Jo Mango & Friends – System Hold
Olive Grove – 26 April 2019
Folk music, at its best, disrupts the system by naming the emotional consequences of societal ill. In the process, the artist gives the listener a set of chords and lyrics to help bear the weight as best we can. For the often invisible world of families of citizens caught in the justice system, Jo Mango & Friends offer a lament that simultaneously stirs action and offers a balm for the trauma of separation with her latest release, System Hold.
The album confronts the issue of supervision and constant monitoring for citizens and families in the criminal justice system. Together with renowned criminologist Professor Fergus McNeill, Mango has crafted an album that immerses the listener in the experience of being under constant surveillance. Jay-Z exposed the issues in an article for the New York Times: “It’s time we highlight the random ways people trapped in the criminal justice system are punished every day. The system treats them as a danger to society, consistently monitors and follows them for any minor infraction–with the goal of putting them back in prison.”
Mango swaps the reflective lyricism of her previous album on climate change, Wrack Lines, for a style with grit and edge on System Hold. She deliberately employs glitch, patchworking CD skips, digital skips, and loud breaths to draw attention to the pervasive failures of the justice system. On the opening track, “Depth”, the squeaks sound almost like a fold-out chair scraping across the linoleum–a sterilized backdrop for a family visit.
The lyrics cut to the quick of the heart-wrenching separation and weight family members feel. In “Weight”, the singer pleads with a parole officer to understand how the visits “leave my daughter calling out his name.” “Tightness” recreates the tension of a supervised meeting spent “focusing on shoes” that also captures the yearning for a private moment with soaring phrasing.
System Hold offers an uncomfortable, up-close encounter with the criminal justice system. The juxtaposition of the disjointed glitches with the warmth of the Mango’s vocals exposes the fragility of the justice system and the inestimable value of free human contact.
https://soundcloud.com/olivegrove/jo-mango-friends-depth
System Hold is out now and available via Bandcamp: https://jomango.bandcamp.com/album/system-hold