Q&A: Masma Dream World Confronts Mortality and the Divine in “A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE”

MusicQ&A

Sep 26

INTERVIEW

TURNING DEATH INTO A THRESHOLD — Masma Dream World, the experimental project of Devi Mambouka, has released their latest body of work, the three-song EP A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE.

The EP emerges from the same creative sessions that birthed PLEASE COME TO ME, Mambouka’s sophomore album released earlier this year to widespread acclaim. That record marked a turning point in their artistry, born from an extensive immersion in meditation, Hindu mysticism and Advaita Vedantic texts. Where PLEASE COME TO ME charted expansive inner landscapes of healing and grief, A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE feels like a continuation of that path — a meditative extension reaching further toward the divine.

“Knowledge is a destination beyond the thick veil of suffering, a treacherous path that treads lifetimes on different timelines, always reaching for the divine,” Mambouka reflects. “You travel it until you meet a death that is final, and you realize that you were never born.”

Masma Dream World is not just a musical project, but a vessel of ancestral and mystical lineage. Born in Gabon before immigrating to The Bronx, Mambouka describes themselves as a child of the world. They studied religions of all kinds, but ultimately Mambouka’s have presented themselves in the figures of maternal Hindu ancestors and the fierce goddess Kali.

Each composition operates as an offering. A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE is no exception, positioning itself as both an intimate transmission and a universal exploration of mortality, spirituality and transcendence.

With A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE, Mambouka continues to guide listeners into liminal space, where death is not an ending but a threshold, and where music itself becomes a practice of becoming.

LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?

DEVI: The best way to explain this is there is this awareness which permeates the universe. When we ask questions of existence, like who am I? Why am I here? If you personally, in your personal story, and maybe your ancestors have gone through a lot of trauma, and there are so many things that you feel like just being a normal human being existing in society is already super hard with all of its complexities. And then you go into the micro, which is like your own little society, family unit, which is also super complicated. If it's paired with trauma, then it becomes even more complicated. It's the desire to want to exist and have things work out.

That journey of self exploration, but how do I transcend this? Maybe life can be better and different. Maybe I can live in a different society. Maybe I can make a difference. I'm Hindu. So in Hinduism, there are different paths and different practices that you do to maybe perhaps get there. It's for every temperament. You could be an introvert or extrovert. It'll have practices for you. You could be in a female body. It has practices for you. You could be someone that's super creative. It has practices for you. You can be someone that's super logical, and in order to transcend the suffering, to have the happiness, there's a logical application that you can do. Inspiration-wise, it’s this idea of who am I? Why am I on this planet? Why are those things happening to me? My story has a lot of trauma and generational traumas, like why is this happening? I want to be happy, so that was the jumping point.

LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?

DEVI: I'm not the doer of any of this music. We're so attached to our phones that those moments of boredom do not exist anymore, really, because our mind loves to be distracted, and so we've created this environment where seeking distraction is so easily available. I try to clear my mind and be completely open to what the ancestors want to say. It's not really about when I create. It's about what happens before I create. It's the daily practice — the spiritual practice — which allows me to regulate my emotions and allows me to be aware of what this existence really is in it.

Something very intense and traumatic happened to me in 2021, where it was both beautiful and intense. I got to a point where I had been seeking for at least maybe 10 years or something to go to this retreat and go after this guru. My family is Hindu, so going back and reading the books and asking questions from my mom, it got to a point where I can't take another retreat. I can't take another course or program because this deep sadness isn't going away.

So I was like, you know what? I have a good idea. Maybe I can just reset the button. I can just press reset and jump in the Hudson River. But on my way there, I blacked out, and I ended up waking up back in my apartment, back in New York, and I didn't die that day, so I'm screaming and yelling at the goddess and all of my teachers. I'm like, you guys have said that there is a promise of enlightenment, there is a promise of transcending the matrix, but I'm not able to reach it. I still feel this deep sadness that won't go away. In that moment, I felt a light that was like the hug that I've been wanting for my mom. I read in Hinduism, they say if you decide to leave this body earlier on, you will enter the same door, so you have to do it again.

I started finding out that a lot of people share a similar thing when they're at the end, they can't take it anymore, and they need to transcend this, and then they will have similar experiences. They say if your story cannot apply to masses or other people have not experienced it, that's your experience and it might not be true for anyone else. Because I saw that other people had shared similar experiences, I felt like I should share mine. Fast forward to getting in a studio, I wanted to make a dub album. I had this whole whole plan, and all of a sudden all I could say was ‘ma.’ I can only sing the words ‘ma,’ and channel the ancestors like they were talking to me. When the music was coming through me, I felt the spirit snitched on me because I couldn't not talk about that experience of searching, of asking mother to come to me. Everything that I wrote was about this intense spiritual practice, this yearning and this asking of her, this wanting to reconnect with the mother.

LUNA: Your newest EP A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE comes from the same sessions as your acclaimed album PLEASE COME TO ME. How did you decide which songs belonged on the album and which ones became this companion EP?

