Guest DJ: DARUMA

Indra Raj: KGNU FM 88.5 Boulder, KGNU 1390 Denver, and you’re tuned into the afternoon Sound alternative. It’s been a busy afternoon. We had an Elephant Revival earlier, and now we have Shane and Gabriel from DARUMA in the studio. They’re a contemporary jazz unit. You can say more about that. How’s it going?

Shane: Greetings. Good. Thanks for having us.

Indra Raj: It’s good to have you. And we’re gonna do a fun little guest DJ set today, which I’ve been loving doing lately ’cause it’s fun to get to know musicians through the music that you enjoy and that has influenced you. But before we get into that, you guys are gonna be at Full Cycle this Saturday in Boulder and then it’s kicking off a regional tour in Colorado and New Mexico. I noticed you guys are gonna be at Dazzle at some point. Lots of great stops, so I guess, how would you categorize your music? 

Gabriel: I would definitely place it as contemporary jazz. We have a lot of different stylistic influences that go into it. Everybody in the band is listening to different stuff, as you’ll hear, even just between the two of us. It’s different lanes but related, existing in the same universe. So contemporary jazz but, with influences from all over.

Indra Raj: Yeah. And what do you play, Gabriel? 

Gabriel: I play the saxophone. 

Indra Raj: Nice. And you Shane? 

Shane: I am the group’s drummer and percussionist. 

Indra Raj: All right. And you guys are like a six piece band? 

Shane: It’s a five piece band. So the instrumentation is drums, electric and upright bass, piano and keyboards, and trombone and saxophone.

Indra Raj: Nice.

Shane: With Five world class musicians. 

Indra Raj: Awesome. Let’s get into some of this music that you all chose today. Shane, you chose McCoy Tyner. Tell us why you chose this track. 

Shane: This track is really beautiful. It’s called “Hymn Song” which is written by McCoy Tyner. And this is, I believe, a 1978 release called “Super Trios.” What’s interesting about this album is that the first half of the album is one configuration of a trio. The second half is obviously a second one. The first half is Tony Williams on drums, and Ron Carter on bass with McCoy. And this track “Hymn Song” is from the second half with the incredible Jack de Jeanette on drums and Eddie Gomez on bass, and just the way McCoy plays on this track. And then the whole album, it’s like he’s one person playing piano and it sounds like a symphony orchestra just from this one instrument. Just the way he plays and moves about the instrument and orchestrates everything. And then with the two other musicians, it sounds like eight musicians are playing. And it’s only three guys. And just every note that each one of them plays has so much intent and power behind it. It’s really inspiring to me in that way. 

Indra Raj: All right. That’s Shane’s first pick, Shane from DARUMA. Let’s listen to it together. 

[“Hymn Song” by McCoy Tyner plays]

Indra Raj: Yeah, like you said, you just can hear everything in it. 

Shane: It’s crazy. 

Indra Raj: It’s crazy. 

Shane: It sounds like there’s like an orchestra of musicians with all the things that are going on, and it’s just three guys, so it’s pretty incredible.

Indra Raj: Absolutely. So we have Shane and Gabriel in the studio from the band DARUMA. Tell me a little bit about how this band came together. We were just talking about how y’all met in Brookline and Boston and how has this come together? 

Shane: Gabriel and I met about 10 years ago, in my junior year of high school in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb basically right next to the city of Boston.

And we went to high school together for a year where we were in the school’s jazz band or our band director called it Improv Collective or Music Collective. It was really cool ’cause the way we run DARUMA now is like this collective of everyone brings in their own music and we try things out. And she fostered that in us in high school because we weren’t just playing like Duke Ellington charts and Count Basie charts all the time. While she did talk about that and educate us on it, she encouraged students to start bringing in their own arrangements and compositions and actually required it. So that was really inspirational for the direction of this group. 

