The joyous return of Jai Uttal to the Rio Theatre
Grammy-nominated musical artist Jai Uttal returns after two decades to the Rio Theatre, playing Saturday, Sept. 27 with his band, The Pagan Love Orchestra.
This rare showing comes at a time when Uttal is getting his house in order, literally.
“The Santa Cruz show is kind of a one-off, because we, my wife and I, just moved from the Bay Area to Grass Valley,” Uttal says from his new home. “I’m going to be doing a small tour at the end of October. But this is more like a return to Santa Cruz. I used to live there, and I haven’t played in Santa Cruz [without The Pagan Love Orchestra] since before the pandemic.”
In 1997, Uttal brought forth his vision of The Pagan Love Orchestra. It was/is a mash-up of myriad styles of music, including Indian music, rock, jazz, reggae, ska, samba and jazz. The band has had up to a dozen members—and Uttal, who is himself classically trained on the piano, only works with the best.
“My idea, you could call it a vision, came out of places that I’ve been to in India,” says Uttal, who has traveled the world sharing his music.
“In the villages, in the mountains particularly, there would be gatherings, and all these people would come together. I also saw it in Bengal, in West Bengal, where people, all these people, would get together and they all knew the same songs. But they all knew them slightly differently, and they just didn’t care and would play all these beautiful songs together. That was kind of the original vision for The Pagan Love Orchestra,” Uttal reflects.
The now silver-haired composer took the concepts and structures of devotional songs, and spiritual songs, and to ensure that his band kept things loose, they would only rehearse once. Since the first album with The Pagan Love Orchestra, Shiva Station in 1997, the band has evolved.
“I think I was a little too controlling at first,” Uttal admits. “As we evolved, I became less controlling and more honoring and respectful, and grateful, of the incredible musical talents working with me.”
When questioned about what the goal is in his music, Uttal is quick to answer, “It’s about having more spaciousness, more love and more compassion.”
At the Santa Cruz show, the arrangements are like a “loose sarong,” Uttal explains. “A loose shirt over a skeleton. The arrangement is the skeleton, but everything else is very fluid. And the songs themselves are all Kirtan call-and-response, chanting songs. They’re mantra songs. But there’s nothing monotonous about it.”
Kirtan is the thousands-of-years-old style of devotional call-and-response. Listening to Uttal, whose voice sounds like a Middle Eastern Bob Dylan, it’s easy to get swept up in the music, and find that one’s mind quiets. It’s like yoga for the brain. An antidote to the million miles a second constant rush we find ourselves in.
Uttal is an artist who absorbs the influences around him and spins them into a new fabric. Like a weaver whose loom contains yarn of all the different genres of music, The Pagan Love Orchestra is a psychedelic dashiki.
The music also acts as a vehicle to another space. “Whether it’s a solo concert or a concert with a full band, I’m inviting that transporting energy for myself and for the audience. I invite the audience to respond to my singing, to sing back to me. So it’s very interactional,” says the musical time traveler.
It’s truly the magic of music that it is able to transport you to another place—but so much depends on the intention of the band. In the case of Jai Uttal, the intention is transcendence.
“It’s like a wave comes over us and transports us to someplace that’s not like someplace we’ve ever been,” Uttal tries to explain. “It’s not someplace we’re ever going to be at again. It’s not nostalgic. It’s not recreating a previous experience. It’s a wave of unity.”
Once the dust settles from the uprooting and replanting, and with over 20 albums in his catalogue, there is a new live album on the horizon. “I’m just kind of still figuring it all out. like, okay, where’s the silverware?” Uttal laughs.
Jai Uttal and The Pagan Love Orchestra will play at 8pm on Saturday, Sept. 27 at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $30. Find more information at riotheatre.com.
