Seven years is a long time in music, and for Doe Paoro, the years between Soft Power and her latest album Living Through Collapse have brought considerably more than a change in sound. They have encompassed illness and recovery, a departure from the traditional music industry, years devoted to sound healing, life among a community of artists and activists in the Costa Rican rainforest, and a deeper exploration of what music might actually be capable of doing.
The result is perhaps her most personal and purposeful work yet. Living Through Collapse confronts some uncomfortable realities, from climate crisis and conflict to grief, identity and our tendency to retreat from a world that can increasingly feel overwhelming. But Paoro isn’t interested in simply documenting the darkness. Running through the record is the idea that music can offer something in response: connection, healing and, as she puts it, a little light.
“I see each of these songs as a candle,” she tells SALT. “Our intention for touring at this time is to go out and carry that light in each of these communities that we are visiting and ignite it in each other.”
That philosophy sits at the heart of her Ignited Heart UK tour, which arrives at The Tabernacle in London on 25 September before travelling to Shrewsbury, Manchester, Totnes, Glastonbury and Portsmouth. These aren’t designed as conventional concerts. With her band from Costa Rica alongside her, Paoro describes them instead as gatherings, shaped as much by the people in the room as those on stage.
Ahead of the London show, SALT caught up with Doe Paoro to talk about stepping away from the music industry, making Living Through Collapse independently, the experiences that transformed her relationship with music, life in Costa Rica and Brazil, and why she hopes audiences leave these shows feeling a little more able to face the world outside.
You’re returning to the UK this September for your Ignited Heart tour, with the London show at The Tabernacle on 25 September. What was it about this moment that made you want to come back and play these intimate shows?
There is so much collective fear right now about the future, and with good reason. Every week it seems that the news becomes more apocalyptic. I endeavored to make a record that held space for the grief of what we are witnessing in our world and is also deeply woven with the possibility of healing and turning towards repair. I see each of these songs as a candle and our intention for touring at this time is to go out and carry that light in each of these communities that we are visiting and ignite it in each other.
Living Through Collapse arrived seven years after Soft Power. What changed for you during that time, both personally and creatively, that needed to happen before you could make this record?
I had a complete dissolution process in this time, and it was very generative. First and foremost, I encountered a deepening in my understanding of the vulnerability of the body with my struggles with endometriosis and miscarriage. Living with chronic illness is difficult but it also comes with blessings of perspective – you understand how to hold space and compassion for suffering and grief in an embodied way. I learned how many people invisibilize and don’t know how to respond to illness through my own journey with it. And I believe many people are doing that right now with the planet as well – dissociating and turning away from all the suffering happening because they don’t know how to be with the immense emotions that witnessing it would stir up, or they don’t know what to do, and we are living in a world that promotes numbness through overstimulation.
Secondly, I left my record label after feeling very burnt out by the traditional music industry and I didn’t know if I was going to make another record. For a few years, I devoted myself to my sound healing practice; I didn’t know it but I was recovering in this time from the toxicity of the music industry, it’s not a business for sensitive people like myself, and unfortunately, most artists are extremely sensitive. This was a big liberation, in retrospect. Making this record independently allowed me to create without having to ask anyone else for their opinion or permission on my music, and that’s why I think Living Through Collapse is such a pure offering. I got to make the exact record that I wanted to.
The third thing that happened is I lived in a community of artists and activists in Costa Rica for the last 5 years, in the rainforest. Living with so many folks dreaming and fighting for a more equitable, benevolent and sustainable world had me inspired and seeing the possibility of what kind of consciousness can grow when we have more understanding and when we have a community and council to strengthen our work and dreams with. I deepened in my inquiry of how music can serve the purpose of a revolution of consciousness.
The title Living Through Collapse feels particularly resonant right now. When you began writing the album, what did “collapse” mean to you, and has that meaning changed since the record was released?
When I began writing the album, I was thinking about collapse in terms of the fracturing of our humanity and the devastation coming as a result of our collective inaction towards the climate crisis and towards Gaza. I also felt an inner collapse of identity as a Jewish woman, as a descendent of a lineage that experienced genocide, enact this on another group of people.
Since this record was released, the meaning of “collapse” has also taken on somatic meaning. I had a surgery for my endometriosis three days after the record came out, and my recovery process took about three months. In this time, I was confronted with the collapse in my own body.
You’ve described music as something that can heal, awaken and create connection. When did you first realise that your work could function as something more than simply songs, as a space for people to process, release or reconnect?
