MNGWA’s new album knows no borders
East Van’s MNGWA isn’t your usual Russian/Mexican/Canadian cumbia rock group
As album covers go, MNGWA’s The Strange One is deceptive. Is it a cat’s head peeping through a hole in a lush jungle canopy? Or is it a cat’s head-shaped opening in the vegetation that opens up a night sky filled with shimmering cosmic wonders to peep at? How does this tie into the east Vancouver octet’s unique blend of rock en espanol?
Designed by conga player and percussionist Boris Mandiis — a fella rumoured to be a wicked fine tattoo artist, too — the image fits perfectly with the full-length album from MNGWA (pronounced ming-wah), a band whose music appears to come at the listener from multiple reflections in a cultural mirror.
Released this past October, the eight-tune independent release homes in on the mix of Latin rhythms, psychedelic pop, Central European folk, dub reggae, and rock that the band dubbed “vancumbia” on its debut EP Vancumbia Ambush. Without losing the punky thrust of that 2014 recording, the musicians have learned a great deal in the five years between. Bassist Nick Lagasse, who has produced both releases, and lead singer Blanca Escobar sat down at Commercial Drive’s Continental Coffee to discuss the new release.
First up, naturally, was where the name comes from.
“The name comes from a mythical creature from Tanzania called the Mngwa, which is a giant catlike creature, which I came upon one late night of falling down a cryptozoology hole online,” said Nick Lagasse. “Everything from the pronunciation to the meaning is a minor point of contention, too. Because on a trip to Tanzania, I found almost nobody had ever heard of this beast that is apparently in stories and songs, and one Swahili speaker looked at the word and pronounced it ‘mm-Wah,’ like a kissing sound.”
So it’s an energetic kiss or a sharp claw to the face, depending on who you talk to. That also could describe how the eight musicians approach the music they make, ranging from the driving, hip-hop heavy opening track Lit Up! to the surf-and-strings trippiness of Curandero. The group members — Igor Barbashin (keys), Max Bentsianov (guitar), Roberto Cruz (vocals, percussion), Anton Ayzikovsky (drums), Pavel Burakov (violin), Boris Mandiis (percussion), Lagasse and Escobar — are all multi-instrumentalists, and an additional eight musicians are featured on the recording. The Strange One is a big-sounding affair.
“Back in Mexico, I sang from a very young age and was working in the world of cover bands before coming to writing my own poetry for original music,” Escobar said.
“It really wasn’t easy at first, but now it’s a very organic process in how it comes together in our songs. We sort of found a common thing in cumbia that worked well with everybody and we’ve been letting it go from there and figuring it out.”
Cumbia is a dance music and rhythm from Colombia that, like salsa, has spread throughout Latin America.
Based upon a 2/2 or 2/4 time signature, the style has undergone numerous changes and tweaks, including the development of “Mexican cumbia” popularized in the 1940s and ’50s by singers such as Colombian migrant singer Luis Carlos Meyer Castandet, Mike Laure and Carmen Rivera y su Conjunto. Lagasse, Mandiis and Ayzikovsky were in a reggae band before MNGWA and started playing some Latin rhythms in their jam space just or fun. Inviting friends to invite friends to jam, the lineup eventually came together. Escobar and Cruz knew each other from Mexico. Other musicians knew each other from other projects.
“Suddenly, there we were, a majority Russian group — actually, there are only two Russians, but also members from Lithuania, Ukraine and a guitar player from Kyrgyzstan — trying to play salsa, backing a singer in Spanish,” said Lagasse. “It was quite challenging, because almost none of us had any understanding of any of the rhythms or time signatures. Then we hit upon a really cool cumbia cover of the Simpsons theme by Brooklyn’s Chicha Libre and realized it really fit our groove and jams.”
So MNGWA found its party vibe and the band has been bringing it to more and more people across the province. Eight members with active lives and employment prove pretty awkward to schedule for a tour, but the band has been able to develop a reputation for generating energetic dance parties wherever it goes.
From the Surrey Fusion festival to Arts Wells, all-ages audiences have swayed and shimmied to the sinuous grooves of songs such as the Middle Eastern-tinged Waves of Khemit.
As the band is entirely DIY, it’s been a piecemeal process developing a tour circuit. The summer festivals seem to be the most rewarding, as it’s possible to link a series of shows together in a short time criss-crossing the province. Locally, the band has headlined the Rickshaw and makes regular stops in Victoria and various Vancouver Island locales.
“It’s been really rewarding and heartwarming to us how every summer we add another festival along the northern route,” Escobar said. “We started in Williams Lake, then the Caribou, Arts Wells, the Kootenays. We try to cram as much as we can into a month, as members have families and other jobs.”
Another surprise about MNGWA’s musical makeup is that the members are all self-taught. It has almost become standard in the Vancouver scene for groups this adventurous to have roots that trace directly back to the Capilano University music department, which has produced such genre-jumping acts as Pugs & Crows and others.
Lagasse says that members found their way to so-called world music from unique pathways and that has all come in to shape the MNGWA sound.
“To me, Latin and African contemporary music are the new punk rock, the stuff that your parents weren’t listening to that has global power,” Lagasse said. “I’m amazed it hasn’t taken off more, because the radio here still sounds the same for the past 20 years. We’re looking forward to touring down to the U.S., which we know has a much bigger Latin scene.”
One way that the band has been able to overcome the realities of not having a label or distributor is via social media platforms such as YouTube. Owing to having friends with filmmaking chops, the band has produced some winning videos for songs such as the new adventure story-themed clip for El Gato or the raucous romp for La Rumba de Kingsway, and its recordings can be purchased at all the usual music and streaming services as well as MNGWA.ca. There also is a cool band logo just begging to wind up on hoodies and T’s.
“My main goal is to share classical music with as many people around the world as I can.” — Sheku Kanneh-Mason