Mar 21

Mar 21 Jai Uttal’s Roots! Rock! Rama! Juggernaut Continues April 22 In Sonoma At Sacred Music Sessions

Photo of Jai Uttal by Jeffrey Newberry

PRESS RELEASE FROM JAI UTTAL

Sonoma, CA – March 21, 2017 – Coming off of a sold out Kirtan event with over 400 bhaktas at Spirit Rock, Grammy nominated spiritual music pioneer Jai Uttal will perform a more intimate Northern California event to celebrate the release of his acclaimed 19th album Roots! Rock! Rama! in the town of Sonoma April 22 at Sacred Music Sessions. Open to just 50 ticket buyers, these sessions are videotaped for a larger audience online. Tickets are $30 in advance here.

In Sonoma Jai will be joined by noted Kirtanista Prajna Vieira on vocals, bassist Greg Barnett, Radhanath Das on mridangam, and the co-producer of Roots, Rock, Rama! Ben Leinbach on drums and percussion.

Of the album, top music trade magazine Hits says it’s “simply undeniable” and about the live show adds “the mood was as purely positive, inclusive and uplifting as any gig I can recall. And isn’t that exactly what we need these days?” LA Yoga says “There’s no way to sit still as this music plays and it’s easy to see how the live concerts Jai will perform in celebration of this collection will go down as unforgettable.” And the Marin Independent Journal adds, “The production values are impeccable and the call and response between Uttal and his chorus of backup singers is heavenly.”

Common Ground raves “This spectacular DBL CD is a journey through the splendors, riches and tribulations of the India sub-continent, musically, spiritually and globally. Jai Uttal has reigned over the Nor Cal kirtan/chant scene for three decades. His musical monarchy has been a rollicking, beneficent parade of high energy and sacred spirit through 18 albums and countless live shows. While kirtan is not a ‘musical genre’, Jai has infused his world vision with an amalgam of reggae, blues, Indian and Beatles-inspired pop music. All of these have come together on his celebratory Roots, Rock, Rama! — an ultra-dynamic raise the roof high and open the heart wide offering.”

Jai Uttal has been rightly hailed as a world music pioneer. Singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, he was among the first to hear the universal heartbeat in the variegated rhythms of the globe. But his powerful, plangent voice and panoramic musical vision have also long been at the core of the yoga community’s tradition of call-and response devotional chanting known as Kirtan. While his music is deeply rooted in Indian classical tradition—he studied long and hard under the Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan—it is also plentifully imbued with echoes of reggae, rock, folk, Brazilian music, Bollywood and other sounds from across the musical universe. All of these diverse and colorful strands are woven together beautifully on Roots, Rock, Rama! The title is a play on the name of the Bob Marley song “Roots, Rock, Reggae.”

“I feel that this album is the completion of a cycle,” Jai says. “And it’s a cycle of many years. I wanted to put every mood, feeling and experience I’ve had into these songs. I wanted to offer a rainbow of devotional feeling.”

But the centerpiece of the album is Jai Uttal’s amazing voice. With his unique gift for phrasing and melismatic ornamentation he can wrest a thousand moods from a simple Sanskrit mantra.

Jai Uttal’s musical journey began at an early age. Growing up in Manhattan, the son of record executive Larry Uttal, he was ideally suited to absorb pop music’s ‘50s and ‘60s golden age. “Every week my father would bring home the top ten singles and play them for my sister and me,” he remembers. “That was the coolest thing. And I was at the recording session of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels doing ‘Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly.’ That made me totally crazy; it was just so amazing.”

Jai learned to play piano, guitar, banjo and harmonica while still quite young. But a first encounter with Indian music at age 17 proved to be a life-changing experience. He would later say that this music “touched my heart like the sounds of home.” Soon he was studying with Indian sarod virtuoso Ali Akbar Khan. His endeavor to master the challenging Indian stringed instrument also led to the discovery of his singing voice.

“Ali Akbar Khan insisted that all his students study singing as well,” Jai explains. “He said, ‘All music comes from the voice. I won’t teach you sarod unless you also study voice.’ Most of the students just did it begrudgingly. We wanted to be instrumentalists. I was extremely shy and insecure about singing, but I found that when I was at home practicing, I started having glimmers of this deep, deep inner world when I started singing the ragas. But it was years before I took that outside my bedroom. And what took me out of the bedroom was kirtan. I was terrified at first, but somewhere along the line I realized that I couldn’t be paralyzed by fear because singing was my salvation and spiritual catharsis.”

Music and spiritual practice became inextricably linked for Jai when he became a student of Indian spiritual master Neem Karoli Baba in 1971. Maharaji, as the guru is known to his students, encouraged the practice of bhakti (devotional) yoga as expressed through kirtan, the call-and-response chanting of sacred names, over and over again until they become deeply instilled in the consciousness, providing an experience of profound peace and spiritual insight. Kirtan would become the center of Jai’s musical and spiritual life.

But while all this was unfolding, Jai was also exploring other music forms, including a stint as electric guitarist for Jamaican reggae artists Earl Zero. In time, he began searching for ways to integrate all the diverse musical styles and traditions he’d absorbed.

“I felt that the harmonic structure of Western music couldn’t really support the subtlety of the melodies in Indian music,” he says. “That’s where I started on my very first album, Footprints [in 1990]. I tried to make that leap between Indian melody and Western harmony.”

With contributions from jazz trumpet innovator Don Cherry and Indian vocalist Lakshmi Shankar, Footprints was the first in what has become a deep and diverse catalog of Jai Uttal albums that includes 2002’s Grammy-nominated Mondo Rama, 2009’s Thunder Love and the 2011 children’s album, Kirtan Kids. Many of these recordings were produced by his longtime musical associate Ben Leinbach, who also played the main production role on Roots, Rock, Rama!

Roots, Rock, Rama! represents not only a grand summation of Jai Uttal’s musical and devotional journey but also a new chapter in conscious music-making. After all these years and so many recordings, concerts and workshops, he’s still wide open to new musical epiphanies.

“The universe is filled with colors and melodies,” he says. “They’re just everywhere, if only we could see and hear them more clearly. I feel that all art exists to enhance devotional practice and devotional expression. I just try to hear the melodies.”

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For more information please see jaiuttal.com.