Masma Dream World is the experimental project of Devi Mambouka, who spent her childhood in Gabon before immigrating to the Bronx. Her father hailed from the indigenous Bahoumbou tribe of Gabon, while her mother is Bengali and Cantonese from Singapore. Before it became a way of invoking a world of spirits and ancestors as Masma Dream World, singing was, for Mambouka, a means of communing with nature. The name of the project alludes to a dream she first had when she was six, in which she walked through a nightmarish landscape, lost in a veil of smoke and darkness; demons erupted at the sound of her voice, but what terrified her the most was that it was a voice she couldn’t hear. In America, Mambouka began a new kind of musical and spiritual journey, getting deep into meditation, Hindu mysticism, and Vedantic texts. After making waves with her 2020 debut Play at Night, she’s now releasing her latest album, PLEASE COME TO ME. Sounding by turns meditative, tortured, and exultant, it transmutes the abyssal language of devotion and the divine feminine through cavernous electronics, spine-chilling noise, and a powerful voice that succumbs to forces beyond her control. It makes the void sound like an embrace, and the embrace immortal.

We caught up with Masma Dream World for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about the origins of the project, her spiritual journey, meditation, and more.

It’s been five years since the release of Play at Night. How has your philosophy around Masma Dream World evolved since then?

There is definitely a link to it, and it’s kind of continuing the conversation between the spirits and I, however they want to deliver their message to the world. I very much don’t take ownership over it because it’s not possible to make music like this without some sort of weird guidance. I would say the big shift is that when Play at Night came out, it was 2020. It was during the pandemic, and I remember the voices being like, “You gotta put it out now.” I remember emailing Northern Spy, my record label, and I was like, “This is the time.” In my personal life around that time, I was doing a lot of outreach and work with my sound healing community. We all got to face ourselves then, and it came to a point where – I’ve been trying to heal my PTSD, my trauma, for like 10 years. I remember being like: I’ve been doing a lot of work – it’s been long enough, right? It’s 2020. Here’s another traumatic thing that’s happening to the world, which is impacting all of us. It’s been just a series of really intense moments throughout my life, from the moment I was born, and I’ve just been trying to heal this, taking classes, seeking out gurus, courses, meditation. But there was this feeling of abandonment, this thing in me where I just felt so alone and so sad – this deep sadness of separation, which will put me into depression.

I don’t want to get into the details, but one thing triggered it, and I was like, “Well, if all of this – all these promises of healing – is not going to work, then to heck with it: I’m just gonna end my life. I’m done.” It was like, “How much more healing do I need to do? How many more books do I need to get? How much more meditation do I need to do?” At that time, I was also getting some new connections with the spirits. But I was like, “You guys are talking, you’re saying all of this, but I still feel this sadness. Where is that promise of bliss and peace? Where is that?” I’m not going to articulate those words now, but at that moment none of that was available. I was just ready to go.

I decided that I was going to walk from my mom’s place to the Hudson River. At that moment, I was like, “I’m going to jump off the Hutton River, and that’s it.” And all of a sudden, I blacked out – something took over me, I don’t even know what it is. Maybe it’s the moment of crisis, you’re disassociating, but all I know is that I blacked out, and the moment I woke up, I was sitting on my couch back in Brooklyn. I don’t know how I got back from Manhattan to Brooklyn, but I was sitting on my couch there, and I was like, “God damn it, what am I doing here? I had a plan. It was clear.” And all of a sudden, in that moment of true despair, I felt this incredible, warm, deep light, and I felt arms wrapping themselves around my body from the back, and it was the first time that I felt that hole inside of me, that sadness, completely be filled up. The sentence that came out was, “I am complete.” I’m talking about this, and to this day, I can feel in my heart right now – this yumminess, this bliss. That’s kind of how I guess the music that we hear now began. 

