Mo’ Mojo, American Pardis Gras band tours the island

The Mo’ Mojo, a Zydeco based Pardi Gras band, is currently touring Sri Lanka. According to Jen Maurer, their vocalist/diatonic accordion, “everyone is like a bouncing sun or bouncing planets in an orbit and you just come together in each other’s orbit for one minute, then you’re off in the universe again which is nice.”

The band arrived in Sri Lanka on February 12, 2017, as a part of the American Music Abroad (AMA)  programme, organized by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs. Their first stop was Jaffna. Here, they conducted several musical workshops and a concert on their final day.

They also performed at the Mardi Gras Music festival, which was held at the Park Street mews, last week (16).

As per the programme, the department would pick ten bands as musical ambassadors, to go out to different countries for about a month or more. Mo’ Mojo first got their chance to tour in 2014. Sri Lanka is their ninth country.

We met up with the band, just before their performance that evening (16). They talk about Jaffna, recalling that it was a wonderful experience. Furthermore, they were also amazed at the talent, the North had to offer.

After their visit to Jaffna, the band decided to put together a world video, featuring a song they had done, with vocalists from different countries. “We could connect with those musicians again and ask them to send their vocals; we could start with our singers from Jaffna, because they were really good, Jen tells us.”

We ask them about what it’s really like to be part of the AMA programme and travel around the world. To this, their percussionist/ rub board player, Leigh Ann Wise, tells us, “it’s that little sensation of a new adventure. You don’t wanna have it be familiar, but you wanna be able to walk around all the streets, spend time and just take it in on a very normal day kind of basis.”

By Joshua Surendraraj, Pics by- Ranjith Perera

Read the full story in the Mirror Magazine this Sunday