Jessica Mauboy reveals how being a mum ignited her creativity following the birth of daughter Mia
Jessica Mauboy welcomed her first child Mia earlier this year and opened up about a moment she is still laughing about.
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Creativity is positively flowing from Jessica Mauboy in the wake of giving birth to her greatest achievement – her daughter Mia.
Melodies and lyrics keep springing to chart-topping Australian singer Mauboy’s mind and from her mouth, inspired by her child and seeing the world anew through her daughter’s eyes and experiences.
“Writing these lyrics today, they are so full of a different kind of love. I’m just wowed by life, through her,” she says.
It is the start of a fresh chapter in Mauboy’s life, which she will also explore at this year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival in her new show The Story of Me: A Musical Journey Through My Career.
Mauboy and her husband, Themeli Magripilis, decided not to know the sex of their baby … finding out the moment after the birth on January 13, when a nurse asked whether the singer wanted “to hold her”.
“It was such a surprise,” she says, still laughing with delight. “The doctor said ‘You can look now’, because we almost forgot to look if it’s a boy or girl. We just were full of joy and laughter after that.”
However, the new mum says she always had a feeling that she was having a girl.
“You get a sense of knowingness. Either way, I hoped to give him or her everything.”
The couple also did not have a name in mind before the birth.
“It was only on her fourth day … that we were like, ‘She’s a Mia. She’s definitely a Mia’.”
Mauboy is already working on writing new material for a possible future album.
“I couldn’t help myself. I’m just full of music and melodies. It (motherhood) is a big change, but it’s also a really wonderful one which has opened up another space, in my head and my body, that I’m hungry for.
“I don’t know when I am going to put it out, but it’s some beautiful, crazy stories that I am looking forward to sharing – maybe at the end of the year, maybe next year. It’s been really fun to be in this space.”
Mauboy says she is also making up songs to sing to Mia “all the time”, and illustrates this by spontaneously breaking into one of those exquisite, nursery rhyme-style tunes.
“Mia Mia Mia Rae/Mia Mia likes to play/Underneath the yellow sun/All day long,” she merrily sings.
“I’m literally just making up songs for when I’m changing her nappy. Each day I have a group message with my family and each day I send an update pic up to Darwin. There was a video and I sang a song … I was just making it up on the spot, but at the same time I was like: ‘Oh, that’s good’.”
In fact, the adoring mum sometimes has to admonish herself for singing to her daughter too much, out of fear that she “might put her off it”.
Motherhood has also taken Mauboy back to her own childhood in Darwin, especially “wanting to be outside all the time”.
“I remember as a toddler running around mango trees, picking up some of the mangoes that had dropped, and starting to rip them open with my teeth and just getting messy,” she says.
“Running around barefoot and just feeling the earth … to remain open and always being thoughtful and empathising and thinking of the world, and thinking of others.
“You have to be kind everywhere you go, and to whoever it may be – even though you may not get that back. I hope to really instil that (in Mia). I really just hope for her to dream big … because I was allowed to do that.”
Mauboy is also writing and directing The Story of Me, which – as its title suggests – tells of her own musical journey, starting in Darwin where she was born in 1989 to an Indonesian-born father from West Timor and an Indigenous Australian mother.
“There’s so much. From the age of 11 – even before that – I remember my life playing out in song. I still picture and feel that and am completely moved by it still to this day.
“I remember seeing someone transform, from having a conversation to all of a sudden tapping their foot … brought to joy by (me) doing songs that I loved and making up songs.
“There’s so many really important memories of my growth and my relationship with music, and people who have pushed me and encouraged me in my career.”
That all began to pay dividends in 2006, when Mauboy was runner-up on the fourth season of Australian Idol and signed a recording contract with Sony Music Australia, briefly joining other former contestants to form the girl group Young Divas.
“At some point of my life, I got to really be the forefront person, of controlling and directing the life that I wanted, as well,” Mauboy says.
“I really hope to infuse a lot of that (into the show) with song, or with sound or with light, or with body language. I really hope to project that on stage.
“The Story of Me is really like a flower, and each petal is a moment of moving forward – and also kind of letting go. There’s been some heartache in there, too, of sacrifice and being away and being so young, but also learning that it will be good in the end – it’s all worth it.”
After announcing her pregnancy last year, Mauboy deliberately kept very quiet about her progress until well after Mia’s birth in January.
“It was really the nerves – I’d been (like) a mother to my nieces and nephews, and aunty to them, but having actually gone through the experience was an unknown,” she says.
“My body was changing, my hormones were just off the scale. It was more that I just wanted to feel comfortable in my own body, and hope for the best with the pregnancy … try to be kindest to myself.
“I’d try to go to mothers’ groups and confide in other mothers and other women how this goes, and what did they feel, and what was normal, and what was meant to happen.
“It was a little scary. It was also magic knowing that she was growing, and I was helping to create that.
“Now she’s here, I’m just like: ‘You’re a piece of magic that I didn’t know could ever really exist’. It’s like I’m looking at myself.”
As if motherhood and directing her new cabaret show aren’t enough to have on her plate, Mauboy has also returned to TV as a judge on the latest season of Australian Idol, and has recently launched her own skin care range, Desert Rose.
“Desert Rose was definitely a plan. I knew that I wanted to make great skin care and take it back to my community, and bring education that you only have one skin, and the sun doesn’t have any breaks.
“Sometimes it does get a bit overwhelming … but if I’m just in the moment and doing what I love, then it all comes together.
“My heart is full and my hands are full, but it is something that I always look for … in the background I’m seeking to know where I’m going to be next and who I’m going to meet next.” ■
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