Video Premiere: Masma Dream World – ‘Elephant’

During September 2014, Devi Mambouka invited Swedish costume Designer Tove Berglund to collaborate on a performance project in her home in NYC. Devi found inspiration in weave culture, how hair extensions carved out a network of trade from donors to wearer and its evolution. She shared it with Tove who in turn weaved the hair directly onto Devi’s body over the course of 5 hours using a pair of stockings to hold the shape. They later met with film maker Margret Seema Takyar who developed the concept of using light and darkness as a backdrop to Devi’s Butoh-inspired dance performance. The song ‘Elephant’ on her self-titled EP ‘Masma Dream World’ evokes the essence of her childhood.

Born in Gabon from a father of the black panther people—the Bahoumbou tribe—and a Singaporean mother of Chinese, British, and Indian Brahmin origins, Devi lived a childhood of both violence and magic, of wealth and hardship.

At age 12, she ended up in the Bronx with her mother and two brothers in an even stranger land. She sought solace in the World Music section at Tower Records, seeking the mythical Africa that haunted her memories of childhood. Over time, she found those fantastical sounds, too, in American and Western music: first in hip hop and R&B, later in ambient and drone. Devi became a vagabond of sound, DJ-ing all over the New York City nightlife scene starting at a young age with a fake ID.

Today, Devi lives in Brooklyn and studies sound therapy and conciousness. It is the mechanism that creates worlds that she channels through this leading edge, this music, her Masma Dream World.

Masma Dream World will be released October 19th

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