Lal Meri
LABEL: Six Degrees  |||  PHOTOGRAPHY: BrantleyGutierrez

It’s no coincidence that Nancy Kaye, Ireesh Lal and Carmen Rizzo chose to name their groundbreaking collaboration after the ancient Sufi folk song, “Lal Meri,” an interpretation which closes the trio’s seductive and refreshing Six Degrees Records debut. “The message of the song is unifying different people from different cultures and beliefs,” says Nancy, the mystery-laden honey-and-sand voiced siren, with a gift for expansive turns of phrases and indelible melodies. “Why can’t we basically be together as one? It’s a beautiful message.”

If ever a band represented such ideals, it’s Lal Meri, with each musician coming in from different backgrounds, cultures and musical sensibilities, all combined into a unified, vibrant whole. Nancy’s singing and writing – both urgent and timeless – have powered her forays in pop (a 2002 debut album for Island/Def Jam Records) and jazz (her recent, saucy tour de force Luckiest Girl), both under the artist name Rosey. Ireesh’s multiple instrumental, composing and arranging talents have been spotlighted in his previous bands Hot Sauce Johnson and Animastik. Carmen’s global-conscious sense has brought him to the forefront as a writer, producer and remixer with Seal, Coldplay, Paul Oakenfold, Jem and countless others, while his expansive vision is at the core of his own wide-ranging album and his work as a member of the groundbreaking world-fusion act Niyaz.

On their self-titled debut album, these distinctly creative musical minds and strong individual personalities form at once a microcosm or mirror of the whole world -- and a whole new world unto itself. Nancy’s voice intertwines with R&B punches and smoky cabaret inflections, while Ireesh blends reggae & jazz on the trumpet. Seductive trip-hop beats mix with oud and tabla. Emotions run deep, in matters of romance and the state of the world, the music and lyrics alike questing for the best instincts of the human spirit. From the soulful bounce of opener “Dreams of 18” through the closing title song, Lal Meri is three artists inventing a new common language.

Each reached out to her or his respective circles to bring in other elements to enhance and expand their palette, with Ireesh’s cousin Pooja providing Hindi vocals on three songs (including the title number), Natalie Warner singing with Nancy on the stern “Bad Things” and Carmen’s friend Dmitri Mahlis playing oud, bouzouki, saz and jumbush. Every thing was built from the ground up – no prefab samples, no forced fusions, but an organic creation that belongs to no genre, standing firmly on its own terms. “It was really important that the three of our voices were all heard in all of the tracks,” Nancy says. “Sometimes it was a painstaking process, having three headstrong producers on one record, but we made it through and I’m so pleased…” “It was very important for us to come together and create this as a group,” Ireesh says. “So it sounds like our project.”

And all this grew from a very small seed. “I was in India in 2006 and heard my cousin sing and recorded her into my laptop,” Ireesh recalls. “I came back to the States and started writing some trip-hop tracks to what she was singing and put it up on my MySpace page.” That’s where Nancy found it after someone she met randomly in New York recommended that she check out Ireesh’s work. Craving new and challenging projects after having gone through the pop mill in the early 2000s, she was enticed and intrigued. “I went online to check out his tracks and thought they were really cool,” she says. “I went back to L.A., met up with him and we immediately started writing together.”

LINKS
Lal Meri's website
Lal Meri on myspace