Two decades ago, Devendra Banhart emerged as perhaps the quintessential voice of a folk revival so peculiar it earned the epithet ‘freak-folk’ – a reference to the abstruse elements wound through the gorgeous, refracted songs of that scene. On a series of largely acoustic records, Banhart addressed world issues with a light touch. New Weird America was another word for freak-folk, and it didn’t suit Banhart. Raised in Venezuela, the musician is peripatetic, prone to geographical and musical wanderlust. A descendent of two Americas – North and South – his globetrotting escapades yield albums dipped in samba and chansons, Japanese psychedelics and English pastorals. Ma (2019), his most expansive and centred record yet, is a discursive suite of hyper-personal and magnetic songs.
On a brief respite from touring, Banhart talks about love, songs that scare him and direct-messaged dick pics. The sounds of New Age music – the bamboo flute and floating harp of Joel Andrews and Schawkie Roth’s Music to Harmonize the Aura to be specific – hum in the background of his Echo Park, Los Angeles home, where Banhart has lived for the last five years.
Devandra Banhart at KCRW Radio Station, Santa Monica. Photo: Christopher Ho
Grayson Haver Currin: Your new album, Ma, deals with the realisation that you may never have children and what that means for your own life. You compile some of the advice you might have given your kid in these songs and reflect on the lessons you’ve been given, too. When did you start thinking about how you might not have kids, and why?
Devendra Banhart: Up to a certain age, you think of having children as this thing that is automatic, part of a human being’s life. This is the nature of the world we live in – a projection world, not a world about being present. You even project these basic rights, like feeling good about yourself or enjoying your life – ‘Oh, I’ll do that in the future. I can’t do that now, but, someday, I’m going to do the things I actually want to do.’ It’s quite natural to project things when you’re very young. When I was twenty-two, I was really not thinking about having kids. As time goes on, I started to have some imaginary numbers – ‘OK, thirty-five, and I’m going to have kids.’ And then, if you’re fortunate, thirty-five comes, and maybe you don’t have kids. You need to say, ‘Am I OK if I don’t have kids? That might not be my karma.’
That also happens from suddenly being surrounded by kids. The people I’ve known since they were kids all have kids now. My chosen family – my band, the people I play music with – are all having kids. Just like they’re in this new position of being parents, I’m in this new position of being an auntie. And I have secretly always wanted to just be an auntie, to wear turtlenecks and make pottery. Give me the 500 cats. Give me the crochet kit and the hiking boots.
…Well, it just showed up!’ That has never happened to me, but I wish it happened to me…
Grayson: Do you, in fact, have a cat?
Devendra: I don’t. I’ve got a fern, and she hangs by a thread, meaning that, if I had a cat, I don’t think she’d last long. I do have cat food. It’s like having a band shirt but no band. Every now and then, a couple of neighbourhood cats come by. I’m trying to steal them. I want them to like this house more. I love those kinds of stories – ‘Well, how’d you get your dog or cat? Well, it just showed up!’ That has never happened to me, but I wish it happened to me.
Grayson: How did those experiences – as an auntie, knowing that about yourself – begin to translate into songs?
Devendra: I am so intimately connected to these people that have kids, yet I get to go home and write about it. I get to watch that relationship, and then I get to go home and process it and write about it in this way where I can imagine, ‘OK, if I don’t have kids, this is everything I’d want to say to a kid.’ As I’m doing that, I realise, ‘Maybe it’s everything I wish I’d been told as well.’ That’s just one aspect of it – there’s this other aspect of these songs being about music and art itself as this mother, something that I still turn to after almost forty years of feeling frightened, insecure, scared and lonely. I still turn to art and music to ease that, to feel more connected to human beings and myself.
Grayson: Do you know the Norwegian songwriter Jenny Hval?
Devendra: Oh, a huge fan. She has this song called ‘Conceptual Romance,’ which is a masterpiece.
