ROSE of JERICHO, a Brief History of Money
“An eerily timely song. I was laughing with glee by the end!”
“The Northern Rivers floods that swept through Mullumbimby in March 2022, shocked me into sudden clarity. Questions of money, universal and personal swirled in the murk and I wrote the first draft of this song. Many drafts later I birthed it as a single. It is my anthem for hope.” Mo
Mo McMorrow’s most experimental work to date is dynamically varied, lyrically dense and invites you to lean in. The stacked internal rhymes, often surprising, never superfluous, create an urgency, a forward motion like the march of time. The tumbleweed imagery in the choruses, like history repeating itself, imbues the song with a metaphor for rebirth.
The production is taut and punchy due to multi-instrumentalist and award winning Steve Berry (Coolangubra). Greg Sheehan (also Coolangubra) is the legendary percussionist makeing the humble tambourine sing! He tunes the skin low and plays it like no one else.
My art (painting, songs, video, stories) is how I process deep emotions arising for difficult events. The night before the floods I started videoing the flood as it was approaching not realizing that I would continue to do so for the 10 days of the aftermath. I documented how the devastated community took care of its own while waiting for the government to finally declare the Northern Rivers flood a national emergency on the 10th day.
The following video is the result of the 10 days of filming by day and editing by night.