Voices Like Rain - An interview with Ajeet

Voices like Rain is the first live album by Ajeet, a collection of songs that portray the richness of life around the world, and the love and connection created collectively through the language of music.

Ajeet’s concerts are a unique experience of journeying from stillness to pulsing tribal dance and through dreamy ballads inside of a rich musical tapestry. Ajeet has a growing worldwide audience hungry to have her return to the stage after 2 years, so she decided to create ‘Voices Like Rain’, her first live album to share their favorite songs from her concerts. She has uniquely merged the cultural experiences of American Folk, Celtic, Shamanic and Sikh music in a way that has hundreds flocking to each of her live concerts. Each song on this album was recorded at a different venue on her last European Tour in 2019, which will help the music connect to her fans all across the continent and the world. The music features layered harmonies, acoustic and electric guitars, world hand percussion, and celtic harp.

What inspired you to create a live album?

Ajeet: To me there is nothing in this world like live music. Whether I'm in the audience or on stage, there is an incredible vitality in music that is like nothing else. Over the years, I've felt most free, most at home, and most deeply connected while playing concerts and hearing the voices of the audience. My band and I have covered a lot of ground with a fire in our bellies and longing in our depths to share music. This year we've taken time to pause, to rest our tired bodies, and to reconnect with home. We've also come to cherish the opportunity to play music in a whole new way as we sense the fragility of our lives as touring musicians during this time. I can still hear the audience’s voices in my dreams and feel the echoes of all the rich experiences we've shared. With that longing for shared musical space, I turned to our archives and mixed a selection of moments in our concerts that moved me and that allow me to feel that connection once again. They are our journeys and our offerings, and I hope they bring people the peace, inspiration and connection they have for me.

Can you tell us a little bit about the band?

Ajeet: They are an interesting, cool, eclectic group of people from all over the world. We have Aisling Urwin on harp and she is Irish and has a very traditional Irish musical background, which the two of us share. That is definitely a precedent in the vocals, but also in some of the melodic aspects. Raffa is our percussionist. He is from Spain but has lived a lot of his life in Africa, studying and performing in African drum groups. He is very cool and grounded. Everyone is entranced by Raffa’s stage presence. He is definitely a sight with his long dreads and amazing tattoos. He is quirky, funny and wild, but when on stage he becomes very deep and almost shamanic. Ezra is our guitarist. Everybody loves Ezra. He is sweet, focused, and an extremely versatile musician. He is a multitasker on stage and does all of his effects with his toes while he plays guitar. He is an outdoorsman and a rock climber and so has extremely dexterous feet and toes and audiences love to watch how incredibly skilled he is at controlling all his sounds with his toes. Being a very eclectic group of people from all over the world definitely creates a feeling of a real fusion of cultures in the music; we play a combination of original songs that I’ve written, and also traditional songs from places that all of us have either lived or have a deep musical connection to.

How does this intercultural background of the band reflect on your music and live events?

Ajeet: As I was listening to the tracks on this collection, I was really feeling how important it is to share with people that we are a group of travellers, and that is what has given each of our lives a lot of meaning. Music is our language of connecting to the cultures we have spent time in and the places we have lived. I think that comes through a lot in our live offerings where we bring our love of the world and the richness of human experience through music in this gathering of folk songs of the cultures that mean a lot to us.

Each of us in the band have spent our whole adult lives travelling, and we have all lived in multiple countries and learned many of these songs living in countries far from our own homes. We are rooted in songs from many places, and by connecting through the songs, we feel at home in music no matter where we are.

Do you have any particular rituals you enjoy doing together while touring?

Ajeet: Raffa has Palo Santo, which is wood from a sacred tree that is burned like incense, with him at all times. He uses it to clear each of us before each concert, and then we do a big group hug, getting really connected to each other. The music is about being together and playing together, and getting our heads into that space of being really connected before we go on stage is important. We never miss this pre-show ritual. It is very important for all of us.

Why are your concerts so special to your audience?

Ajeet: We encourage people to dive into their own experience, letting it be more like a journey, rather than a performance. Our concerts are almost ceremonial, a ritual in a way that is not spoken or named. It is something I’ve always been interested in and studied a lot:  the importance of ritual in human life. Music and concerts hold so many moments of connection and ritual in our current society, so we do a lot of encouraging people to be a part of it and sing in moments where the words are very simple. You will hear it in the recordings; sometimes it is just amazing and powerful and in other concerts people are a little more withdrawn, maybe not as comfortable. There are concerts where the feeling of the entire sea of voices singing together blows me away the most and I think a lot of people leave the concert with that special energy, maybe even more than my voice. It is the collective voice, perhaps that is more moving.

Why did you select “Breathe” as the focus track of the album?

Ajeet: I wrote the song “Breathe” for one of my dearest friends. It was a moment when I wanted her to feel my support and my belief in her beauty, strength and talent. I wanted to somehow share the way I saw her through the feeling of a song so that she could feel her beauty as clearly as I do. She was taking such big steps in her life towards freedom, and I wanted to write a song that lived like the wind beneath her wings as she took those leaps. I was so moved by her courage. Over time this song became that for me, too. I’d sing it, and it became like a reminder to the darker corners of my own heart, nudging me to move ever closer to a truth I felt in my bones. It became a reminder to move through life with trust in my own inner guidance. With this evolution, a new part of the song emerged. This live version of the song was recorded in Amsterdam, a place that always feels like home in some mysterious way. This song has brought a touch of magic to my life, and I hope it does the same to everyone that hears it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMzIHDwhTvo

Listen to Voices Like Rain now.