Wohlgle Mut the Drunken Satyr melds art and music
In the past year, Wohlgle Mut the Drunken Satyr has become something of a household name in our local music community. Joshua Songs lodges his character into the memories and minds of his audiences with the help of theatrical elements, costuming, and an inventive spirit that is endearing as it is mischievous.
He created this persona that he maintains online and at performances, a 6-foot-tall goat man who sings like a pirate playing Tom Waits tunes. He constructed a pair of stilts that he wears when in character, causing his body to look like something out of a C.S. Lewis novel.
“I would like each show to have the potential to be a transformative experience, like the wild hunt in Norse mythology; where people would be swept up in this thing that is simultaneously terrifying and intriguing, so that they become part of something that is larger than themselves,” Mut explains.
The term “panic” comes from the god Pan, who could at certain times have an impact on individuals and make them completely hysterical, afraid yet elated, completely overwhelmed in every way.
“You get excited, you get drawn in, you become afraid, afraid of yourself, afraid of the things around you,” says Mut. “You get carried away, watching yourself in the third person, laughing and crying, swept up in something that is larger than yourself. Something you can’t wrap your head around, something you never knew you were interested in at all.”
He continues, “I have seen it happen at shows, seen other artists do it, and I have been lucky enough to in some way participate in inspiring people in that way myself. When I find myself in the position of seeing that I helped pied piper people into some sort of apocalyptic mythological thing inside their head, it transforms me, it transforms them.”
Mut often feels like he is seeing a show or a performance from an outside perspective. A very emotional perspective, at that. “Being at a show for the first time and starting to cry, being overwhelmed by the experience, is like watching a child being born—experiencing emotions for the first time. They knew the baby was going to be born, they knew what was happening, but being there and seeing it actually happen is completely different. You think you know what is going on, but when you’re there, something overtakes you. There is a connection on an emotional and spiritual level that is overwhelming. All of the things you thought, all the boundaries are dissolved.”
Dissolution is a common theme to Mut’s own creative process. He feels that performance art, by its very nature, is about boundary dissolution. “I want people to get off their asses. I don’t think there’s anything respectable or cool about just standing there and nodding your head to something that you feel strongly about,” he explains. “Maybe people aren’t made to feel strongly about something, maybe they’re hard to get to; they’re always out there. I was that way; terrified and uncomfortable around people.”
For years, Mut wouldn’t leave his house unless he was going to play a show, or going to see a show that he felt he absolutely had to see. Then at one point, he says he was watching a band called Whores for War, and they started playing a song that inspired him to run around in circles.
“I felt in no way separated from the people around me who were also moving, whereas before I felt completely alienated,” he says. “The right music made me forget the separation and be just participating, having the feeling of being a part of this amoeba of people.”
Josh has always viewed performance art as deep spiritual work. He associates his shows with shamanism, which he sees as a healing process for himself and the audience. “I like to think that we can blur the line of audience and artist, or at least confuse the apathetic onlooker. I want the kid in tight jeans nursing his PBR in the corner to eventually get naked and flap his wings running around in circles. We’ll all feel better once that’s out.”
He likes to think it’s just a matter of involving the observers. “We can all be this pied piper. We can all draw this depth out of ourselves and others. I believe that each show is a ceremony, every song is a ritual in itself, and there’s a particular sacrament, and set of movements with each song. It’s like alchemy, turning the dirt into gold, the dark into light.”
To Mut, it’s all a transformative process that renders ailments into strengths. The idea of Wohlgle Mut, as he tells is, is a blend of mythos, metaphor, and the absurd. “There are archetypal narratives dictating some of the framework that we perform within,” he notes. “It’s like we’re presenting gestures of thoughts.”
Wohlgle Mut and Mas Moss Manics will be performing next at Ziggy’s on Saturday, Nov. 5th.