Review for North Star Road: "I met this charismatic street musician today. She overwhelmed me with personality first, then she played an Original from this album. I had to own a copy.Track 6 is even better live ! First impressions count for a lot. She passed the audition with flying colors. A Great sense of Humor and Clever Lyrics frequently Deep. Way above Average. She writes as well as Bob Dylan in a sometimes Dylan influenced way." ~Mike Heilman
Influences
AMMA, being in love with everyone and everything, music as medicine, magic, and meditation, honesty, freedom, traveling, the many amazing friends and beautiful random strangers i've met along the way, being here now, busking, life and all its joys and sorrows, inner peace, sharing songs and ideas at open mics, Burning Man, rainbow family, natural sustainable living, The Mayan Calendar, comm-unity, late night campfire jams, the birds singing in the morning, being in love, the wind blowing through the trees, nature, rainbows, mangos, sunshine, 4:20, long Manitoba winters (good for staying inside and working on creative projects!) yoga, tai chi, organic vegetarian and raw foods, health, harmony, herbs and healing, the wise ancient redwoods, children, the ocean, friends, family, unconditional love, and going with the flow!
Musically, Mary Lou Lord, Greg Brown, Melanie Safka, Dan Frechette, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Cat Stevens, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Woody Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Ani Difranco, Ember Swift, Richard Thompson, Joan Baez, Signe Knutson, Iris Eve, Roldo, Utah Phillips, Fraser & Debolt, Steve Schellenberg, Neil Young, Blind Melon, Elliott Smith, Beck, Nirvana, Hole, Hayden, George Harrison, Adrian Avocado, Shimshai, Brett Dennen, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Human, Jack Johnson, Joules Graves, Bob Marley, The Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Jason Webley, Billy Bragg, Sandy Denny, Leonard Cohen, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash & June Carter, Nate Stevens, and CAPTAIN SUNSHINE!
Sounds Like
"Maria is a living, breathing embodiment of the best ideals of the hippie generation. Born several decades too late to be part of the original Summer of Love, she nevertheless took up the tattered psychedelic banner of the flower children, and carries it with love and affection. Whether busking on the Haight, performing in Hawaiian clubs, or serenading Burners on the Playa, she poses the same question eloquently asked by another musician -- "What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?" -- and shows us all that one can live with grace, beauty, and positive energy in a broken world."
“Maria Mango has shown us that we can enjoy life and the abundance of mother earth through love, compassion and sharing. So rare are those in today’s sea of humanity to give us such beauty and joy in music laced deeply with unconditional love. Maria Mango is a wonderous blessing." ~James Beckett
“Maria Mango is a shining star. Everytime I have been in her presence she has such a big glowing smile on her face. Her songs are so fun & full of inspiration and truth. We need more free spirited people like her around.” ~Manaka
"She is a butterfly made of colorful Light and she beams many rays of delight.
She is eternal like Love, Living in the Now. She is as playful as a child and wise like an ancient tree. She is a living example of Joy and Gratitude is her lifestyle. She deciphers what the birds sing about, on each and every music album she creates. She is a Soul Sister of humanity. . . . and I Love her dearly." ~Gemini
"The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love.
This dance of light, this sacred blessing, this divine love
beckons us to a world beyond, that only lovers can see with their
eyes of fiery passion. They are the chosen ones who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light, now they are the radiant sun.
They have left behind the world of deceitful games.
They are the privileged lovers who create new worlds
with their eyes of fiery passion." ~Rumi
"Maria Mango is a light!!! She is a walking mango colored love light! So bright like a beautiful sunset, only nicer and more entertaining, (she can play all night, lets see the sun do that!) I am wholly sure that great things are in her future as well as her past and present." ~Glass blower Dan
"Children, love can accomplish anything and everything. Love can cure diseases. Love can heal wounded hearts and transform human minds. Through love one can overcome all obstacles. Love can help us renounce all physical, mental and intellectual tensions and thereby bring peace and happiness." ~Amma
“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”
~Alan Watts
"If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal." - John Lennon
Maria Mango is truly an artist at life. A seasoned traveller and street performer, she carries with her little more than a guitar and a grin, singing her sweet tunes on sidewalks and in subways, in cafes and around campfires. When one listens to her sing, it becomes easy to believe a better world is possible through the simple kindness of the human heart.
