Change Has To Come

MO'JU

A call to arms to work together for change

Why I wrote this song

I wrote this song against the backdrop of 2019-2020 bushfires and the beginning of the pandemic. I have always cared deeply about environmental and sociopolitical issues, but I was about to become a parent for the first time and suddenly everything seemed more urgent than ever before. My concerns for a future beyond my own lifetime became more real and tangible than conceptual.

About me as an artist

I am Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga, professionally known as MO’JU, a queer, non-binary, third culture kid (Wiradjuri / Filipino) who uses their music to speak about their lived experience as someone of intersectional identity.

My 2018 album ‘Native Tongue’ was an exploration of their connection to family and ancestry as well as the life experience of a person of colour in modern Australian society.

My latest album ‘Oro, Plata, Mata’ was released this March. In this album I examine the internal conflict I have experienced participating in a capitalist society – feeling both complicit and captive. I also contemplate my feelings of eco-anxiety and concern, grappling with the dire implications for humanity, should we continue down this path of excess and destruction.

About the music video

When I first started writing this song we were experiencing bushfires all over the country. By the time I made the video in 2022, we were experiencing unprecedented flooding around the country.

I wanted to make something simple that evoked both fire and flood and spoke to the urgency of the situation. So you will see tonally the colour palette is of burnt orange and reds, but as the video progresses there is water rising around us, which eventually reaches our necks. There is also a sun setting behind us, a metaphor for time running out and the sun setting on our life as we know it, if we continue to let the waters rise.