter since the start
(16 years ago) he runs a Butchers in Swanage. If he can’t get to a gig he will
always send a big parcel of meat including artisan sausages and some hand made
pies. We tend to stay in hotels with no self-catering so the meat usually goes off
but even so it’s always a lovely surprise when we turn up to a venue. This is actually true!!
Your new album is about to come. What
can we expect from Papa Shango in 2021?
The new album (Risk Assessment) is in truth
the very best thing we’ve ever done and we genuinely think people will be surprised
(although do not fear, we haven’t grown up). We’d like to play again but we’ll
see. What we do know is that when we do return we will want to be putting on
the biggest gigs we can where audiences can hopefully join us and watch how we
all scratch our heads and try to remember how all the songs go.
Once again, thank you very much for your
time. Is there anything you want to add or shout out?
Thank you
for your time, it’s a pleasure to read some well thought out questions, you
have clearly researched our band which makes a pleasant change. I will shout
out to you the interviewer to like our facebook page and anyone who has read
this far. Press it…
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