Giungla is the stage name of Emanuela (but it’s just Ema for everyone) out of Italy, and her name comes from the Italian word for ‘jungle’, “I like the fact it gives you the idea of something you cannot fully understand nor control because of its innate nature,” Giungla says to Eat This Music at the top of our chat about her debut EP. “And that’s the way I believe one should approach music: you can’t think too much about it, it’s more a matter of feeling it.”
Giungla just released her new five-track EP called “Turbulence”, which she is obviously really proud of, and this summer she is playing a few shows with drums, so for the first time, Giungla won’t be alone on stage. Then for the rest of the summer, she is on tour as a session guitarist with an Italian artist called Myss Keta, who is one of the main voices of the LGBTQ+ community in Italy.
At the beginning of the year, Giungla also started working as a sound designer in a studio so which is helping her find new ideas and approaches for the new material.
“I think this is the perfect time to experiment with different things in general, like collaborating with other artists and trying to create a community even if we’re “distant”, and I’m happy 2021 is giving me a lot of chances in this direction.” — Giungla
“It feels really good to finally have some music out after such a difficult year without shows (or with a few shows with people socially distanced and sitting), which are a very important part of what I do,” Giungla expresses on the release of her debut record. “Releasing new music gave me the chance to see that people around me really are missing everything about music, to collaborate with beautiful people and artists, and to feel that I’m definitely not alone in this. The power of music.”
Giungla’s Turbulence is about all the stuff around us we can’t control. It’s also about missing life out there with its ups and downs: “Basically, I imagined a plane writing a sort of love song to turbulence,” Giungla explains” What can feel like the scariest part of a flight, it’s just a part of it and sometimes you need to go through it in order to keep flying. It wasn’t intentional, but in retrospect, I feel that this title can describe perfectly these times we’re living.”
Giungla never knows what she wants to say exactly at the beginning of the creative process for a song. Music for Giungla is a discovery and she almost never knows the result. In fact, Giungla usually starts writing from a melody idea, from a riff, or with a precise word/sentence in mind, but basically only once a song it’s finished she can see its true meaning.
“For this EP I had the chance to work with producer Andy Savours (who also worked with The Kills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) in his London studio, which was really exciting, and this helped me a lot in shaping a new sound.” — Giungla
“Plus, I wrote the song “Little Problem” with Jessica Winter. I love Jess’ work both as a songwriter and as a producer,” Giungla continues. “It’s probably the first time I release something I wrote 50/50 with someone else as part of a body of work and I’m really proud of that. I loved working with her.”
Giungla is the type of artist that tends not to speak a lot about herse;f in a direct way when she is writing but does feel that the title track of the EP “Turbulence” really represents who Giungla is and speaks a lot about her as a persona and artist, “I think that in the past I used many precise images in my music, but this time I tried to reflect on something more elusive and basically more connected to the idea movement and to imagine a balance between opposite feelings,” Giungla adds. “It’s like I tried to grab some feelings to see what they’re all about. Let’s say it’s my personal way of doing introspection.”
With this EP, Giungla is hoping people will find some sounds that are unlike anything else and, please, feel free to headbang a lot. “I think I would recommend “Turbulence” if you want to have a taste of the Giungla sonic world,” Giungla emphasises. “And “Give Up” if you want to have a taste of the live gig vibe.”