Gabriel: Yeah. It was our band director, Carolyn Castellano. She was really amazing. And she would have us, like Shane said, arrange things individually and bring them in. And also, as a group every semester, I think we would do two or three songs that we would either arrange or compose completely from scratch as a group. And it was like this oral tradition kind of thing. We weren’t writing out charts. We were dictating parts to each other and saying, “hey play that baseline. Okay, that doesn’t sound so good in that register. Let’s change that to a different key.” So that was really cool to be, at that very formative age when you’re between 14 and 17 thinking that way. About music and taking your own ideas seriously, and taking other people’s ideas seriously and having the room to explore like that and feature your ideas on stage. 

Indra Raj: Writing your own music at that age and actually being told that it’s required as a part of your educational experience is not common. So that’s really cool that you all had that and obviously you’re taking it into what you’re doing now.

Shane: Exactly. So fast forward 10 years from high school our lives took different pathways and basically my family moved out to Denver a few years ago. Gabriel came out here because of a relationship he’s in and I found out that he was in Denver like inadvertently. And I’m like, “Hey man, like I’m coming to Denver soon ’cause I just moved here a year and a half ago” and I found out he was here and I just got here and I’m like, “Listen man, do you want to start a band together?” We’re both trying to pursue this music thing a hundred percent with tunnel vision. So he agreed and we just got our nose to the grindstone and started trying to get opportunities for ourselves, and we ended up winning a grant from a regional arts organization funded by the NEA and a couple other funds. And we got $15,000 to go on a US tour last year to a bunch of different cities across the states, and then that was a really crucial catalyst for the band to start getting more and more opportunities. And now we’re playing at the Kennedy Center this summer. So, we’re really excited about that. 

Indra Raj: I’m glad that’s happening. Arts funding is important. I will just say that in this current climate and the Kennedy Center, interesting stuff is happening there, but I’m glad you all are playing there. 

Shane: Yeah, definitely. We’re trying to bring light and positivity and healing through our music to all these places, no matter people’s differences and opinions. 

Indra Raj: Absolutely.

Shane: That hopefully brings people together as one. 

Indra Raj: Yes, music does that. And so you have one more thing that you chose here?

Shane: I did, yeah. I chose this awesome track that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago, and these picks are like things that I’ve recently been listening to. So this is in my playlist but it’s a track off of an album called Minnie by the incredible Minnie Riperton, who I think is a really multifaceted artist. And this track is called “Memory Lane.” I like how the lyrics talk about thinking of a memory and feeling happiness and pain and suffering at the same time. I think that’s really relatable. Even things you do in life that are your passion but also cause a lot of suffering. I think a lot of artists can relate to that for sure. So that’s really relatable. And then the arrangement is so syncopated and dense for a sort of quote unquote “pop artist,” like Minnie and you’ll hear string quartet in there and horns and rhythmic breakdowns and it’s great. So it’s a totally different vibe from the McCoy, but they are recorded within like a couple years of each other, which is also interesting to me. 

Indra Raj: It’s so wild because when I was putting this show together, I hadn’t looked at what you guys chose yet. And I actually chose a track from Minnie for the show, just really in general from “Coming to My Garden, which is, I think, maybe her most well known. But then I was reading about her and she died in her early thirties from breast cancer.

Shane: I did not know that.  

Indra Raj: It’s tragic. So it’s like she had such an amazing career at such a young age. It’s like you just wonder what could have been if she had lived longer. I feel like her music was so ahead of her time. Let’s hear this. My computer went to sleep, so hold on.

Indra Raj: Memory Lane from Minnie Riperton. 

[“Memory Lane” by Minnie Riperton plays]

Indra Raj: Okay, we’re having fun talking about conservatories and life and music and all the rest. That’s so interesting ’cause through my work at New England Conservatory, when I was in Boston, I knew Carolyn. 

Shane: Wow. 

Indra Raj: Like we came to your school and we like had one of our ensembles come and play for you all. I wonder if you were there. 

Shane: Maybe what year? Do you remember which ensemble it was? 

Indra Raj: It would’ve been sometime between 2012 and 2016. 

