Kirtan Master Jai Uttal Speaks About Music, Love and Addiction
From the banjo picking of Appalachian influences to Brazilian rhythm and classical Indian cadences, Jai Uttal’s release Thunder Love is a foot-stomping, hand-clapping ode to love and longing in all its forms. Amidst a busy touring schedule, Jai Uttal paused to talk to LA YOGA about finding love.
FMT: When I listen to Thunder Love, I feel it has a very different quality from some of your other releases.
JU: The Indian influences in the music are certainly an extension of all my other albums but this has a lot of Brazilian music, there’s samba, and there’s bossanova. This has been developing in me for quite some time, but Thunder Love is the first time it’s really expressed itself.
The idea came from my wife. She’s Brazilian. We met in Brazil, and since I’ve been with her, she’s turned me on to the incredible riches of the music. I find it so musically off the chart in life and light and the Brazilian flavor of spirituality which is also very sensual.
On a different level, my last few albums, the double kirtan album and Music for Yoga and Other Joys and Loveland were all very introspective, transpersonal, dreamy, spacey and meditative and Thunder Love goes right from that into the personal in terms of the English lyrics talking about what’s happening inside me and connecting that to the transpersonal and mystical. The chorus on each of the songs is fascinating and intense. The song is really an expression of the personal issues, challenges and experiences of life with the deeply mystical transformative practice of the mantra (sacred syllables) and rather than separating them, they’re totally combined.
I’ve always in my albums had a couple of English language songs, but this is the first time I’ve done it where the songs are totally mixed where a verse is in English and a chorus is in Sanskrit. I thought, this is crazy! I’m going to alienate the people who like English words and the people who like kirtan words! It’s just what came.
Musically that was an experiment I had never done before. Emotionally and spiritually, I think that’s what life is about. We don’t leave our personal selves and personal lives behind to go a spiritual journey.
FMT: Sometimes we forget there is that spiritual expression in daily life and there is no either/or of Sanskrit or English or Indian rhythm and Brazilian rhythm.
JU: We compartmentalize our “spiritual” lives. I did it a lot. Every time I say “spiritual” please put it in quotes. We make comparisons between the different sides of our lives: the “spiritual” side and the world side. Every one of those separations and compartmentalizations is counterproductive rather than productive. We grow together, heal together, work together and be one together or else there’s a big error in the picture.
Why would we be human if being human was anti-“spiritual”? I think that would have been a big mistake on God’s part.
FMT: How is Thunder Love about your own experience of love?
JU: I didn’t really open happiness or love, until I was in my fifties, until I met [my wife] Nubia and secondly, hugely, until we had our baby Esra. I’ve certainly had a lot of glimpses of love, like when I met my Guru which was unbelievable grace slash luck slash love, but I don’t think I ever really got to the place where I could allow myself to fully believe until I met my wife.
Opening to human love made me feel the vastness of divine love. It’s not like it suddenly came; it was always there, but I didn’t think that someone like me was allowed to actually achieve that kind of love. Then that began to change and it’s still changing today; my heart is like a revolving door: one day open, the next day closed, one day open, the next day closed.
It’s just the acceptance of love wasn’t in me before and I think Thunder Love is the first CD that expresses these changes. Mondo Rama was recorded on the cusp of all these changes. One of the big changes in my late, late, late 40s was getting sober. Of course, people in the Yoga community don’t talk much about addiction but we are as prey to addiction as anybody and working on healing that, which of course is an ongoing process. This process jump-starts the process of love.
FMT: I agree, addiction is not often talked about in the Yoga community and sometimes people feel as though doing Yoga should just cure everything but it doesn’t necessarily happen that way.
JU: I’ve been deeply involved in Bhakti Yoga (practice of devotion) since I was a teenager and on one hand I think it kept me alive and kept my connection to my groove alive and yet I still had to go through the super intense life stuff and one of those was addiction. It’s a shame that in the Yoga community there’s so much denial. It’s like, oh we’re yogis so we can’t have any dark side, but that’s so not true.
We’ve chosen the path of Yoga to heal. The full spectrum of Yoga is that it’s such a deep healing practice, but any healing starts with being aware of that which needs to be healed.
For more information about Jai Uttal, visit: jaiuttal.com.
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.