Depending on where you’re from, your religion or cultural context, we all see the universal energy with different names. For me, it’s Mother Kali. There’s all this promise that it’s a real thing, but in that moment, it became real to me. All this time of her being in my life, from the time I was little – looking at photos of my mom, praying, going to temples and everything – this entity became so real to me. That really helped me out. When COVID restrictions lifted and I went on tour, that was my point of anchor. And then, of course, more teachers were sent to me. I got to even dig into Hinduism in a way that I have not. I feel like there’s always like I feel like the universe is the biggest comedian, this cosmic joker – I’m always laughing. You know, according to Hinduism, if you commit to suicide, you come back again. You have to deal with that same thing again. So it’s just like the twilight zone: you step out one door, and then you come back again right there. It’s better to confront whatever those things now to move through it. 

I know we’re already going back in time, but I wanted to go quite a bit further back. I read that you started singing because your sister told you not to. Is that true?

I’m glad you bring this up, because I want to clear the record on this one. I feel like a lot of those times where I was speaking of this, there was still a tinge of anger towards her. I feel like my biggest teachers are the ones who have hurt me, who have put me in a situation where there was true pain, because it pushed me. When pain comes to you into your life, depending on what your Samskaras are – Samskaras are the things that you carry within yourself, your temperament, your past impressions – you take that pain, and then you deal with it differently. Two people can grow up in one household, have the same type of trauma, and they would choose two different paths. For me, I’ve always had this inclination of spirituality at a very young age; maybe it’s because of my ancestors where I was born, and my mom being spiritual at a young age. 

I love my sister very much, and I’m so happy that she actually was this catalyst, because I’m like, “Oh, you said no? Okay, so I’m going to actually do it.” [laughs] We have to think of the context – she was also a kid at the time, and she didn’t want her little sister to come around and hang out and sing with her friends. It was totally valid, right? But my brain saw it as being rejected. Then I was like, “Well, who are my friends here? If my sister doesn’t want to hang out with me, I know who my friends are. It’s the trees.” And the trees behind my house there, at my father’s home in Gabon: tall, beautiful trees. What’s so cool about that very specific place where I used to sing is that you would see the migration of birds at a certain period of time, so my audience changed all the time. They were awesome. 

Didn’t that also mean that singing was a very private thing for you for a long time?

There is what I was doing as a child, and then there is what I know now as a sound therapist. The more I dig into time and space – it’s almost like time and space exist all at once, and the more I investigate that, I see that to be true for me. So when I was singing, it’s almost as if I was traveling in the future. There was something familiar, something that felt bigger than me when I was doing that. I remember the first time I did Masma Dream World and there was actually an audience, and I was kind of losing myself between that moment in front of the trees and that. You know that movie Arrival, when the aliens gave her that power – it was feeling this way. It was kind of surreal.

Even though the songs I was singing were pop music, there was this healing thing that was also happening. It became like a spiritual experience, because music at my earlier age was always in the context of spirituality. Either you go and you sing the bhajans, which are devotional songs in the Hindu context, or in Catholic school. To me, I was doing another spiritual practice, but now in hindsight as an adult, and someone that has studied sound therapy for a while now, what was happening is that there was a lot of traumatic things around me at the time. My home wasn’t necessarily the safest place. There was a lot of sadness happening, and one way of soothing is singing, because it affects your vagus nerve, which is the one of the longest nerve that runs throughout the body, and it is associated with the breath. So as I was singing, I was feeling good. I was feeling safe, and that’s actually something that through all my childhood I kept doing. That’s how I look at it now, knowing what I know, but at the time for me it was like, “I’m singing for the trees.”

I read that the name of the project kind of alludes to a recurring dream that you started having when you were six. I wonder whether the project sometimes occupies more of a liminal space, for you, between the dream world and the waking world.

It’s a good question. I actually am enjoying conversing with you because I almost feel like you’re coming from a space that isn’t ego-focused on, like, this is the story you want to tell. I’m grateful to you for that, and to honor that, I will give you actually the answer. That dream – the more and more I’m living in 2025, there is not a big difference with the dream. [laughs] It’s a little bit more extreme in my dream, but it feels like the world is on fire. All of those things have been clarified for me in my spiritual pursuit and made more sense after 2020. 