DEVI: I just tossed it, I wrote the title and I tossed it in the air, because apparently I don't have any choice in the matter. I want to write a dub album. Ma said no, we're doing something else. I sat in the garden, I wrote the titles of the songs and I tossed them in the air. Whatever fell was it. I picked 11 songs and listened back to it and it made sense. What was left is now the EP. Funnily enough, the EP is a mini version of the album, because the journey is presented sequentially at the same thing again.

LUNA: Each of the three tracks on A GRAVE IN A LUCKY SITE feels like its own world. What were the inspirations behind them, and what messages or energies did you want to bring into being with this EP that maybe weren’t fully explored on PLEASE COME TO ME?

DEVI: One thing that I realized from this experience is the idea of death. The idea of death is something that the first humans have asked about. It's this fascination that we've all had as cultures. At some point you have to face your own mortality, like maybe thinking of the first time you understand what death is. As a child, I remember the first time I came face to face with death, was my grandfather's death. I didn't know how to deal with that. This idea of death and mortality, and it's something that I've had a relationship with for a long time, with wanting to understand and transcend this matrix.

When you look at the album, there's a song, “What If It Was True” — like all these books, all these teachings, what if they were true? That the other worlds are just a transition period. You have to come here and it's only here that you can transcend the whole entire matrix. You don't go into heaven or another place. You have to come here to transcend it. What if those teachings were true? Having this conversation it’s hard not to think of death. I feel that on that day, I feel like I also died because I do not recognize my old self.

I felt like the EP would go to the crux of that question of death. I found this image which is like a Feng Shui location where you would place a grave. This would be like the ultimate grave. It's talking about my own death and my relationship with death, which is also a spiritual practice in Hinduism, praying to the god of death, Lord Yama or Kala. I don't want what I share to influence anyone that hears it. Listen to it and see how that makes you feel. It's almost like I'm just the messenger, and, even the picture that I found for the album, it happened in five minutes.

LUNA: Kali appears as a recurring figure in your work. What does she represent for you both personally and as an artist?

DEVI: Mother Kali is part of my lineage. My family has been praying to Kali for centuries, so it's part of my DNA. Kali is also manifested in many cultures. If you look closely, you'll find her. She has different names. She’s described as maybe how cycles are. If you think of cycles, then there's no end, so there's no creation and destruction. It's just a cycle. It's more of a renewal, kind of the Wheel of Time. It's what holds this world together. That's how we describe her. When you think of the human realm, you think of what could have created this place. The first thing you would think is the archetype of the mother. But even going further than that, Kali is beyond gender. Sometimes you will see her as Kala, which is the other, or Krishna. If you're looking at the femininity of it, it's more of like a primordial femininity, which we are all at first. We express first as feminine. Then we move into duality. It comes from the primordial female femininity and out beyond gender. That's the energy that she represents. And of course, there's the iconography and the very specific Upanishads and Shastras and how they describe Kali. But for me, getting the information of who Kali is through my mom — who is my first guru — but also having my experience from with maa, and also being in a female body and being nonbinary. I really resonated with her being beyond gender, where it's like a container of all gender within one. This nondual energy, which permeates the whole universe, which this world couldn't exist without. It feels so good to talk about her.

LUNA: Since PLEASE COME TO ME has been out in the world for half a year already, how has the response been from friends, family and listeners? What’s been the life that it has taken on?

DEVI: I'm getting emotional here because I wanted to leave this realm. When I see comments of people being like, ‘this has got me through really dark moments,’ or ‘I feel really bad, I put on the record, and something happened for me.’ I felt this transformation, because I know it's not me doing it. I cannot even take ownership. It's not me, but it's this idea of being a servant. I'm so grateful that I can offer that, because I remember when I was feeling like shit and depressed and couldn't get out of it, I was seeking for something. Those moments where I listened to a song that opened up and healed my heart, or I read this book which brought me a new perspective. I'm always so grateful to these teachers. To be able to give that back and not be selfish with it, I'm just like, thank you.

One of the ways I'm doing this is performing. Those ceremonies become different, the songs you will hear, some of the songs from the album but then there are moments where it's just free, open, channeling, bringing the music for whomever is there. Now all of a sudden, we're all creating the music together, during the performances. It's like whoever is there together, we create this one sonic sound together.

LUNA: What’s fueling your fire right now — musically or personally — that’s pushing you into this next chapter?

DEVI: Career-wise, I have studied sound therapy. I work at a memory care facility, and we'll sing songs, and I will be playing polka music for them. If I think about it and I try to organize it in my mind, guaranteed disappointment will come in, because the mind is always looking, seeking for pleasure and does not want bad things to happen. The reality of the matter is that this world is suffering. As the Buddha said, you cannot find anything outside but from within. I'm just trying to just sit and go within and do the work. The fire is the mother calling in the back.

LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?

DEVI: The rest of the year is touring. In a couple of weeks, I will be touring Europe, and then I will go northeast. I'm doing a mini northeast tour, and then just unboxing, because I just moved into a place. I found a bunch of journals from before the Hudson. I don't live far away from the Hudson either, which is really funny. Now, there's my life before the Hudson River and after the Hudson River. I've been reading all these journals from before, and I'm like, wow, that's interesting the way I thought. I'm feeling this gnawing in the back of more music to come, which is weird, because I never feel this way.