Shane: Oh wow. So we definitely might’ve been there. Yeah, I was there from 2014 to 2016, so that’s really funny. Super cool. 

Gabriel: Was it the jazz ensemble with Kevin’s son on saxophone? Oh my God, that’s so funny. I was there. I was, I think we were there. You know what, actually it’s funny actually, the bass player that we were just playing with this morning, ’cause we just did a Zoom audition. He’s from CU Boulder. He went to NEC and he actually is like friends with Kevin’s son and plays with him regularly.

Indra Raj: Such a nice guy. 

Gabriel: Yeah, I think he’s in New York now. Brilliant player too. 

Indra Raj: Yeah. It’s a small world, isn’t it? And it’s cool to have you guys in Denver ’cause I feel like this sort of thing, it’s in spades on the East coast and in east coast cities, but we just haven’t had as much of that energy out here in Colorado. So it’s nice to have a group like yours out here. 

Shane: It’s nice to be out here. Thank you. We love it out here. Appreciate it.

Gabriel: I think being in Denver has actually been really advantageous for the development of this group, ’cause I feel like there’s just been a lot of really great opportunities and, what I tell a lot of people about the music scene in Denver is a really great thing about it is there’s a lot of places to play and the average person in Colorado is just really pumped up about music. And that’s a really beautiful gift to be around. Because not every city is like that. I’ve lived in Boston, it was not like that. I lived in Los Angeles. It was certainly not like that. So this is really great to see here. 

Indra Raj: Yeah, it’s like a smaller selection, but people who are like really engaged statistically.

Shane: And they’re open too.

Indra Raj: Right? Really open.

Shane: Like, they come out and check new bands out, right? And if they like it, like that’s it. They love it and they’re super supportive and want to keep seeing you do really well. And the radio stations here are particularly very supportive. And high caliber. 

Indra Raj: Right?

Shane: VO has this whole amazing studio with Rocky Mountain Public media, and they do studio performances and they interview artists and they like sponsor shows. And it’s really great to have that resource, like lots of music and arts happening here. So we love it for a reason.

Indra Raj: Next time we’re gonna have you guys come and play in our Kabaret studio. This came together at the last minute, but absolutely. That’s so great to hear. I feel like it’s because for so many years, all these touring bands would just skip over Colorado. They would plan their whole national tour, but they wouldn’t come to Denver because there’s nothing around us, so it wasn’t worth it or whatever. And that has solely been changing, I think that sort of developed this hunger for good local musicians, who would be playing often here that we could really get behind. And earlier in the show we had Elephant Revival in, they’re out of Netherland and they’re a good example of a band that just, they’re so high quality, so great. They’re local and everyone just rallied behind ’em.

Gabriel: I have to go check ’em out 

Indra Raj: Yeah, absolutely.

Shane: That’s why community is important.

Indra Raj: Absolutely. And community radio. Okay, so Gabriel, you chose a couple songs here today too. Which one should we play first? 

Gabriel: We can start with the Ilan Bar-Lavi Barla song. Okay, it’s called “Laila.” 

Indra Raj: Tell us a little bit about it. 

Gabriel: Shane was doing stuff that was from the seventies. Within a couple years of itself. I have a 40 year gap with what he’s listening to. That’s a good contrast. I think this album’s from 2017. It’s by Ilan Bar-Lavi who, we’re just talking about Boston, he actually went to Berkeley. He’s half Mexican, half Israeli and this album has this wonderful vocalist, Shelly Tzarafi on it. And this Mexican guitar and vocal group Sonex as well. So you’ll hear some of that. 

Indra Raj: So it’s a real fusion here. 

Gabriel: Yeah, totally. 

Indra Raj: Awesome. Let’s listen to it now. 

[“Laila” by Ilan Bar-Lavi plays]

Indra Raj: All right, so we just heard, let’s see. I need to bring this up so I can remember Ilan Bar-Lavi from an album called “Unprofessional,” and we heard “Laila” off of that. Nice pick. All right, and you have one more piece of music here from Cassandra Wilson.

