Spectreview: Jyoti – Mama, You Can Bet!

Released: August 28, 2020

Jazz
Soul
Funk
Instrumental

-LIGHT CORAL-

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For over fifteen years, Georgia Anne Muldrow has lived and breathed the music of her parents’ legacy, practicing jazz and soul in all of its mercurial forms. She’s collaborated with high-profile artists like Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Robert Glasper and Dev Hynes, all the while remaining just outside the spotlight, in the comfort of elusion. A side project like Jyoti, on the surface, might seem a little redundant considering how consistently Muldrow has pushed the limits of the form already under her own name. That name, as it turns out, was given to her in her youth by Alice Coltrane, and it signifies a deep dive into even further experimental waters.

It’s a wonderful surprise that Mama, You Can Bet!, for all its avenues, is so incredibly listenable. Only a few of its tracks breach the four-minute mark, and the indulgences are kept to a minimum, but that breeziness belies an invigorating sense of adventure. Like many great jazz records, this one is a journey from locale to locale, from revelry to resistance and back. It’s rife with stylistic variance, from the cascading vibraphone of “Zane, The Scribe” to the delightfully-madcap pair of “Geemixed” Mingus tracks to the exuberant howls of “Bop for Aneho” and the off-kilter percussiveness of “Swing, Kirikou, Swing!”. Muldrow swaddles these tracks in warm, vibrant production that pulls as much life as possible out of her instruments.

Yet what makes it the most crucial Jyoti offering yet is the inclusion, at last, of Muldrow’s voice. Along with being a remarkable instrument in itself, it’s an anchor of context for every piece it appears in. From the get-go, the familial support of the title track bask its sunlit synths and walking bass line in positivity, creating an inviting space that primes the listener for subsequent elicitations of joy. They do come, in the honest acknowledgment of “Our Joy (Mercedes)” and in “Ra Noise (Thukumbado)’s” eponymous tribute to the jazz great (of which Lakecia Benjamin’s saxophone forms an intense nexus). But Muldrow’s album-length itinerary serves valleys along with its peaks, and the harrowing modulation of “Orgone,” along with the crushing, atmospheric “This Walk” are standouts because of how stark they feel in comparison. The former in particular sees Muldrow’s vocal power finally emerge, and its presence, especially following the record’s previous lightness, sears with power.

With countless projects under her belt and nearly two decades to hone her craft, it’s hard to imagine Muldrow could do any wrong. Even so, Mama, You Can Bet! feels like an exceptionably strong outing for her, able to be enjoyed as much for its breezy instrumental pleasures as for its weighty complexities. With it, she solidifies Jyoti as not only a worthwhile endeavor but a vital part of her underappreciated legacy.

Highly recommended for secret histories.