Maria's musical journey began almost ten years ago, playing for change on the streets of Neil Young's hometown Winnipeg, Manitoba. Although she was attending university at this time, her real education and passion was flowering as she took to busking for hours on end out on the city sidewalks, and playing at the local open mics. Her interest in school began to wane. Eventually, with the encouragement of an Engligh prof who told her to pick up a copy of Jack Kerouac's book 'On The Road' and hit the road, "because some people just need to do it that way," she decided to leave school behind and see what the world had to teach her.
One spring, Maria set out for a vision quest on the magical garden island of Kauai. It was while camping in the enchanted valley of Kalalau that she got her name, connected to the Source, and began writing original tunes. When she came back from that trip, she started her own record label, Star Seed Harmony Music, and recorded her first album with longtime friend and musical compadre Dan Frechette. After the CD's release Maria headed out to the west coast for another adventure. She serendipitously ended up at
Burning Man, that wild and crazy celebration of creative anarchy. It was like being awake in a beautiful dream! At home and in her element, she would trip around the playa, giving out mangos as gifts and serenading the various theme camps. Some burners might mave memories of a colorful, cheerful sister with an ukulele singing about a loveolution!
After Burning Man, Maria Mango found her way to San Francisco, the city that gave birth to the event and a place that keeps the spirit of freedom and freakiness alive year-round. It instantly felt more like home than anywhere else she had ever been. She has become a familiar face in the Haight-Ashbury, keeping flower power alive and performing random acts of kindness, and singing regularly on the street and in the local cafes. During her time in the city, Maria befriended two of the hippie forefathers of the counterculture movement, poet and Oracle editor Allen Cohen, and the "Father of the Summer of Love", Chet Helms before they passed on from this earth life. Maria says, "There were some psychedelic seeds of consciousness planted here in the 60's and NOW is the time for those flowers to BLOOM! There is a renaissance of love happening again in San Francisco, and all over the world! The time is ripe for us to learn to really love ourselves, each other, and this earth, and to remember that everything is connected! We can use art and music and gatherings to raise the collective consciousness on this planet, and by changing our minds, and tuning into our hearts, one by one, we can change the world!"
Maria Mango's music has a message of peace and unconditional love that is timeless and universal. Her songs are simple and upbeat with singalong choruses that make everyone feel like a part of it all. She has the ability to bring the intimacy of a campfire to any venue she plays. Her songs have the power to inspire community, to heal hearts, and soothe souls. If you see her playing on a street corner sometime, stick around for a tune or two and she's sure to make you smile!
Sangit means music -- divine music. Music comes closest to meditation. Just beyond music is meditation: one step more and you are in meditation. And music is the most beautiful door. Listen to music so totally that the listener disappears in the listening, that there is only music and you are not, that you are an emptiness and the music fills you. There is no observer even, nobody to appreciate, to judge. Listen to music without judgement, without evaluation, and it will become your deepest meditation. Then any music will do. Slowly slowly you will come to the knack of listening. Then any sound will do, mm? -- just this sound of the train passing by is enough to create silence, because sound is one polarity; silence is the other polarity of the same energy. If you know how to listen rightly, each sound can create silence. Just as light and darkness are together, sound and silence are together; they cannot be separate. It is one energy -- they are two aspects of it. So if somebody learns how to listen rightly, each sound provokes silence in you. That's the beauty of music. In first listening to it you will become aware of this tremendous phenomenon, that in listening you become silent. Then you can try with other sounds slowly slowly, and then one day suddenly, standing in the marketplace, all the noise is around you and you are so silent -- the centre of the cyclone. And that is my message to my sannyasins: they have to be silent in the very storm of existence and life. They have to meditate in the marketplace; they have not to become escapists. They have to transform their lives, and transformation needs the challenge of the opposite. ~OSHO
“There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.”
