From The Archive: Mariee Sioux drives us wild into our own higher heavens
An interview with Mariee Sioux from the Perhaps Transparent ‘Archive’
by Maria Pugnetti
Originally published on the Perhaps Transparent online magazine Dec. 2005
A friendly nudge and the following inquiry lead me to Mariee Sioux’s music. I was drawn out of my rural haven to a corner bar in San Francisco to experience a unique and stirring musical encounter. Naturalist, Jon Young says that great musicians are healers, they are able to move energy with the storytellers mind. Mariee Sioux has a divine gift for such storytelling. She is a stunning poet who exercises great fluency with her truly loving and richly emotive voice. Her music seems to have emerged from a state of being wholly connected to her spiritual nervous system. And to her credit, throughout her show the entire audience was wholly enticed to partake in the energetic happening. The bar seemed to be lulled into reverent quietude.
Can you briefly mention your influences or describe your sound?
I am so bad at this kind of stuff. I started playing music three years ago so it is all kind of new to me. A lot of it probably came from being around my dad who was always in blue grass bands. So as a kid I was going to all of the blue grass festivals, that was probably my biggest influence.
How did you learn to play guitar?
My dad just showed me some basic chords and I went on this trip to Argentina for a few months by myself. I was working for school and I didn’t have much to do during the night so it was really there that I taught myself and made up all of these songs. I still feel like I don’t know that much about music.
Where you writing songs before you picked up the guitar?
I wrote a lot of poems and stuff but I never really knew what to do with them so it kind of just worked its self in.
Can you describe the impetus behind your songwriting?
I am really bad at explaining how I feel while talking and my writing is the most condensed part of my feelings. I can get kind of off topic easily when I’m trying to describe stuff to people, they’ll say “what are you talking about?” and I am like, “uh I don’t know, I cant explain it.” They ask me, “how do you write these songs about all this fucking crazy stuff and not know how to explain it!?” And I don’t know, but that is why I write it. I guess I find muse in nature, and I always grew up around it. Growing up in the woods and being Indian is part of my heritage that I have strong feelings about and makes me very upset. Because I am not a very outward activist style person, my music is just my way of expressing this. At this time I don’t know what else to do about it.
How would you describe your writing process and the content that interests you?
A lot of the time I don’t know what I am writing about, I just have all of these scattered words. Only a couple times have I felt, “I really want to write about this,” usually, it is just a lot of feelings, and I never think they will come together. Sometimes I feel like “ I’ll just never write another song, its just not going to happen, I guess.” But, it just happens when it does and you can’t really force it. My songs tend to be about a bunch of different things that intertwine, ie., very personal stuff then mixed with worldly stuff.
Do you find a song or lyric meaningful in a surprising new way that you were not aware of when you were writing it?
Oh yeah, it’s so weird. I’ll look back at songs not even remembering at all when I wrote those words on a piece of paper. It’s a very haunting feeling I’ve felt a lot of strange chanelling I guess sometimes. There might be a song that was written a while ago, but all of the sudden there is this other meaning that comes out when I don’t notice, either literally in my physical life or in a metaphore I just didn’t notice at the time. In some cases, I’ll just never know where some lyrics came from but they hold a deep meaning for me spiritually and personally that can only be conveyed in song. For example, in the song “Wild Eye” I sing, “papa my pine whistler, sparrow eyed sun misser, papa my pine whistler sparrow eyed moon blisser. Mama my jaw clencher, spirit mouthed ghost dancer, mama my vein braider thousand year bone burner. Mama my tongue twister, thousand pronged antlers, mama my vein braider thousand pronged antlers. antlers. and ohhhh her wild eye.” Towards the ending the song goes into a scene of a river that goes low, where I go down gather lichen from the boulders. That is sort of about saving parts of my old town in lockets to keep it “dry” or safe, remembered, and also people in general feeling connected to living rurally, and then trying to leave my home of the forest.” Ill try to leave these branch arm behind. The swaying hands of pine, their needle tugging at your skin. Trying to pull you back deep in their wooden womb of a hundred hearts hanging suspended, moth eaten. Those muscles the size of your fist all floating around you head and not knowing who they’re a lovin’, not knowing how fast they’re a pumpin’ not knowin’ hard they’re beating, those muscles the size of your fist all floating around you head and throwing punches like we throw stones to the bottom of river beds. Who knows who is next to watch from under the currents. The rapids, rapidly raging while rapid, while we are rapidly blinking our wild eyes.” That’s a newer song and is probably one of the most intense I’ve ever written. Going back to your question, the part about the thousand pronged antlers still kinda boggles my brain. I don’t remember making that up! and every time I sing it, it feels kinda like something within me that I’m unaware of, shown and released. It’s really, really weird. The song involves a lot of my feelings about my ancestry, and personal issues within my own family. Some verses tie in the wildness, craziness, or sickness present in everyone.