Before 2020, I did take a training in dream yoga with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoch, which is at the highest of the learned people in the Bon tradition of Tibet. It’s all about, in order to understand the waking state, you must understand your dreams first: using dreaming as a spiritual practice in order to be able to awaken in this present reality. That was prior to 2020. There’s not a big difference between non-dualist Tibetan practices and non-dualist Hinduism – it’s very much connected. And in learning more and reading more about it, there’s this text, the Mandukya Upanishad, which is about the philosophy of Hinduism and psychology, and is more in the realm of non-dualism. I’m reading this book under the guidance of Swami Sarvapriyananda, and I’m like, “Wow, there’s so many breadcrumbs throughout my life for dreaming, and how dreams and reality kept shifting for me.” Because those dreams feel so much more real than even this reality. It’s like there’s no difference between the dreaming world and this reality – they are all an appearance in awareness, because the one thing that does not sleep is the awareness, which feels like it’s there during the dream, which feels like it’s there in this moment, which also doesn’t sleep during deep sleep.

If you go beyond your mind, you go beyond your memories, you go beyond who you are, at some point there is this blazing stare which witnesses all. Which allows now other things to come through, like, “Put the bass like this, put the drums like this, mix that over there. We need this plugin over there.” And I’m just in the middle. It’s almost like I have one foot on the other side of the beyond, and one foot here. But non-dualism has helped me kind of ground everything in this moment. 

A lot of music tries to evoke experiences of isolation, trauma, and sadness, but the way you frame your work is more as a form of invocation. Is that a distinction that feels tangible to you? 

You can feel the distinction when something has been created by the mind versus something that is beyond the mind. Something that is not, for lack of a better word, human. I don’t think that I can get into those states randomly at the studio. It’s a very real daily practice for me. Before, I was doing it because that’s how I was coping with the pain. – my meditation practice, reading the books, all that thirst for that type of knowledge so I can be better, so I can heal that pain. And then, beyond the experience I shared with you, now it’s all about holding on to that understanding and making it into a reality. When someone says, “I’m losing my mind,” it’s that raw energy that exists, that unrestricted, unclassified energy. Once it’s there, the only thing I can do is surrender to it because I don’t have enough power to withhold it. I wanted to jump off the Hudson River, and that thing was like, “No, you’re not.” So once I’m in the studio, I just give myself over to it. If it was for me to say, “Let me write an album about how I almost committed suicide,” that’s a whole different album than saying, “This is the experience that happened to me. This is what I have found, and I continue to surrender to that moment over and over and over and over again.” 

The power of meditation is palpable on PLEASE COME TO ME, but one thing that struck me is the way you incorporate dissonance in some of the more meditative tracks, or the way the meditation is rhythmically disrupted. I’m curious if that’s related to this element of surrender. Was that on your mind at all?

My mind wasn’t there for sure, because I’m getting ready for shows and I’m like, “Who wrote this?” [laughs] If my co-producer, Chris Weiss, wasn’t in the room – that’s my grounding. But I hear what you’re saying. I’m thinking of the first person that put paint to paper and drew up Mother Kali. Where was that person at? It wasn’t only one person that saw that; it’s many people that saw the same form. Once you see that type of form, you just have to surrender to it – some will be paintings, some will be poems, some will be songs. In my devotion to her, because she literally saved – I feel like she’s the personification that came to me at that moment. In 2013, I heard a voice that said I was supposed to make Masma Dream World, and I don’t have to worry about anything. They’re going to tell me how to do the sounds. They’re gonna direct it. And I didn’t believe them until the EP came out, and people responded to it. At some point, you can’t doubt anymore. You’re just doing it. With those sounds that you’re talking about, is that specific or not – it’s like there is something that organizes this world, and I try to surrender to it. 

A lot of what you filter into the music is field recordings, and that’s something I feel like grounds the spirituality of the album, rooting it in your personal history, as in ‘The Island Where the Goddess Lives’ or ‘What If It Was True’. 

