These pockets go deeper than you think: Maruja, moments and making it up
The world burns, and yet I grow tired of revolution. On my phone, there is destruction at every scroll, and every story contains mind-bending bloody statistics that the human mind, one depraved of any kind of similar conflict in real life, simply can’t comprehend. Instagram is now Pablo Picasso’s Guernica; destruction lingers in every corner, and I mourn, but being able to say I understand or relate is a lie.
Why is laying on a bed of nails borderline painless? There might be pressure and occasional pricks here and there, but the sensation can be lived with for the most part. It’s because you displace your weight. If you were to lay on one singular nail, it would pierce your skin, drawing blood and amounting to immeasurable pain. But when your weight is displaced, and you spread out across the nails, it doesn’t hurt, and you can lie there forever.
If I were subject to one tragedy, I would be hurt by it, and I would do what I can to stop the pain. It seems we are unable to escape tragedies today, there is genocide, war and fascist politics on the news, and I watch bloodshed in real time on live feeds and social media posts. I see murder statistics on a social app more than I see photos of my family, and these pins grow in number so much that I hardly feel them prick anymore. I can live with the added pressure. The world burns, and I grow tired of revolution.
One of the biggest fronts for rebellion has always been music. A wealth divide and the winter of discontent sparked Sex Pistols and the punk movement. Stevie Wonder protested against the fact Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday wasn’t a national holiday. Prince shared commentary on the Cold War with ‘1999’ and ‘Ronnie, Talk To Russia’. For as long as there is conflict, there will be music that protests it, and my algorithm-induced tragedies are no different.
The issue with protest music today is the nature of the modern world and how we consume information. By the time lyrics and music are written, I have read and re-read the sentiment at the heart of said protest ten times elsewhere. It’s hard for these songs to have the same hit that they used to.
Maruja do not hide their politics. During their gig at Yellow Arch, the alleyway-style room is flooded with raised fists, screams of “Cease fire”, and punters chanting “Free Palestine”. The message is loud and clear, but the message has always been loud and clear, and the same problems of saturation that the majority of protest bands face linger. The music is still necessary; it is essential for the creative as a way to express their emotions and release frustration; it is also necessary for the consumer for the same reasons; those gigs are a release; however, to suggest the music packs the same punch it used to in a pre-technology focused world is difficult.
There is magic at these Maruja gigs, though. While they have original songs that they play to the letter, and fans enjoy singing along to them, a long section of their show is spent improvising. There is no plan, just four excellent musicians seeing what comes to mind when they let their emotions take over. They reach into pockets of memory, those from years, weeks, and months ago; they also take from the room, the atmosphere around them, the energy of the crowd, and the feedback draining from the speakers, and they create something spontaneous with it.
You can write about the world around you, whether in your close circle or a bigger picture that you have to stand back to look at, but nothing reveals more than the moment. When you let it accumulate and bleed into a spontaneous sound, there is no escaping those feelings as they’re laid out and experienced in real time.
“Each piece of improvisation is unique and has its own energy attached to it. We write all our songs with improvisation as the foundation. Before picking up our instruments we tend to talk to each other about whatever’s on our minds, be it mental health struggles we’re facing, other art we’ve consumed or war around the world,” said the band, “These emotions and stories naturally bleed into the energy of the music created.”
They continued: “These emotions and stories naturally bleed into the energy of the music created. It’s slightly different for the live shows as we obviously don’t communicate verbally with each other before ripping into jamming, so that energy comes from the crowd a lot of the time. The crowd’s reactions, movement and vibrations leading up to the jam section will definitely affect our feelings going into it.”
The live show is elevated with the introduction of improvisation. It truly becomes something else when the band draws from the crowd and one another to create a form of protest that cannot be recreated. I haven’t heard this already; I haven’t seen it all before. This is emptying pockets onto a stage and dancing in time to whatever hits the ground.
“Prior to this tour, we had improvised small parts during a set, but with this tour we wanted to be more ambitious and attempt to do at least 10 minutes improvising at each show,” they added, “We want to push the live experience as much as possible and give each audience and each show something unique.”
In a world where we retake photos if they don’t look good enough, we see most of our talking points through screens and messages are duplicated, replicated, and reshared; the moment is all we have, which is sacred. To go to a gig and see a band stay true to their roots and ethos while also giving into themselves and delivering something completely uncopiable is one of the biggest treats a music lover can receive.
Maruja concluded: “Improvising to us is the purest form of art, there’s minimal conscious thoughts, just simply flowing through what’s coming out of each instrument, so we all hear something different when playing and listening back. Naturally, the audience will be the same, we’re delighted it’s being received so well, and it’s having the same effect as it does on us. Everyone’s going through something silently, so people being moved and affected on a deeper level to the rest of the set is hugely encouraging to hear.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Punk Newsletter
All the latest Punk content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.