Gabriel: Yeah, she did this album in 2015. Cassandra Wilson’s an absolutely phenomenal vocalist.  NEA Jazz Master. Which is absolutely phenomenal. Album in 2015, “Coming Forth by Day.” And it’s mostly Billie Holiday songs. But, as you’ll hear, a much more modern interpretation. This particular one is one that people may know, “Strange Fruit” which is certainly dark subject matter. It’s about lynchings and a protest song about that era. Which Billie was not far removed from. Cassandra’s obviously much farther in the future from that. But, certainly feeling a lot of the aftershocks of that treatment.

Indra Raj: Nice. Okay. Let’s hear this version of “Strange Fruit” by Cassandra Wilson. 

[“Strange Fruit” by Cassandra Wilson plays]

Indra Raj: That was Cassandra Wilson’s version of Strange Fruit. Really like a rock version of it. Very epic.

Gabriel: Very eerie, and dark. Incredible though, what she did with it. That’s stunning. 

Indra Raj: Okay, so you guys are playing at the Full Cycle Bar here in Boulder, which is like a DIY venue. It’s newer in the area. It’s pretty cool.

Shane: It’s a bike shop turned Jazz supper club at night on the weekends. Very Boulder, very unique.

Indra Raj: Very Boulder. So that’s this Saturday?

Shane: That’s this Saturday April 5th. There’s dinner seating at 6:30 PM. There’s a whole menu. There’s food. There’s drinks. They have a highly regarded chef that curates the menu top. 

Indra Raj: No way. I didn’t realize it was like a whole experience. 

Shane: Oh, it’s a whole thing. It’s a whole jazz supper club experience. And a bike shop. 

Indra Raj: In a bike shop. 

Shane: So that’s dinner. He sees people for dinner at 6:30. And then the show with DARUMA starts at 7:30 PM and we’re gonna play two sets of music and finish up around 9:30 PM. You can get tickets online, I think it’s fullcyclecafebar.com. They’re $20 advance and $25 at the door. It’s gonna be a great show.

Indra Raj: Can you just name the other people in your band? 

Gabriel: Yeah. It’s Shane, obviously myself, Max Moore on piano. He’s a staple of the Denver scene. Really beautiful harmonic player, Hunter Roberts, who’s also ubiquitous on the scene, plays with the Butterfly Quintet. He’s played with the Colorado Symphony, a lot of different cats. And Zachary Rich, Dr. Zachary Rich, might I add, on the trombone who’s also all over the place, plays on all sorts of stuff. And is a professor at the University of Denver. 

Indra Raj: Great. And this is the start of a run of shows happening for you all. Including, I saw something at Dazzle. 

Shane: Yeah. So we’re gonna be playing Full Cycle Cafe this Saturday evening. We’re playing the theater SilCo in Silverthorne on April 12th. And that starts our little mountain tour run, where we’ll play the Ute Theater and Rifle the following day on Sunday the 13th. And then we’re actually gonna be doing a masterclass at Colorado Mesa University on Monday, April 14th. And then later that week we’ll play Dazzle on April 17th. And tickets are on sale for that now as well. That’s gonna be a really dope show. And then that weekend of the 19th and 20th, we go down to New Mexico and we play at a new Jazz Supper Club called Unit B in Santa Fe. And then we go up to Taos on Sunday and we play at the Kau Solar Center in partnership with the Taos Bebop Jazz Society. A nonprofit presenter there. April 20th, and then that sort of wraps up the April regional tour. 

Indra Raj: I’m impressed that you had all of that, just like in your head.

Shane: I’ve looked at the calendar and inputted dates and sent people that list so many times it’s pretty locked in there. And by the time you’re done booking it, you have it memorized. It’s a long process. 

Indra Raj: This is really exciting. It’s fun to even just know that you guys are here in the front range and KGNU is always here to support you guys and what you’re doing. So we’ll have you back to play. 

