CHIRP Radio writesThe CHIRP Radio Interview: Mother Fortune

Liz Mason of CHIRP Radio recently spoke with Shami of Mother Fortune, a Chicago-based five-piece hip-hop cooperative. Their new EP, entitled Ma, Don't Look Back, integrates funk, jazz, and soul influences into their unique sound, encouraging the listener to ask the hard questions.

You can listen to their podcast episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Liz Mason: Shami, congrats on your new EP. It feels like a party. How did the songs on it come to be? 

Shami: So there's a group of songs that we've played around at different shows, and we just decided on the ones that gave us the most of an emotional reaction, like the best of what we've made in the window of playing together in the last year and a half, and we just put our entire spirit into it. 

LM: Your live shows look like a real party. Can we talk about the elaborate head pieces and the robe with no shirt underneath that you wear during performances? 

Shami: Okay, so I try to do everything purposely. The crown is made by my friend, Sophia; she has this shop called Spirit Crowns. When I was in the military—I was in the Air Force for six years—I went to this Atlanta party and I described her as a shaman because she is just this mythical person. I walked up and she had these pretty little crowns that were out and I was like, "Oh, this is a cute crown." And she's like, "Sure." And I'm like, "Can I buy it?" And she's like, "How much do you think it's worth?" And I paid her 60 bucks. But when I wore it, I felt powerful. So then I paid her to make me like a real deal super crown and that was pretty much what we built Mother Fortune off of—this idea of this crown. And actually at the California Clipper show, I ended up ripping that crown apart and throwing it to the audience, because it was falling apart, to be honest with you, because I wore it to death. So when I ripped it apart and threw it out I was like," I'm gonna get another crown made," and I literally just got off the phone with Sophie and she's gonna make me another one. 

As to not wearing a shirt with the robe—that is literally because everyone has problems with their bodies and body dysmorphia and I sometimes am a little self-conscious, but I want to show that you can have a dad gut and still be super sexy. It's not your physical form that exudes your power, it's you, it's your mind that exudes the power. So it's just like, hang loose, get sexy, get kind of existential, but shake it out, get loose, and then let's have a good time, you know? The world is ending, let's have fun, man. 

LM: On one of your social media videos, you talked about feeling like your dad didn't approve of your liberal arts path as opposed to football. So do you feel like you have a family that doesn't get what you do, or do you have a day job that overlaps with your music? 

Shami: I truly said that as a joke. My dad is a club owner. He throws jazz festivals. My dad is actually pretty supportive. My mother is also very supportive. She's my best friend, but she didn't really understand what I was doing. I went from the Air Force, then to film school, and when I said, "I wanna be a musician in Chicago," she asked why, as in "Well, I don't understand it." And the first show that she kinda started to understand what I was doing was at the California Clipper. She called me and all of my artists and my friends, "The island of misfit toys," and said, "I get it I get what you're doing. This is great."

I do a lot of freelance work. I work at the Chicago Trade Center making smoothies, I work at the the National Park in Chicago, the historic Pullman Foundation. I basically try to take any work I can and then I try to survive. I'm also technically a disabled veteran. I try to take any work I can, but as long as it gives me the flexibility to focus on not only Mother Fortune, but also on my online sex positive magazine called Zigzag Sex Mag. I try to be bigger than the sums of myself. And to do that, it means that I'm not working a nine to five like normal.

LM: Can you talk more about this magazine? 

Shami: Absolutely! Zigzag Mag, I work with Weebs, Lisa Weber, @BadArtTeacher on Instagram. Me and her, we've made this online magazine which pretty much brings together the best artists, filmmakers, and smutty magazines. We try to bring the best people together. You can go on zigzagsexmag.com to look at our magazine. It's completely free. This magazine is something that's really, really awesome and important and a lot of people have clinged onto it. It's been a great experiment to work in symmetry with Mother Fortune, because Mother Fortune is not at all Zigzag Sex Mag, but they work together in a way to open up a more colored, leftist, queer environment for everyone. Come together and rock out and also make important changes. That's the dream. 

LM: So I saw pictures posted of your live shows and you guys had a book swap. Books about Afrofuturism and Black futures and these concepts in the books, do these overlap with your music or your online writing or any of that stuff? 

Shami: I really do try to study movements of the past—surrealism, dada—and then I also try to study the punk movement in the 70s, early hip-hop, and even now into the modern movement of trap and its industrialization. I try to take artscapes and abstract concepts and inject it into the music. It's this balancing act that I feel that we're getting better and better at, right? Our music, our past music, has been really great, but it's of chaos. It's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And what I'm really trying to hone in on is being both of the heady, oh, that's deep, but also like, haha, that's funny, haha, that's dope. I don't have to think heavy when I listen to this song. But if I want to meditate and think heavier on this song, I can. It's that perfect balance is what I'm hunting for.

LM: I've noticed that you have a full band, but you also use a sampler. How do the songs start? Do they start with like, I have an idea, I came up with a sample, let's build around it, or how does that process work? 

Shami: What we used to do, Jackie would have these beats and then I would go and I would write them. That was old Mother Fortune, "Grandmother Fortune" as we once called it. But for where we're going now, it doesn't work that way with everyone in my group. So Caesar is this whiz kid, right? He's a freak who could just play a guitar and do heart surgery with it and use a piano and build a bridge off of Michigan. Tyler, forget invited to the cookout... This man is on the grill. Like he just has this soul and this energy to him is dynamic. Mora is very sweet and subdued, but the moment she starts singing, she has this Aretha Franklin-like power. And then Toshkin, she's this hip-hop head who also is nasty on the ones and twos, who is also dynamic. She could play punk, she could play rap, she could play anything. So I can't go to them and be like, "Hey guys, play this song that I wrote." They're like, "No." So, you know, now what we're doing is we're doing exercises.

Our song "Barking Dogs" is an exercise. We made "Barking Dogs" by having everyone play an instrument they normally did not play. And then I was juggling over the words. There's a poem called "Chicago is a Chorus of Barking Dogs" by Eve Ewing. I had read it earlier over at my friend Natalie's house. And later, when we all got together, I said, "Let's do something weird." It sounded awful, kinda sorta. And then we all went back to our normal stations and played what we thoguht we heard. And that is how we made "Barking Dogs." To make the best music, it's more than words, right? If it's solely words, then you should be a poet. Music is about feeling, it's about atmosphere, and it's about trust. It's about trusting the musicians to do the best that they can and forcing them, not allowing them, forcing them to get outside of their pocket in their own way. And then that's when you get to see them shine. And with Zigzag Sex Mag, with Mother Fortune, it's all about people coming together and having a level of trust, not naivete, but trust. Trusting that everyone is good at what they do and if you trust and work together, what can freaking stop you, right? One thing that I want to say is Mother Fortune, I hope, induces the spirit of Chicago. And in my opinion, the spirit of Chicago is a lot of people from different schools coming together, working together, and getting things done together. And I'm just fortunate to be one of the gears in this clock that is Chicago music.