Grayson: Her album The Practice of Love confronts the complex feelings of not having children, too. An interesting thing that emerges from that reflection is that there are other ways to give love to the world and to nurture something bigger than yourself than having children. Have you found that to be true?
Devendra: Oh, that’s beautiful. Of course. With age comes the relief of not taking yourself so seriously and being so self-centred and so self-conscious. That’s the whole thing – finding something bigger than you. That’s why you have kids: ‘Well, now I have this bigger thing than me, and it gives my life meaning and purpose.’ That is an incredible practice. We also do that with our work, and that’s why religion can be an incredible element that keeps us going. That idea of giving love that transcends these few people in your life is the real definition of growth, or of expansion as a human being. It’s the hardest thing to do and the most liberating thing to do.
That is the basis of growth and evolution and I want to say all religions, but I don’t know. I’m a practising Buddhist, and that is the essence of the actual practice – to try to identify myself and others and to identify the mother in other people. There is an actual practice called ‘Mother Recognition,’ and that’s one of the things that attracted me to Buddhism as a young gal: ‘Wow, I hate people. I hate them. I really can’t stand being around other people. That’s a problem, and I have to work on that.’ Turns out, I had to get out of the way in order to make that connection. Getting out of the way is very difficult for us. Once you can do that, you can start to see yourself in other people. Your love becomes less tribal. It becomes an expansive thing. It makes life a lot easier.
Grayson: Tell me about Mother Recognition.
Devendra: There are two sides to it: one, to some degree, requires a belief in reincarnation. If you believe in reincarnation, that means that, at some point, everyone has been your mother, and you have been everyone’s mother. Through the millions of incarnations, at one point, this stranger on the subway was your mom, or you were their mother. You can truly believe that, or you can just use it as a tool for compassion. You do not have to believe in reincarnation. You do not have to be a Buddhist. All you have to do is try to spend an hour of your day walking around, maybe going to the supermarket, and just imagine that the person waiting in line or the person that cuts you off on the freeway was, at one point, your mother. That will change the way that you perceive that person.
Grayson: I imagine you get a lot of practice with Mother Recognition on tour.
Devendra: Tour is really intense and exhausting, and you’re constantly moving. I am amazed at the amnesia I get when I’m not on tour, because I go to a show and say, ‘Oh, look, I bet they had a nice normal day of hanging out, and now they’re playing a show.’ But the reality is you drive ten hours, load in and out, soundcheck, try to find some food, try to take a shower, and suddenly you’re playing. That’s almost the moment when you can relax, which is very strange. When you’re first starting out, that is the most mortifying moment possible – ‘I have to go onstage and perform and talk to people?’ But after some time on tour, you don’t have to worry about the next thing you’re supposed to be doing. This is my moment.
To this day, I get through tour with a couple of key songs and food items.
I used to, every single day, listen to Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda. But lately I’ve been turning to the Luaka Bop compilation, The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. It’s just a constant thing in the house, and it’s really how I get through tour. When you’re not doing explicit Mother Recognition or contemplative practice, Alice is one of the… I’m trying to think of a medical term, the thing when it’s a cure.
Grayson: A panacea? A balm?
Devendra: A pan-uhh-see-a – oh, that’s great. I was thinking remedy. It’s beautiful, because she spans a couple of practices. It’s clearly Shaivite, but there’s deep general Hinduism and Hare Krishna touches. There are a lot of spiritual reference points. Even though I’m Buddhist, I have a tremendous respect for Hinduism. I was born into a family of practitioners, so it feels very much like home to have someone who is basically a Westerner singing in Sanskrit. It feels like the house I grew up in. Can you relate to that?
Grayson: Not strictly, but I grew up in the American South, and there was gospel music in the air and in our community’s past. I’m not religious, but I’ve always been drawn to the depth of feeling and commitment in religious music. It is an unabashed kind of ardour.
Devendra: It’s so deep, how can you not feel it? It resonates with the deepest parts of us.
Performing with his band and collaborator, legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante.
