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For
years, Jai Uttal has occupied a special place in the vanguard of the
world music movement, delighting an international audience by embracing
an extraordinary variety of cultures and musical traditions ranging from
Appalachia, to the rock of the ’60s, to the Kirtan chants of ancient
India. With MONDO RAMA, he continues to break new ground, pushing the
boundaries of contemporary world fusion, yet offering his most
accessible music to date, producing an infectious blend that aims Uttal
right at a pop mainstream audience.
“This album is both a progression and a departure,” Jai reflects.
“During the time of conceiving and producing this CD I did a lot of
traveling; Israel, Brazil, Fiji, and India, each time returning to my
home in the Oakland-Berkeley area where boom boxes and car sub-woofers
are the preferred way of hearing music.”
This multitude of experiences went into the making of MONDO RAMA.
“The album seemed to grow and grow with a life and energy of its own.
Sometimes it spoke to me, and sometimes I spoke to it. MONDO RAMA takes
the seeds of what I’ve been doing with Indian and world music and
spreads them in various directions: dance music, sampling, turntablism,
Appalachian, Brazilian, blues, and Middle Eastern. While the rhythms and
melodies are consistently organic, the textures are tripped out and
electronic.” Jai’s rendition of Tomorrow Never Knows/Shivaya, the
Beatles classic from REVOLVER, is a case in point: singularly melodic
verses in English followed by soaring Sanskrit invocations to Lord Shiva
(the energy of transformation) take the listener on a journey from one
world to the next and back. “My music is about traveling,” Jai
points out. “Actually REVOLVER was kind of a model for this album.
Each song created its own unique environment and yet they were all tied
together.”
The references to the Beatles and traveling are apt. Before he ever went
to India and immersed himself in other musical traditions, Jai was a
’60s teenager weaned on the Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, et al. As the son
of a music business executive in New York, he grew up around music (his
father discovered Al Green and Blondie, and founded Bell Records) and he
remembers being at recording sessions for Devil In A Blue Dress at age
eight. But it wasn’t until he was nineteen, studying at Reed College
in Oregon, that he surrendered completely to the sounds of Indian music
after attending a concert by the great sarod master, Ustad Ali Akbar
Khan. The experience was so transcendent that he dropped out and moved
to the Bay Area and began a 25-year guru-sheshia relationship with the
legendary Khan, who taught him mastery of the 25-stringed instrument.
When he traveled to India, Uttal became fascinated by all the traditions
and lived with the Bauls of Bengal, the mystical musical madmen of East
India who combined elements of Tantric Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism.
Jai could communicate with them only through music, and by the time he
returned to the U.S., exposure to the Bauls, Kirtan singers, and other
Indian forms had profoundly altered the way he perceived, conceived, and
performed music.
While Jai continued delving into Indian music, defining his distinctive
voice and honing his chops, he embraced reggae, Motown, punk, blues,
rock, and jazz in various bands throughout the ’70s and ’80s. His
exquisite vocal style and exotic sound began to emerge with FOOTPRINTS,
his 1991 Triloka release that featured Don Cherry and garnered rave
reviews. Jai put together a seven-member band called the Pagan Love
Orchestra and began touring internationally. With MONKEY (1993) it was
clear that Jai and the Pagan Love Orchestra were gaining a large
following when the album landed in the top ten of Billboard’s world
music chart. With BEGGARS AND SAINTS, Jai’s tribute to the Bauls of
Bengal the following year, that following was further solidified; and by
SHIVA STATION, his 1997 release mixed by Bill Laswell, he was being
acclaimed as one of the true stars of world-pop fusion.
MONDO
RAMA
MONDO RAMA affirms that Jai Uttal has evolved into one of the foremost
artists communicating spiritual themes in truly original world music.
The title conveys the presence of “an absolute all pervading Being in
a big crazy world,” Jai explains, and the album was created in a year
of great personal change for the artist: in Narayana,
Hindu chants morph into strains of bossa nova; in
Sri Krishna, devotional Kirtan singing meets contemporary DJ
turntablism; Shalom
utilizes
the words of a Hebrew prayer for wholeness, forgiveness, and peace,
reflecting the influence of the Kabbalists on the artist; Mood X is a “psychedelic hillbilly song of anguish and love”; Kali
Mati is “roadhouse rock merged with Indian village music”; and
in Valencia Gardens we hear
the voice of a 15-year-old girl who attempted murder, while Jai sings
lyrics derived from the songs of the Bauls.
Call the music of MONDO RAMA what you will – diverse, cross-cultural,
exotic, melodic, ancient, modern, acoustic, orchestral, spiritual,
techno – the only obvious thing is that it’s exhilarating,
delightful, and that nothing else sounds quite like it.
Visit
Jai Uttal's official web site.
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TO MONDO RAMA ALBUM PAGE
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