The Mummers

The Mummers are a Brighton-based group active since 2006, centred on London-born singer-songwriter Raissa Khan-Panni. The line-up includes Mark Horwood, Raissa and Paul Sandrone, and the group is associated with experimental and pop music.

Background

Khan-Panni performs under the name Raissa and previously worked as a solo artist. She grows up in Tulse Hill in south London, with a mixed Chinese, Indian, Mexican and English background, and begins with classical music before later discovering artists such as Rickie Lee Jones and Prince. She learns the oboe, teaches herself to sing, buses in Leicester Square as a school pupil and later performs across Europe before studying music in Bristol.

Her solo career gains critical attention, particularly for the album Believer and the single How Long Do I Get. After that period she returns to work and spends time waitressing in a Brixton restaurant, while continuing to write lyrics about that part of her life.

Formation and name

In 2005, Khan-Panni receives a track built around her vocals and meets orchestral composer Mark Horwood, who lives on the South Coast in a treehouse outside Brighton. They assemble around 20 musicians from the Brighton area and record an album there with producer Paul Sandrone. The group takes its name from medieval mummers, travelling performers who wear masks and costumes and present stories through rhyme, song and mime.

Style

The Mummers describe their sound as an orchestral urban fairground. Their references include night buses, Negro spirituals, The Owl and the Pussycat, Wings of Desire, orange trees, early-morning walks through London, and the fairytale tapes Khan-Panni listens to at bedtime as a child. The music is arranged with the feel of a carnival, a marching band and a string quartet, and Khan-Panni describes the songs as musical versions of real events and fairytale treatments of ordinary life.

Earlier work

Before forming The Mummers, Khan-Panni is already known as Raissa and receives acclaim for her solo work. Her writing is shaped in part by the large-scale sound of Rufus Wainwright and the spaciousness of the Flaming Lips.