Jai Uttal

Fusing jazz, Worldbeat, and traditional Indian chants, Uttal crafts a passionate and entrancing musical brew. His robust baritone voice dips and soars with devotion; his dotar offers microtonal embellishments that lilt and sigh with a mixture of sadness and exultation. But this is not merely a wholesale Westernization of Eastern musical styles -- this is a full-fledged World Fusion project. The ensemble includes Hammond organ, country-fried electric guitar, and a rhythm section that percolates somewhere between down-tempo breakbeat and Reggae. And when a trombone and sax join the guitar and organ in soulful, articulate melodies, the music defies genre classification.