The Mother Gong Manifesto
Gilli Smyth
The Berlin wall has long crumbled old attitudes are changing the Protestant Prayer Book now reads Our Father and Mother who art in Heaven! We believe there is an unstoppable tide of new consciousness sweeping through the world washing away old hierarchies old armies old cutthroat competitiveness. Sure these attitudes still exist look at America and China! but there is also a huge growth in cooperative groups, networking and love and care for the environment and the desire for equality between people of whatever race or gender…so many of the ideas of the sixties are coming to pass on the new atmosphere of the nineties, an awareness that things must change, and that resistance is useless.
We now know for certain that if we don't change now then THAT'S IT.
We feel part of this great new tide of change joining with people all over the world as we travel around to celebrate simply being, with song, joy and happiness in the place of alienation, guilt, crucifixion and polluted death. Of course these are only the beginnings our brothers and sisters all over the world have to have the same basic chances as we have so that the human celebration of the Age of Aquarius and the evolution of the human race into the next stage of global consciousness can take place. We play the tunes and sing the songs for the whole world to join in. We ourselves are changing, as all people are, trying to live in new ways and encouraging others to do likewise. Love, the absurdity of separateness, paradox and humour, colour our voices while passion and beauty inspire our music. We look forward to sharing these and further ideas with you during the forthcoming tour of Europe and the USA.
A brief summary of our work together:
The ROBOT WOMAN TRILOGY came out in the eighties when women were fighting to be considered equal to men. The 1981 USA tour was based on this theme (in a surrealistically humorous way) showing how women, to earn social approval by becoming the stereotyped wife, mother, servant, etc. lost their identities, becoming: flesh robots. These days the problem is to define the new role for men, and explore how men can give up their favoured position in society and the home for the sake of equality and the survival of humanity. What do you think would be the new male hero? The man who puts up with flak from other men for staying at home and being the house husband? We all need to reaffirm our gender and find our identity within.
The WILD CHILD album contains themes of affirmation and alienation. Wild Child itself is the voice of the small child (our child within) crying out for the parent who isn't there, wanting to change but powerless (so it thinks) to do so. So we grow up feeling guilty and estranged from our true wonderful selves, and live like this until we get rid of the critical parent voice by loving ourselves. The chorus of Superboots says Lets us be valuable, let us forget how crazy greedy we are let us put on superboots and stride the stars!
A new piece, the Earthy Song starts with the void and the swirl of atoms out of which grows Mother Earth and life. It's a celebration of Mother of Jesus, Mother of Mary, Mother of Allah, Mother of Jahweh, Mother of Buddha, Mother of Krishna, Mother of LaoTsu, Mother of the Waters. Other songs in our current show celebrate the Mother Goddess in her many forms as well as discussing the issues we mention above. There is also sadness expressed at the division between people's spiritual beliefs, since spiritual truth, by whatever name is: see you soon