Meet Cat Mahatta | Musician, Educator, & Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cat Mahatta and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cat, how do you think about risk?
Risk is relative to the society we grow up in and I have spent most of my career convincing my students and musician friends, as well as myself, that much of what we believe to be risky is essential to the act of authentic creation. I took the classic professional risk of quitting a full-time job to build a freelance music teaching business based on this ethos and it has sustained me for a dozen years. I think the reason I have had such a steady stream of clients is that I create safe spaces for people to take risks and I give them solid tools to ensure their success. I had a rigorous music education and I share that same level of discipline with my students but I show them where to throw out the rules and I encourage them to explore uncharted territory. I was a very risk-averse child and performer – a typical perfectionist who imitated studiously and did not unveil a piece until I had mastered it. This limited any urge to write my own music and no one on my educational path encouraged me to develop my personal style. It was not until I started playing in bands on the West Coast that I felt safe to relax into my eclectic musical interests. Around the same time, I came out as queer and extended my already radical political leanings into advocacy for the queer community. My songwriting evolved out of the need to share the ecstasy and heartache of our community and you can hear the journey on the album I put out last summer “who cares?” I took some kind of compositional or lyrical or revealing personal risk on each of those songs and if I don’t do that in all of my work, then it lacks creative integrity for me. The next album I’m putting out will be a collection of soundscapes I have created over the years for art openings and film scores. I primarily trained as a vocalist and would never have expected to publish instrumental work, but I was called by my community to create it and now it’s time to share it. I have to remind myself constantly that sharing my creative work is an act of generosity in order to silence my inner self-doubt. Once I got into this practice of de-risk-ifying everything I do, I could not stop the ideas from flowing and I’ll be lucky if I finish all the projects I’ve conceived in this lifetime. I went from songwriting to poetry writing, which is actually my first creative love, and now I’m putting together a book with a painter friend for publication. Then I took my love of directing and producing music videos into a curiosity about screenwriting and now I’m working on a couple of film ideas with very gifted friends of mine. I’m incubating a podcast with my singer friends about vocal technique that teaches people how to harmonize. It’s part of the process of synthesizing the liberating things I’ve learned from my years of teaching and from my music practice into more broadly accessible educational offerings. The first manifestation of this work has been the NEW SOUNDS vocal and synth music workshops I taught at NAVEL LA art space earlier this year. Participants of all levels of experience improvised vocal pieces and synth pieces in response to visual artworks selected by each of them. Some of them were playing sounds they’d never heard before on an instrument they’d never played in response to art they’d never seen with complete strangers. A risk? Maybe. Extremely fun gorgeous revelatory music? Definitely. They all seemed to think so. You can find it on my media channels to see for yourself and join us as we spread to new locations around LA! I want to make sure to acknowledge all the people in my music community and queer community that made it possible for me to take all these professional and creative risks. They taught me every lesson I needed to learn about the logistics of running a business as well as the cultivation of a creative mind. They have given me the security I need to continue taking these risks year after year, knowing they will be there to catch me if I fall. I cannot stress enough the importance of building a loving community around you and being a great contribution to your city. Part of the reason people are so afraid to take risks in our society is that they are isolated from the people and/or resources that would support any ventures beyond business as usual. When you have community support, starting a business or recording an album or making a music video or publishing a book is not a risk, it’s you fulfilling your purpose in life. It’s you just being who you really are and exploring all your options freely so that you know that for sure, which is what we all deserve.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Cat Mahatta is a synth pop and R&B performance art project I started for my friend Dana Dart-McLean’s art openings. Each performance has been in conversation with its location and over the years that has meant large interactive soft sculptures around the choreography, bioluminescent lights and metallic paint for the audience, sampling chains or pinecones or most recently dryers and balloons at Emji Saint Spero’s Fluff ‘n’ Fold birthday exhibition. All of this and more while I sing celestial critiques of the patriarchy over vocal loops and tracks I produce. Mahatta is a riff on my family name that comes from my family’s photography business in Delhi, India – Mahatta & Co. I am proud to carry on my family’s legacy of image making through film as an extension of this music project. Aside from making music videos and experimental short films, I’ve had the honor of scoring a handful of cinematic projects and contributing songs to soundtracks. Most recently, a couple of the songs from “who cares?” were included in the series “Undocumented Tales” created by Armando Ibañez, which I very highly recommend everyone go watch right after you finish reading this. In truth, my music project is the lovechild of all of my inspiring queer friends and collaborators, so to be able to contribute to this series about queer immigrants, especially coming from an immigrant family myself, felt like a homecoming. I’m excited about forthcoming multimedia collaborations, including an 8mm piece and a virtual reality music experience that would incorporate my love of animation and world-building. Animation sparks my musical imagination more than anything and also has the most potential to convey a vast diversity of better futures for us and the earth. I would love to collaborate more closely with animators as my career progresses. Some of the writing projects I have started would be beautiful animations and I’m very excited about presenting them to my animator friends who have shown interest. I definitely see my creative practice shifting from music performance to composing and also writing as a broader practice. After the great work opportunities I had in that vein, I realized that it’s a practice I will be able to grow into the older I get. The poetry book and story collection I’m putting together this year are just the beginning of a number of publishing projects I have in mind. I will, of course, play a show to celebrate the release of the album of soundscapes later this year and my shows are always shimmering neon queer love fests so I won’t give them up entirely. NEW SOUNDS will also have a series of interactive performances as culminations of the workshops. I hope to turn that practice into an album of collaborative synth pieces made for local visual artists and I can see it turning into a regular series that continues indefinitely. It took me a long time and a lot of creatively generous and empowering friends to feel worthy of being an artist and I have felt like I have to make up for all the years I wasted not believing in myself. One of the things that helps is that I’m so far from where I want to be but I’m grateful to have the elasticity of mind and the obsessive focus to learn new skills and ways of being that make it possible for me to work on such a beautiful diversity of projects. My main objective right now is to have the time, the team, and the resources to actualize every precious idea that tickles my mind. To be honest, thanks to my brilliant friends, these projects are so far beyond the wildest imagination of the shy little choir kid I was that I have no idea what my future holds but it will inevitably be something beyond my current wildest imagination and that thrills me infinitely.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
These are actual little itineraries I have made for loved ones visiting over the years…