Me even starting sound therapy – I actually had a dream about it. I remember I was turning 30, and I was like, “What am I doing in my life?” I was like, “I need to go back to school. I need to get a real job!” And that night,’ I had a dream about sound healing. I remember I woke up, and I could just hear, “Sound healing, sound healing.” It was echoing in my mind. I looked at my partner, and I was like, “Have you heard of sound healing?” “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So then I Google sound healing, and it was a real thing. And not only that, there was an open house at the school I went to the next weekend in San Francisco. And immediately I bought a ticket to go there. The moment I get to the to the open house, we’re all sitting down, and my teacher goes, “I don’t do a lot of marketing, I just have marketing angels around.” I was like, “You have who? Well, your marketing angels apparently entered my dream to tell me to come here.” Then I found out that the person that runs that school is one of the best-selling authors of mixing and mastering, David Gibson. I took all his courses, so I learned sound design and engineering.

When I’m in the studio, now it’s filtered through this information that I have been studying, but through their guidance. Putting all of those trainings together, or books – I was visiting back my mom, and on my way leaving her door, I see on the floor, there’s like a bunch of tapes. I’m like, ‘Mom, what are you doing with the tapes?” She goes, “Oh, those are your aunt’s tapes–” my late aunt that passed away – “I was going to throw them away.’ So I said, “Hold on one second.” I listened to the tapes, and that’s ‘What If It Was True’. Or I will be walking somewhere, and there will be a sound, and then the voices will be like, “Record this now,” and I’ll pull my phone and record the moment. So it’s not even the grounding – there’s this thing pushing me here and there, and I have completely surrendered to those impulses now. 

It’s clear that the maternal and the divine are inextricable in your work. What is at the root of that intersection for you? 

When I’m going to speak about mother feminine energy, I want to be clear that it’s not within the context of gender. I think that’s important just to clarify first. There are sages in India and indigenous cultures that have all investigated that – you cannot point out a single civilization or community or culture that does not have the Divine Mother embedded in it. The idea of the Divine Mother is something that never did not exist for me just because of growing up Hindu and my mom literally having the goddess Kali on her on her altar every Thursday when we were praying. But then I would go to Catholic school, and I’d be looking for Mother Mary. In my own personal investigation, it makes more sense that the creator of something would be a mother that takes care of her children. That’s how my psychology is able to understand that. Even in Gabon, the Gabonese passport – the emblem for Gabon is a mother breastfeeding. 

The second aspect, and you can hear it in the album, is my relationship with my mom throughout the years. Although we were together a lot of the time, there was so much trauma happening in our lives together, and independently, that it actually disallowed me to know how to have relationships with people as an adult. Because that was not mirrored to me. I remember I had a mentor, and I was like, “I can’t be in a relationship.” I was just broken up with someone, so I was heartbroken at the moment, and she was like, “Look at the relationship with your mom. If you heal your relationship with your mom, you will heal all relationships.” If you think of it, he first relationship you’ve ever experienced is the one in the womb. So that propelled this investigation of: Who was my mom? So I kind of forced my mom to tell me: “Ma, let’s be together. Let’s heal this. I want to heal our communication style. What happened to you? What happened? What happened from Singapore to Gabon? How was grandma?” 

I was asking all of these questions, and in that discovery I found that it was really hard for my mom to have this conversation. Over the years, she went through her own journey of healing herself, and I went on my own journey. So when we will come together, we will come with this new understanding, and then we will heal, we will heal, we will heal together. And I believe that it also has permeated throughout the whole family unit. My grandmother comes from World War II Singapore; her story is very, very sad. My grandfather’s family ran away from India because they were Hindu priests, so they went to Malaysia. Then I was like, “Oh, grandpa was a Hindu priest! So what happened? What happened to our Indian family?” What was prominent in all of this was the fact that when I was like, “But Ma, when things were hard, what helped you?” She said, “I pray to Mother Kali.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Masma Dream World’s PLEASE COME TO ME is out February 21 via Valley of Search.