Grayson: You collaborate a fair amount, and you seem very intentional about the people you work with, that you invite into the orbit of your music. Is that, for you, another way of loving?
Devendra: Absolutely. Even the early paintings and drawings were that way. The first album I did, I was drawing these monuments, this scaffolding that took a full day of painting little lines and the connections between them. At the top, I would put a name, maybe a musician’s name or a song title. I utilised that for the cover of the first record, but that’s not why I was doing those drawings. I used those as monuments for other people, songs or musicians as proof of love, proof of devotion, proof of gratitude, because you can see how much time it took to make this thing.
The moment that I fell in love with making music or art, it really saved my life. So, I’ve felt a lot of gratitude since that moment. Where would I be without some of this stuff? It’s really helpful, and it really matters. This record has that – for example, with Vashti Bunyan. I owe her the world. She is a great example of someone who, through this horrible time of trying to play shows or find a label or get her music out there, met constant rejection. Having Vashti, someone who you love and respect, giving you the A-OK, was one of the only things that kept me going through that time myself.
Grayson: Was that an exact moment, when you fell in love with music and art and found it could make you feel better, or a period?
Devendra: I was probably fourteen.
I had just moved to America. For some reason, one of my friends was, like, ‘Hey, we’re going to LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. You should check it out.’ So, I go to LACMA, and they show Pull My Daisy. It’s a film by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. Jack Kerouac is in it. Allen Ginsberg is in it. I re-watched that recently, thinking, ‘Wow, this is the thing that blew my mind?’ I don’t understand why. I think it was suddenly being in this artistic environment – a museum, the marble. You go to a nice museum, and it’s like a utopia. I’m in there watching this black and white film of this other world of people that live in these houses that barely have anything in them – just this mattress on the floor and a little wooden table, and someone’s writing poems. Something about that totally blew my mind to the degree that, when my mom picked me up, she asked me for the first time in my life if I was on drugs.
Grayson: It seems like a humbling and vulnerable process, to open your creative world up to someone else’s input. Has that been your experience, or is it a more mutualistic process, where you’re each doing what you do, just together?
Devendra: It depends on who you are collaborating with. There are three different experiences of collaboration I have had. One is the most prominent – working with a friend, and that is so exciting and easy. Vashti Bunyan has been my friend for over twenty years. Cate Le Bon is my true family. I love her. She has played in my band. I’m not good enough to play in hers, but if I was, I would, too. That’s very easy, very fun. We’re already hanging out, so it’s not a stretch to then go into the studio. And then there’s the kind of collaboration that’s with people I really admire and respect but don’t really know. For example, right now, I am doing something with Roger Eno. I love Roger Eno’s music. I had the opportunity to curate this festival, and I asked Roger to play. I just threw it out there: ‘Would you be willing to do a little collab?’ He’s going to send something over, and I’ll send it back. That is an interesting way of getting to know someone.
But I have asked Robert Wyatt to collaborate for twenty years, and I have received a very polite ‘No’ for twenty years. I ask people all the time. I just did something with Mykki Blanco. That was really beautiful, because they really know what they want. I try not to come in with, ‘Here’s what I think.’ It’s ‘Please, what would you like?’
It requires a delicacy and respect when you’re working with someone on their record.
Grayson: Does collaboration ever backfire? Have you ever been disappointed by it?
Devendra: I’m more into curating than collaborating. If I could choose, I’d rather curate an art show and choose someone’s work rather than write a song with someone. That sounds awful. And, therefore, I have to do that, because it’s a very uncomfortable thing. All those uncomfortable things are things that lead usually to something interesting, where you’re getting outside of your zone. It’s a pain-in-the-ass rule: the last thing you want to do is the best thing for you. That’s why going on a retreat sounds nice, but when the day comes that you actually go on that retreat and you have to put your phone and your computer away and you have to wake up at four in the morning and sit and meditate with a bunch of people or you have to eat brown rice and vegetables, it’s challenging. But you leave those things so grateful and cleansed and happy. It’s a drag, but it ends up being really helpful.
