Mary Komasa at City Sounds: original songs by the singer and composer in Wrocław

Mary Komasa, singer, composer, lyricist and instrumentalist, comes to Wrocław to present her long-awaited album to the audience. The concert takes place on 14 October in the Gothic Hall at Stary Klasztor as part of the City Sounds series.

“I am sure I sang before I learnt to speak. I grew up on gospel music sung by my mother. I went to gospel concerts with my family. There, anyone could sing straight from the heart. I loved it. I attended an exceptional music primary school where we were given a great deal of freedom. I took part in every mini playback show. Everyone knew that, even though I was studying piano, I would sing one day. My older brother, a hip-hop and R&B fan, also shaped me. Our childhood fell in the early 1990s, when that music was experiencing its biggest boom. Fugees, TLC, Erykah Badu, Brandy… I listened constantly, singing into a deodorant can.”

Mary grew up in an artistic Warsaw family and began music education at six, learning piano, then organ and harpsichord. “I was naturally shy and fearful, which is exactly why I chose the organ, an instrument giving strength and courage. Playing it felt like piloting a spaceship, demanding my whole body and mind.” She studied opera singing simultaneously. “I reached a point where I wanted to be Erykah Badu and Musetta at once. Eventually, I had to choose.”

At a young age, she decided to begin life independently and set off for Paris. Overnight, she found herself at the heart of a social and artistic world where different cultures and backgrounds intersected. Paris gave her a sense of creative freedom.

“Long car journeys, airports and hotels inspire me… These anonymous places awaken longing and melancholy. Ideas for new songs grow from those emotions. ‘Oh Lord’, for example, emerged on the road from LA to Las Vegas. I was listening to Lutosławski’s 4th Symphony. I had left the big city behind, still carrying images from a Stanley Kubrick exhibition. I was entering a dead, lunar landscape. A strange, surreal atmosphere surrounded me. Everything inside me was bubbling. It was frightening yet tempting.”

“For me, the best test of whether a song works is imagining it playing over a film’s closing credits. When I begin writing a song, I start by reaching into my memories. I try to create a cinematic setting in my imagination, with myself in the leading role. Then I look for a sentence, a phrase or a word to begin writing from. For example: ‘Come’, ‘Farewell’, ‘Don’t leave me here’. That is how each of my stories begins. What am I trying to convey through them? That all our experiences shape us, both the positive ones and those we would rather forget. Instead of trying to erase them from our minds, let us try turning them into our own strength.”

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