Kavisha Mazzella - Official website

Andrián Pertout speaks with Kavisha Mazzella about her new album ‘Fisherman’s Daughter’, and the Australian folk music scene.

In the last decade, Kavisha has become a prominent face within the Australian folk music scene, with career highlights that include four awards from the Western Australian Music Industry Association, original compositions featured in the short film ‘Acquiring a Taste for Raffaela’ and the play produced by Freemantle’s Deckchair Theatre ‘Waterfront Women’, as well as notable guest support performances with Hothouse Flowers and Michelle Shocked.  It’s the interactive nature and diversity of these artistic platforms that have fashioned Kavisha’s eclectic horizons, and in the process have also provided the impetus for the ongoing musical exploration of her Australianess.  ‘Fisherman’s Daughter’ is her follow-up to her 1995 debut solo album ‘Mermaids in the Well’, and was produced by Kavisha Mazzella and Michael Thomas from ‘Wedding Parties Anything’.

What was the concept behind your latest album ‘Fisherman’s Daughter’?

KM: “I wanted to make a more intimate album than my last album.  The last album was in a sense more orchestral in its approach.  It had brass bands, you know, full on, it was just full on (chuckles).  And it was great because there were a lot of fantastic musicians from Western Australia, including Lucky Oceans on pedal steel, Peter Grayling on cello and Lee Buddle on sax.  A lot of fantastic players from the jazz scene, and also from WA’s Symphony Orchestra came and played on it, but I just felt that I wanted to do a more down to earth sort of album.  But it’s eclectic enough, in that it follows in the tradition of the other one, and there are a lot of different styles.  I guess I’ve got more influenced by my rhythm and blues, there’s more rootsy feel in this album, compared to the last one.”

Do you have a particular approach that you usually employ in your songwriting?

KM: “Well, if there is one I don’t know what it is yet.  I don’t feel like I’m experienced enough to have had an oversight of what it is that I’m doing.  I suppose I really admire songwriters such as Paul Kelly, in the sense that he’s got such an amazing way of saying so much with so little words.  And I think a good songwriter is someone who knows the balance between what’s said and what’s unsaid.  You know, the visible and the invisible.  It’s understanding silence, understanding how silence and the unsaid plays a big part in what is revealed.  And I think someone like Paul Kelly has a great ability to edit, or strip his songs down to the essential, and yet create such a strong emotional feeling.  He knows what the trigger points are, that’s the word, and what triggers the imagination.  That’s the way I feel like I want to work, and in a way I feel that that’s the way traditional folk ballads are in a sense.  They carry that essential kind of archetypal quality in their story telling, and that’s what I’m attracted to and try to create in my songs.  But whether or not I’m doing that or not, I don’t know (laughs).”