That’s so great, you’ve got some powerful medicine there! At the same time you are very modest which I can truly empathize with. It is intense grappling with the desire to render a very intimate interior journey but being very shy and weary of such exposure. I wish more of us fostered the belief that performing such inspired music, can be a truly loving and catalytic act. Such pure expression must be essential in activating and mobilizing people as it can draw us to our collective wounds, awaken our true desires and initiate a healing process. The other day, after a small panic attack, I went walking alone through the redwoods and I started singing lyrics from your song Bravitzlana Rubakalva. I realized I had unconsciously tucked it into my spiritual first aid kit and it had become like a prayer. The song is very powerful lyrically and could be embraced as a kind of anthem calling us in to our personal wilds and those really reverent magical places many of us don’t explore in our very mediated modern lives. Can you track this song, explaining how it came to be, what came up and what it means to you?
I was probably really homesick at that time. I had just moved from Nevada City in northern California, to San Luis Obispo in central California. It was a year ago. I lived at my uncle’s house and I was going to community college. I would just go to school and come back, and it was always warm which was really confusing to me being used to the temperature in Northern CA. I am always more creative when I am alone. Now that I have more friends down here, I create a lot less which is fine because it’s kind of intense, feeling crazy all of the time. So missing that feeling of home, I started writing my friend this email about wanting to meet up and creating this place that I wanted to meet in. I just made up the word Bravitzlana Rubakalva and got going making up all this weird stuff in my head, because I just missed people. “Our very own country,” is our own place I wanted to escape to because I did not want to be where I was back then.
I am interested in the power of bringing the carnival of storytelling and lore back into the hands of the people and bringing a central fire to our communities. I recently attended your show in San Francisco, and I was standing next to someone in the audience who was also teary eyed and lovelorn from being taken to these beautiful and haunting places with you. She mentioned she really loved your songs because they where each their own captivating stories. So I was wondering what you thought about how music relates to storytelling.
I think that there is a lot of good music that is not very personal or storytelling. I guess all music could be really personal but not really in that loose storytelling format. There are songs that I love that are in that traditional format and there is this other world of songwriters that go off and get really personal. I am really into Joni Mitchell’s early stuff and learning about her. She writes about her most intense feelings. I feel like her music is the most intense music I have ever heard in my life. Every ounce of her feelings go into her songwriting and then it’s kind of exhausted. She was saying she doesn’t really play music any more and she’s not still touring because her songwriting was just like a release for her, from putting her daughter up for adoption and lots of love and things. Later in her life she got her daughter returned to her and she just didn’t feel the need to make music ever again. I think it’s rad to tell stories, sharing your own personal story, or a made up story. This is some of the most fun stuff to listen to. I feel like in my songs the narrative keeps changing and goes on and then its over, and nothing repeats itself too much which is either interesting to some people or too obscure for others which is fine.
You mentioned growing up in the woods and it seems earth spiritualism; family, community and kinship create the artery that connects a lot of your music.
I would say that those things where always a part of my growing up and a part of who I was. In the same way, I said I never had an activist disposition, to go out and make change. Even though I’d love to, I am not very forward like that. Growing up, my parents where always farming and gardening. I was a kid running around in the garden and it was just a way of life. Everyone else’s parents I knew where like that too. I will always see that way of living. It has been somewhat popularized by the affluent, for example, its cool to buy organic food which is kind of weird but good. Emo music seems to have changed into this hippie neo folk scene (or whatever they want to call it). For me it’s always been like that but has now become a way to fit in.