Shane: That would be fantastic. 

Indra Raj: And if people wanna keep up with you guys what’s the website, social media, things like that?

Shane: Sure. Yeah. You can follow us on Instagram @darumatheband. That’s D-A-R-U-M-A, the band. We’re also on Facebook as DARUMA. And you can check out our website, which is somewhere where you can purchase tickets for any of our upcoming shows through the tour page. That’s darumaband.com. Please, come say hello to us. Introduce yourself at one of our upcoming shows. We’d love to have you out and thank you so much to KGNU and all of its supporters for making the arts and culture and music possible. 

Indra Raj: Yeah, we’re so happy to do it. And one last question actually. What is the name of the band, how did that come together?

Gabriel: So that name actually is, some folks might recognize what it is. I think it was actually somebody through KGNU who, I’m sorry, I forget his name. He was Japanese

Indra Raj: Roger Hara maybe? 

Gabriel: Yes. That’s exactly who it was. Who like, came to one of our shows like a year ago and he was like, man, that name. It’s actually pronounced DARUMA. But we say DARUMA ’cause it’s anglicized. We’ve tried and tried, but that’s how people say it. And it’s like this little Japanese Buddhist doll, you’ve probably seen them. They’re red, they’ve got a little face with a mustache. And it’s this Buddhist guy from India who came, and apparently he meditated so hard that his limbs fell off. And so they made these little dolls and you get them in the Buddhist New Year at your temple. They’re beautifully painted with the eyes blank. And you color in one eye. When you set a goal and if you achieve the goal, you get to color in the other eye. If you don’t achieve the goal you have to burn it at the end of the year. 

Indra Raj: Oh my gosh, what? 

Shane: But in general, it represents good fortune. Like striving, determination. Persistence. And then it’s a victorious, positive symbol. So I don’t know. We liked the vibe and we didn’t want to be like the Shane and Gabriel Quintet or new jazz. 

Gabriel: We want it to be a band, which is something that you don’t see as much in jazz necessarily. You certainly see it in a lot of other styles of music. But the concept of a band as an item is not really as much of a thing in jazz. And I think like there have been bands throughout jazz history, like Weather Report and, Return to Forever and whatever. Now you have bands like Knee Body. But it’s not really as much of a common practice. It’s usually a hired gun vibe. There’s the leader and whoever he happens to have with him that day. And he tours under that name.

Indra Raj: Yes. And that’s cool in jazz ’cause there’s that flexibility, like anyone can play with anyone, right? But it’s also cool to have a unit that’s like all together and developing your sound together and all of that. 

Shane: I think it speaks more to people. In our demographic and age group, I guess in the last couple generations, like they don’t, I don’t think they’re gonna relate as much to like the blank quintet. They’re like, “what does that mean?” People who go in and study music and jazz, that’s normal for them ’cause they’ve listened to so many records like that. But most mainstream music consumers don’t, they’re just like, “oh, what’s the name of the band?”

Gabriel: It’s also like artistically we’re not trying to play. Obviously we’re very rooted in the jazz tradition and we’re all jazz musicians. But we’re not trying to play Jazz with a capital J, if you will. Not like jazz, as textbook jazz, if you will. We’re trying to play, in the spirit of jazz and music, that’s gonna sound a lot of different ways. I think branding ourselves as a band kind of speaks more to that than the such and such quintet. 

Indra Raj: Absolutely. I should have done this before, but I wanna play some of your music. So tell me what I should play from your catalog. 

Shane: Sure. Let’s see, what’s a good one? There’s a bootleg of us playing “Justified” recently in January, which is Gabriel’s tune. How about “If You Truly Wish To Be,” right there? That’s a studio recording from a session we had in Chicago at the end of our Jazz Road tour last June. 

Indra Raj: All right. Let’s hear this. DARUMA, Shane and Gabriel, thank you for being here. 

Shane: Thanks so much.

Gabriel: Thanks so much for having us.