I understood this possibility through my apprenticeship over the last decade with my teachers in the Peruvian Amazon, who are from the indigenous Shipibo lineage. In that tradition, singing is a central part of their healing ceremonies and I witnessed through my own experience how these songs were a transmission of healing. For me, the possibility of healing is one of the higher callings of music. Everything changed for me when I wrote “Divine Surrendering,” which is only a song that I could have written after years of being on my own personal healing journey and going into the eye of my own inner storms. Over the years, I have been told that mothers have given birth to that song and that folks have played this song while hospicing family members. To me, this is the highest honor and touches my heart endlessly.
Your work with sound baths and guided meditation has increasingly become part of your artistic practice. How much do those experiences influence the way you write a song, and can you tell when a piece of music is asking to be listened to rather than simply performed?
I think taking time off from a traditional career to focus on my sound healing and meditation practice transformed not only my composition process but also our concerts. From holding sound baths, I was able to experientially understand how to work with music and curate sounds to allow people to feel safe enough to relax. When we are relaxed, the body is able to be receptive – to a feeling of safety, to healing, to new visions, to insights that one might normally feel defended against. This perspective is the reason I wrote and opened “Living Through Collapse” with the song Grounding. Grounding is composed of different healing frequencies and is sort of like a mini-soundbath. We open the record with it as an offering for listeners to be able to drop in and be more resourced to receive the journey of the record, as the album grapples with some intense themes as it progresses.
There’s a striking line in “Living Through Collapse” about being both “doula and the dying”. What does that paradox mean to you, and did you know while writing it that it would become central to the album’s message?
Years ago, I heard something about how “every truth contains paradox.” When that lyric came, I felt that I had arrived at the thesis of the album. For whatever reason, all of us here on earth are incarnated at a time when the planet and everyone on it is going through massive transformation. Yes, we have had war and fascism and environmental disaster in the past, but we have never had AI – and we don’t know what is implicated by inviting in a technology that grows exponentially, and uses so many natural resources. I think we are being asked to surrender to the process that the world as we know it is dying, to resist where we can the forces that are creating harm and oppression in the world, and to also stay focused and responsible and be part of doulaing in a more equitable and caring world.
The album brings together producers and musicians from very different worlds, from Jonathan Wilson and Chris Sholar to Argentinian producer Lagartijeando and musicians in Costa Rica. What did you discover by allowing so many different musical languages into the record?
This record speaks to issues that impact every living being on the planet, and it was very important for me to collaborate with artists all over the globe – to reflect the collective nature of these questions that the album asks – and I feel so grateful to have had these songs blessed with their perspective and talent. Collaborating in this way allowed me to expand my understanding of how to be a weaver – how to bring all these different threads and ideas together and have their contributions fortify cohesion, as opposed to a sense of mismatch. I believe we (my partner on the record was Devin Gati) did that well and I think it’s because our hearts were all aligned on how this music could be of service, and when that is your compass and prayer, the rest works itself out. The energy that went into this record amongst all the different people who contributed to it was so generous and positive and I think this energy can be felt in the music.
Your earlier records moved through electronic pop, soul and more traditional songwriting, while Living Through Collapse feels particularly earthy and expansive. Do you feel you’re still searching for a sound, or have you reached a point where the sound simply follows whatever you’re trying to express?
Based on my history, I think my sound will continue to evolve as I evolve, because my voice is impacted by time and exposure to new sounds and experiences. I give myself a lot of permission and freedom to change: the orientation that I haven’t yet reached my ultimate expression keeps things exciting for me, it has me seeking a refinement of essence. Right now, for example, I have been living in Brazil and that is a whole universe of music that has completely floored me with its rhythms, vitality, range and devotion. I can already feel how being immersed in that musical landscape is expanding my songwriting.
You’ve spoken previously about wanting your music to be something that can genuinely be recreated live, rather than relying on elaborate arrangements and backing tracks. How important is spontaneity and the connection between you and an audience during these new UK performances?
I think this is what makes our concerts special – we don’t see them as performances but rather as gatherings that center music and that invite everyone to be a part of contributing to the cocreation of the concert – through their voices, through dance, through the conversations that happen between songs, through the energy that is present in the space. Within the spontaneity of our music is aliveness. We rely on listening to the audience who has come to share this time with us to determine the direction of the journey of the music – we try to attune to the energy of the group and what would be most helpful for them to hear and then we try to serve that listening.
You’re deliberately choosing churches, smaller halls and intimate spaces for this tour. What can happen in a room like that between an artist and an audience that perhaps isn’t possible in a much larger venue?
Intimacy. Seeing everyone’s faces. Connection on a felt, human level.
If someone walks into The Tabernacle on 25 September carrying all the noise, uncertainty and overwhelm of modern life, what would you hope they leave the room feeling?
I hope the music helps rinse them of overwhelm and allows them to nourish their hearts, so they can leave and return home more available to respond to their lives from a peaceful and wise place.
Ignited Heart: Doe Paoro in Concert
The Tabernacle, London, Fri 25 Sept, 7:30pm