Grayson: We’re talking about personal growth again, it seems.
Devendra: That’s why fear can really be an ally – when you can use it as this guide. You can say, ‘What is it that I am most uncomfortable with? What is it that I am most scared of? OK, let’s go into that as much as I can.’ You generally find out there was nothing to be scared of.
Grayson: Are there ever songs that you are unwilling to release, because the topic makes you uncomfortable?
Devendra: I have never written a song that didn’t make the record because I was scared of what it was communicating. It’s just that the song wasn’t there yet and didn’t make the cut. I do feel like the newest thing is to talk about my spiritual practice in a more open way. I have always talked about spiritual stuff to some degree, and that’s been a part of my work. I’ve never explicitly been like, ‘I’m a Buddhist.’ It feels like I’m coming out in the last couple of years about that stuff. I’ve always avoided religious stuff and being too specific. Specificity has entered my life, and there’s less baggage because I understand the practice more. It’s an integral part of my life, so of course I’m going to talk about it. It’s not some character that you play as an artist.
There is one song on Ma called ‘The Lost Coast’ where I thought I was just reading my diary, not writing a poem or writing lyrics or using symbols or metaphors or any literary devices in any way. It was just what was happening. It was a new way of writing, and I was a little worried about it – ‘This is going to sound like some kind of confessional shit that is so boring to listen to.’ It probably is boring, but it was frightening.
Courtesy: Devandra Banhart
Grayson: Why were you hesitant to approach Buddhism on your records? Did you feel like you didn’t know enough or that it would be perceived incorrectly?
Devendra: Maybe it felt very safe to be as vague as possible when it came to something that came with so much baggage. It can turn people off. I naturally and subconsciously put someone in a box once they start talking to me about their religious beliefs. It immediately creates a weird gap and makes them an ‘other.’ It’s a weird thing. It’s not that I have some tremendous understanding. It’s that I understand I have no understanding.
Grayson: You have Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Do you ever worry about using social media too much?
Devendra: Just enough – or probably not enough. I have never spent enough time on it to say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get off this shit.’ But I have spent enough time to understand how that can happen. I use Instagram as this bulletin board: here’s something I like, here’s something interesting, here’s something coming up. I would like to be more intimate with it. The reason I go on Instagram is I want to see a little more of someone’s private life. I want to see a picture of you hanging out with your cats with a background of your house. ‘I’m a fan of this person, and now I’m seeing a glimpse into their private life? Whoa, this is so wild and cool!’
Grayson: There’s the flip side of that, too – the worry that we’re only presenting sides of ourselves that we want people to see.
Devendra: I always find it’s so interesting when I post something about Venezuela or Tibet. There’s a real correlation between Tibet and Venezuela. The situation in Venezuela is where you have the government and military totally fucking the people over and holding the people hostage. In Tibet, you’ve got the Chinese government completely trying to eradicate the Tibetan culture to the point that people are being forced to be sterilised. I never post anything that says I hate anybody, but if I post anything that is Venezuelan or has anything to do with Tibet, people are DMing me, saying, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’ It blows my mind, because you are so fortunate that you can get mad that somebody is trying to post about the suffering of a huge group of people. That pisses you off because you live in such a bubble that you don’t even see that.
Speaking of DMs, it’s kind of exciting. When I first started on Instagram, the first DM I got was of two penises about to touch – two erect penises, facing each other. There was a little bit of space between the dick holes. There were these erect dicks, facing each other, about to kiss and it just said, ‘Blaming your music.’ It was the greatest, the best compliment I’ve ever received. I thought that if this is what DMing was all about, I’m so excited. I’m going to get so much great stuff. Since then, it’s mostly just connecting with people who need advice, people who are going through some stuff. It’s a different type of work, and I take it seriously. Some people ask for really serious advice. A lot of people who are heartbroken and going through a breakup or a divorce reach out. I end up DMing with people about that. It’s only happened one time – the erect penises, about to touch, blaming my music – and it’s a shame.