WOMAD Day 2: My Baby Talks About Love, Unity and Inspiration (Interview)

Maria Hoyle has been reporting to us from WOMAD. On Day 2 she spoke with Dutch band, My Baby.

Dutch-Kiwi band My Baby delivered an electrifying show on WOMAD’S main stage, on the second night of the festival. Grief and sadness was ever present over the three days – how could it not be, with traders and staff and audience and artists all affected, some more directly than others. But every artist, every band brought us together in a burst of energy and noise – not a denial of what had occurred, but a colourful warning flare to the forces that try to divide us.

My Baby fulfilled their task of uniting and delighting with a set that was pure rock gold. Made up of siblings Cato and Joost van Dijck and Daniel (de Vries) Johnston, their sound is a hypnotic fusion of blues, folk, funk and EDM. It’s electronic dance music, but without the electronics – Cato the frontwoman on vocals and bass, all power and raw sensuality, Joost on drums and Daniel on guitar. Thousands packed right up to the waterfront, a beautiful ocean of energy, dancing and cheering and waving their defiance to racism and white supremacy. The climax was Uprising; Cato issued her call to arms in stages, urging us on, building the momentum and the sound until we roared and danced as one.

Earlier the band talked to The 13th Floor about tragedy and unity, the fictional superwoman who drives their unique brand of dance music, and why they love to play to a New Zealand crowd.

13th Floor: I have to start with the events in Christchurch; it’s like a shadow over everything. Some of the bands here, in their lyrics they talk blatantly about anti-racism and social justice and unity, but because of the nature of music, you don’t do that so much…

Cato: There’s actually quite a lot in our lyrics but you don’t hear it straight away because the music is normally pretty festive and positive but still the lyrics and topics that we like to write about are…

Joost… they’re anthems about unity, freedom, just being nice to each other!

Daniel: It’s about creating a sense of community. It’s more a socially conscious thing rather than being politically engaged. It’s spiritual…

Cato: Our song Uprising is about people rising and standing up. So it will be different playing that song tonight. We will want to say something as well. A big part of rising up against what happened yesterday [Friday] is to celebrate what we are doing here.

13th Floor: Will it change your performance in some ways?

Cato: Yes.

Joost: We’ve had other times with these sort of vibes going on… Bataclan (in Paris). After the Manchester Ariana Grande, we had gigs after that.

Cato: Actually Womad is the opposite of what happened there. It’s such a different world here, to what happened yesterday

Daniel: It’s about celebrating that diversity. People here are already conscious of that and now even more so. You want to rise above the hate.

Joost: Music is always about unity. What would those people [anti-racists] listen to? I’m not sure!

13th Floor: You started out as a funk, blues, gospel band, is that right? How has your music evolved?

Cato: it started with more gospel and blues influences. There’s always been a folk aspect.

Joost: From all around the world. Even Indian…

Cato: That gradually become more and more about folk from all around the world. When you started to open up to those influences, you are not limited. We gradually drew more and more…

Daniel: We grew up with folk music [he’s born in Amsterdam, raised in NZ], from our youth. That’s always going to seep  musically into what you do later on in life. The EDM music influence came through when we started gigging; we’d play anywhere, at parties and festivals. More often than not there’d be a big DJ scene, an EDM music scene in Holland. You’d end up sort of…

Cato: Competing!

Daniel: Yeah, competing with that sort of energy…  There were already some elements of modern trance in our albums but even more so live; you sort of feed off what the crowd does, how they react, when you play live. And they react very strongly to that energy, that pumping beat, so it became more of an important aspect.

Joost: We also like the essence of the EDM, where it’s more about the whole build-up of energy and dancing. Pop gigs are more about the band and the artist. But then we’re not DJs. We just love that ongoing beat and you build it up, you can feel that energy.

Daniel: That’s why that dance culture has become so big because you get that feeling of one-ness. You are all dancing on the same beat. That was something that was interesting for us to explore and to emulate with real instruments.

Cato: It’s an ancient thing, people having a dance ritual, dancing together around round the fire.

Joost: Except the fire is now a laser show.

13th Floor: So in 10 years your music might be totally different?

Daniel: Yes. We think every album has evolved quite a lot. There’s even aspects of jazz on the latest album [Mounaiki – By the Bright of the Night]

13th Floor: How does the creative process happen? How do the three of you work together?

Joost: The last album, we started off writing a story. Daniel wrote the story of My Baby. She’s a muse character. She’s a fictional character. That also really helped us writing the songs; every song was a chapter in the story. You have a mood and a subject of where the character is. It’s not literally like ‘she’s walking here and there’ but…

Daniel: Just some broader themes that you work into a script, then you can write a song about that  it can be a narrative or not. It was fuelled by all of our ideas. We struggled to write together as a unit in terms of the lyrics in the beginning.

Cato: As a band it’s not like one person sharing heir personal stories. You wanna have something, actually a person outside the three of us. We could put some personal stories in her, in this character, but still it would be someone to write about, to write for.

Daniel: She is a combination of all our personalities. She sort of become this figurehead we can all relate to, we are writing through her eyes.

13th Floor: Do you feel like she’s there with you when you perform?

Cato: I am normally impersonating her on stage.

Daniel: She [Cato]is the embodiment of her..

Cato: I can step into that character and be her on stage. You think how does she act, what does she look like. She has more courage.

Daniel: She is like a superhuman version of ourselves. It’s something you aspire to be

13th Floor: Does she feel sadness right now?

Joost: Yes, like any character in a story. She goes through all the emotions. But mostly she is wondering and observing.

Daniel: It’s in part spiritual awakening. She’s the sort of character who wants to take responsibility for creating a sense of togetherness. I think with our more socially conscious and politically engaged material, she’s our spokesperson. Our freedom fighter.

13th Floor: What can people expect from you tonight on stage?

Cato: They can expect to dance themselves. I’ll be dancing. I just go with it… I don’t choreograph. We make our goal a full 100 percent of giving all our energy in every performance. At some point we ask that of the audience as well. We create this loop of energy. If they send it to us, we can send it back to them. We are both responsible for the energy and the mood. They [the fans] already know that. New Zealand crowds are good at sharing the energy

13th Floor: If you get stuck creatively, what do you do?

Joost: We’ve actually got a whole line up of imaginary albums! We don’t have enough time! The ideas are all there but we are stuck in the creation proves of manifesting those ideas.

Cato: We’re on the road a lot so there’s mot much time to create.

Daniel: Real inspiration comes and goes anyway. You can’t really manipulate it. If it’s not there you just knuckle down and work on your imaginary album. [laughs].

Cato: Or we have a good funky session, jamming.

13th Floor: Who are your inspirations?

Daniel: Sly and the Family Stone is our biggest inspiration.

Cato: He really did a good job creating a festive mood but also putting those strong powerful lyrics in there about community but still sounding fresh.

Daniel: It’s a genre of its own. It’s gospel, it’s rock, there’s soul. There’s a punk ethos too but that hippy thing as well. That really inspired us to try to blend all those influences we love.

Cato: We didn’t try to copy him of course. Its always the trick, when you really like something you see it as an inspiration, but don’t try to copy.

Joost: It’s also not possible. We just think ‘what would he think would be cool?” And it wouldn’t be people copying his music. It’d be Inventing our own style. People always label us a band that has their own style. It’s the only way.

Cato: If you have your own genre, you’re easily the best at what you do if you have your own style.

Joost: It’s your own world.