The new folk buzz in the press and music scene I find very curious. I wonder if there is something underneath it that reveals what many peoples needs are. I have been seeing this prairie home aesthetic becoming popular..
people wearing moccasins..
Underneath the hype there could be some authentic desire for people to live in a more simplistic and balanced way. It would be great if the folk revival somehow connected young people to the back-to-the-landers of the 60’s and 70’s, so many of which did not just assimilate back into bourgeois culture, but have been honing their land-based skills and awareness, and are very brilliant and effective mentors, activists and organizers. I hope people like yourself, coming from an earth-based background will inspire people to explore a more sustainable ecologically conscious lifestyle, at the very least encouraging people to buy local organic food through a Farmers Market, Community Supported Agriculture program or Food Co-op. (I feel supporting the Ecological Farming Movement is of great importance.) Maybe curiosity sparked from hearing lyrics, “Wizard pound your mortar pestle” will lead members of your audience to become healers and herbalists! Or explore their lost cultural lore.
Yeah totally! I was just talking to my friend about how there are musicians who have reached a very influential place, but I don’t see anybody doing anything with that. Not to bash the music, but the new cat power is an example of music that is totally personal but talks about the same things as before and doesn’t go beyond “ I am so sad about this love, that makes my world the most depressing place and I’m never going to get out of it, even though I am this amazing woman powerful singer” I guess some musicians just haven’t opened that door for themselves, but it could be so amazing.
After a long absence of show going and being away from the city for so long, going to your show was kind of a culture shock. The bar harbored somewhat of a cold and hostile fog that everyone seemed to unwittingly perpetuate. There was a lack of safety, camaraderie, and warmth. A musical gathering can be a very powerful cultural happening, so why aren’t the mediators, musicians or people in the crowd taking advantage of that potential? Where is the space for us to honor each other and collectively conjure creative resistance?
Some times musicians make it even more awkward in how they are presenting their work, making everyone else a little less together and less friendly. Nevada City is really small but lot’s of amazing music has been made there or has come through. There were always amazing, little but well-known musicians coming through. Little Wings for example, played these amazing little shows, and had people gather around close either by a river or in the little magic theatre. He is just so warm and people just get together in a way that is not forced or intimidating but because they want to. Seeing those shows is inspiring and then there is seeing the other way that shows can be.
Yeah, after experiencing that greater potential many shows can be very of disappointing. Do you want to speak at all about being from Nevada City, or mention any elders, mentors, or peers that have influenced your creative development?
Yeah definitely, I never went to public schools, I was either home-schooled, or went to Waldorf school. My mom was really into alternative education and she hated public schools. I went Waldorf School but she thought it was a little too loose when you get into 4th and 5th grade, so I went to The School of the Arts until 8th grade. Even when I was young a lot of what we were learning was to think about Gnomes, learning the math signs involved the gnome with the holes in his pockets who was “minus” and drawing with huge crayons and getting really crazy with main lesson books and water colors! All of that really ties into how I am or think. I have always had lot’s of teachers that where really open minded people and would help me grow in really positive ways. They taught small groups so they really cared about all of the kids they were around and you got to know them very well. In Nevada City, there was no really good alternative high school and having a brother, home schooling was too much for my parents so I jumped into a public high school, which was the weirdest thing ever.
Do you collaborate with other Nevada City musicians?
I have been friends with Alela Menig since we where babies. Our parents knew each other and we grew up in a lot of similar environments, our parents would have jams at each-others houses. We have played quite a few shows together. Occasionally she will have this song and ask if I will sing on a part, and I will say, Ok. I only recorded one time and she wasn’t around so I hope that when I record my new songs she’ll be able to sing on them.
I was wondering if you could let the readers know what your musical plans are.
It’s all still really new to me so I don’t really know about the music world, how it works and what I want from it or whether it could really offer something to me. I am still working on how I envision my stuff. Even lately I stopped going to school because I wasn’t going towards anything I actually felt passionate about. I have kind of connected with this band The Bright Black Morning Light. They have a lot of the same mind set and have a really beautiful and worldly message in their music. I just heard their new album. It is REALLY beautiful stuff, the whole feeling. They contacted me and wanted me to sing with them, so this weekend I am going to go up to do that. We are going to play some music festivals and I want to travel around and see where it takes me and what feels good.
