Chicken Mama

Reason number 68 why I like crowdfunding is that it gives artists that would have normally not received support an opportunity to let their fans speak for them. This might be a creative soul who is trying to introduce the world to a completely new genre. Or this could be someone down on their luck, who needs a second chance after a failed first project. Or better yet, it could be someone who never really tried to perform and now wants to realize a dream. This is where the topic of today’s Crowdfunding Corner, Kasia Moon, fits.

Kasia’s campaign video is short but very revealing. She speaks about realizing that life was not going where she wanted and that a change was needed. She mentions a fear of never really truly being happy and wanting to take risks to fix that. While Kasia has worked on music throughout her life, it was never considered a job but more of a hobby. She also astutely points out that sometimes we don’t realize we can take our hobbies and make them something more. I can definitely relate Kasia. So the goal for her is to create her first album and to begin sharing it with the world.

So…here is where I struggle. At first listen I have to admit that this is not the type of music that I normally listen to. It’s a bit of jazz with some modern kick added in. Mind you, Kasia definitely is not looking to be pigeon holed into a genre. As her videos suggest she is comfortable with any music. But like I was saying, the sound in general is not something that I pay attention to normally. Still, I couldn’t help but listen. And the more I listened, the more I liked. I think it comes down to the one thing that we here at Powder My Noise try to bring every week; quality.

Kasia has a fantastic voice. There is some very clear talent here, which is pretty amazing when you consider her being an amateur at the art. Her ability to move her pitch and tone throughout a song is what really gives it flavor. You know those songs where the vocals sound like another instrument in the arrangement as opposed to just another voice saying some words? Yea, that’s what it’s like here. Her voice makes you listen. My favorite example of this is the video that is included in Kasia’s campaign video. The song is a bit of a deep one and the way that Kasia delivers on the words is very striking. The music itself is a bit different, but again it seems to fade a bit to the background and really lets you focus on the vocals.



Kasia Moon from greenedgestudios on Vimeo.

As of the writing of this article, there were 27 days left in Kasia Moon’s indiegogo campaign. It has a modest goal of $6,500 with reward tiers starting at $5. Some of the more interesting rewards include Kasia helping the donator with writing a song, jazz vocalist lessons, and a personal concert. It’s simple but to the point.

Kasia Moon has a lot of talent. She’s a powerful voice with range and depth. I am very interested in listening to her perform more and with different musical backing. Support her today. - Powder My Noise

Kasia Moon’s compelling acoustic melodies combined with her soulful feminine vocals provides for a feel-good musical experience. Born and raised in San Francisco and based in Santa Cruz, Kasia soothes her listeners with music stemming from influences of folk, jazz, blues, and the Balkans. Check out her soothing, uplifting vibe yourself at 1:45pm at Pono Hawaiian Grill.

Our interview reveals just why Kasia Moon is meant to be sharing her music with the world.

How would you describe your musical style and genre? What/who were the main influences in your life that contributed to this?

This is always a hard question for me to answer, because I never want to limit the possibility of my expression, and it’s always changing. I used to affectionately call my tunes “cuddle folk,” but that doesn’t encompass the evident traces of jazz, blues, and more recently, traditional music from the Balkans and Caucasus. I fell in love with Ella Fitzgerald and Patsy Cline early on. Ella for her almost scientific excavation of a melody, and Patsy for the depth of emotion I experienced in her voice. A friend once dubbed my style “emotive soul folk,” which rings true as well. I like to play with rhythms and explore the range of my voice, moving quickly across parts of my register. Every song is a new challenge.

Tell us a little about your background with making music.

I remember singing in the shower and all over the house, my little ditties, from an early age. I started learning about music and singing in choir as a little girl, right when I started grade school. I was lucky to attend a performing arts school for the first five years of my education. We were there from morning to evening everyday, and the last few hours were choir. I played piano off and on throughout my youth, and finally committed to guitar because I could take it out into the world, especially to the forest. I’ve made up melodies with lyrics for as long as I can remember. Over the last few years, I’ve just let the muse run its course and have a big pile of original songs that have something of a purpose.

What were the motivating favors that encouraged you to be a full time musician?

I’m actually not doing music full time, and am OK with that for now. Being able to support myself with music sounds nice, but the months I’ve spent doing it have been pretty harrowing. I’m not a big fan of self-promotion, so I’ve mostly been lucky to have some great supporters who have given me wonderful opportunities. There was a big turning point for me at the end of 2012, when I was living in a spiritual community in San Francisco, where a bunch of my first guitar songs were birthed. Eventually I moved out because there weren’t enough hours when I could make enough noise to practice music. There was kind of a zeitgeist of support at that time from my friends and family to start sharing my craft. One night over dinner at a friend’s place, we started talking about a crowdfunding campaign to record my first album. I went for it in 2013. That project has seen its ups and downs. I received half of my funding goal, and that gap has led me on some interesting adventures. Something I’ve learned: falling down can be a tremendous blessing.

What are some of the messages that you wish to resonate with people through your music?

I have plenty of opinions about the state of the world, but I don’t think I’m in a position to claim they’re all correct and tell others to think them, too. At the end of the day, what’s important to me is that everyone has good air to breath, water to drink, and soil to grow food in. I would like my music to remind people of the magic that can happen inside of us when we decide to be open, to the natural world and to each other.

Tell us about your recent travels in Bulgaria, Northeastern Turkey, and Georgia, and how the folk music of these regions is influencing your artistic development.