Monday
Picaresca Barra de Cafe for the cafe de olla
Mercadito stroll in Boyle Heights
La Cocina for lunch
Huntington Library Botanical Gardens for sunset
Saladang Thai for dinner
Exposure Drag at The Offbeat

Tuesday
Steep LA tea ceremony
Little Tokyo stroll and shop
Hama Sushi for lunch
Hauser & Wirth
Everson Royce Bar wine tasting
Dinner at Bestia because we probably couldn’t get in any other day of the week
See friends play at Gold Diggers or Zebulon

Wednesday
Peacock Hill Ranch horseback ride in Sunland
India Sweets & Spices in Atwater Village for lunch and snacks for later
Griffith Observatory sunset
Dinner at Mírate in Los Feliz
Screening at Philosophical Research Society

Thursday
Switzer Falls hike and swim and picnic
Queer Spaces Storytelling at North Figueroa Bookshop
Villas Tacos for dinner
Chic2Chic queer party at Good Housekeeping

Friday
Malibu Creek hike and swim and picnic
Take the Mulholland Drive back as the sun sets
Echo Park Lake stroll and farmers market
Poetry reading at Stories Books
Gayasstrology queer dance party

Saturday
Andaz West Hollywood rooftop pool including lunch and drinks by my bartender friend
Hammer/LACMA/Gagosian/Regen Projects/Kordansky Gallery – whoever has the best show up
Chosun Galbee for dinner
Table Manners Hot Pot queer party at LOVE HOUR

Sunday
Brunch at Aunt Yvette’s
Stroll York Blvd. and get soft serve at Magpie’s
Buy beautiful office supplies at Shorthand
Have drinks with friends at Hermosillo & Nativo
Sunset at Debs Park
Dinner at Checker Hall on the spookily green-lit balcony
House show in the neighborhood:)

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I am literally a constellation of the creative magic makers I have had the incredible fortune to know and love as well as a long lineage of queer heroes who laid the stones of the path we walk today. I would probably never have put out a solo album if it weren’t for my beloved Girls Rock Camp communities in Oakland and LA. The volunteers who run the camps are many of my best friends and bandmates over the years and some of the songs on “who cares?” are about them. They’ve connected me to shows and jobs and publishing deals and students over the years and I am eternally gushing with gratitude. Beyond that, the camp infuses social justice issues and political empowerment into music education in a way that lit a fire under me not to give up on my talent and my dreams. I realized early on that I needed to practice what I was preaching to these campers. There is nothing I want more than to give the next generation a better future. They are wildly inspiring in how freely they create and they’ve helped me reconnect to the young boundless version of myself. The campers even made a music video for one of my songs “All You Need” that you can find on their media channels. It was a full circle moment after years of teaching them creative and life skills for them to use the skills on me! They had me in sequins surrounded by bubbles and mylar and clouds they handmade and it was an actual dream come true. Anyone can volunteer their time or donate to Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls LA or Chicas Rockeras locally. There are Girls Rock Camps in over 100 cities across the world too if you live elsewhere, and if your city doesn’t have one, you can start your own!

Website: https://catmahatta.bandcamp.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catmahatta

Twitter: https://twitter.com/catmahatta

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catmahatta

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/catherine-mehta-voice-and-piano-lessons-los-angeles-2?osq=catherine+Mehta

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0sE1Lo5vSBGrHQeMdpBcow

Other: https://linktr.ee/catmahatta?utm_source=NAVEL&utm_campaign=1be48e7d7f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_04_11_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-1be48e7d7f-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Image Credits
Neon Arrow Lights “who cares?” still – Cat Mahatta & Sarah Reddy Red Dance “who cares?” video still – Cat Mahatta & Sarah Reddy Gold Dance “hymn to dudes” video still – Cat Mahatta & Alli Miller Live Rainbow Stage Lights still – Envizion Studio Live Paint Performance @ Hyperion Tavern still – Alli Miller Bubble Astroturf “All You Need” video still – Cat Mahatta & Dead Silence Productions Clouds “All You Need” video still – Cat Mahatta & Dead Silence Productions NAVEL synth workshop still – Jessa Shwayder Carta