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…

 Papa Shango Online:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
Spotify

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fresh Mango: February 17, 2022

News: HOL - Bones (2021)

Mango Playlist Updates: February 05, 2022