Just last week I returned from four months outside of the USA, mostly in Turkey. Half of my ancestry comes from a region called Lazona in the northeast of that country and part of Georgia. I also made it to Bulgaria, and traveled through the Balkans to visit the rest of my overseas family in Poland. In the last year, tradition has become much more important to me. We spend a lot of energy in the West shirking it in the name of creating something new. But there is hard-earned wisdom we are at danger of losing. I can’t not write songs, but what’s becoming almost more important to me is learning where they came from, what their seeds are. That’s different for everyone. It’s probably not a coincidence that Laz music stirs me in a very particular, special way. I’ve fallen in love with odd meters and the call-and-response song form. Georgia and Bulgaria were amazing as well. Any place that has vibrant cultural institutions to support traditional arts and the natural environment is doing something very good for its people.

What is your goal as a musician?

My goal is to make music as long as I’m alive; to keep allowing it to challenge and open me, take me to places and people I wouldn’t choose with my analytical mind. Right now I’m learning Laz and Pontic music on the Black Sea kemenche, which could keep me occupied for quite a while. I’ve been getting curious about the potential for electronics and sampling in my music as well. Sometimes that sounds like a much different direction than the one I went in this summer, but I do wonder. Artists like the late Cheb i Sabbah have really opened my mind to the possibilities available with electronics.

Describe any projects and collaborations that you are currently working on.

On my last birthday, a friend showed me a hollowed out tree with amazing acoustics. I’m recording a live album inside of it.

What type of events do you ideally want to perform at, if not already?

I love performing intimate house concerts, and that’s mostly what I’ve done. I would like to play at more festivals. They’re a special environment, because people have come usually from another town for an immersed experience of one or more whole days. I’d love to be part of that kind of magical weekend experience for someone. Actually, the moment I realized I needed to start performing was during the week I spent at Burning Man in 2011. So you could say this outward expression of my music was born at a festival. In an entirely different decibel range, one of my favorite performances was for a group of new mothers and their babies. I think I could do that again and again and again.

Tell us about your unreleased single!

It’s from Something Will Fall, the EP I started working on in 2013 with CelloJoe and Eric Rachmany. Trouble is an original song which I often perform a cappella, unless I have someone else doing accompaniment. There’s something about singing that song that makes playing my own accompaniment very unappealing, like the melody has its own purpose, it wants all my attention. I started writing Trouble when I was 17, I guess a little bit for my sweetheart at the time, but maybe even more for myself. It left my head for a while, and then halfway through college there was a moment when it just rushed right back in, along with a bunch of other lyrics. It became a whole song. In the years since, it’s been tweaked, largely through jamming with Eric, who is a good family friend and just happens to be one of my favorite guitarists out there. - Euphoric

Kasia Kugay always knew she wanted to be a singer and a writer.

But even though she attended a performing arts school as a kid in San Francisco, she was never selected for a solo part. The feedback she received caused her to shut down. Kugay said she wrote a lot of poetry and spoken word but wasn't a performer. If she sang, she did it in private.

She said she was 17 when she realized that her voice had changed.

"I was on a long walk by myself and I was in a park in San Francisco and all of a sudden this song came out of my mind," she said. "I just started singing this song and it turned into my first song that I actually felt was decent and I really liked the way my voice sounded. I felt like something had changed."

Kugay named the song "Sheila" and sang it for a few friends. Before she knew it, she was singing the song at parties and saw it as a sign that things had shifted.

"Vocally in my body I know something had changed," she said. "As I matured, my voice matured and my approach to performance matured."

Kugay, known as Chicken Mama, will be at Enoteca on Friday. She'll perform some of her original songs as well as a few covers. Kugay will also sing traditional folk songs as well as play the guitar and her new love, the banjo.

Kugay, who grew up in San Francisco, had been living in Santa Cruz for the last few years. She is currently house sitting for the summer in Gasquet, writing songs, focusing on her music and swimming in the Smith.

Music had always been part of Kugay's life. Her father co-founded the San Francisco World Music Festivals and had produced a few festivals in his native Turkey. Kugay said she grew up listening to music from the Middle East, North Africa, and, since her mother's Polish, Eastern Europe.

Last month she studied Turkish music in the Balkans and has begun incorporating its rhythms into her own repertoire.

"There's so many different ethnicities in Turkey; it's such a diverse country," she said. "My father's heritage is from the Black Sea in the northeast of Turkey. That's mostly what I'm influenced by, so you'll hear a lot of odd meter (and) time signatures."

Kugay even drew from her roots initially when choosing her professional name. She had calling herself Kasia Moon since her middle name is Turkish for moonlight. Kugay started calling herself a chicken mama after caring for seven of the clucking, egg-laying fowl last fall in Santa Cruz. The name, silly as it was, stuck even after the chickens had moved on.

Kugay said she felt the Chicken Mama moniker evoked the natural cycles and land-based culture she valued. But it also has a deeper meaning.

"We call people chicken when they're afraid of something and my musical journey has definitely been in part about conquering my fears and allowing myself to be vulnerable in front of people," she said. "The name was sort of egging me on a little bit. It was a way for me to tease myself and keep it light."

Kugay's concert will be held from 7-9 p.m. Friday at Enoteca, 960 3rd St., Crescent City. For more information about Chicken Mama, visit www.facebook.com/chickenmamamusic or soundcloud.com/chickenmama.

Reach Jessica Cejnar at jcejnar@triplicate.com - Del Norte Triplicate