There really is no more appropriate title for Isahrai Azaria’s debut solo album than Making It Up As I Go Along. Her path, musically, spiritually and geographically has meandered, stopped, started, switched back and come full circle time and again. Isahrai is a girl who loves making plans and making lists — she even has a list of lists she hopes to make — but it seems that the universe’s big life lesson for her is to embrace spontaneity and to let go of everything but those beliefs she holds most dear. Those beliefs can be summed up simply as this:
“Sing for joy, live for love and work for peace.”
A more thorough examination of her belief system can be discovered by listening to the words and moving with the melody of the album she has spent the last year (but really the last decade) making.
Isahrai was trained in classical vocal performance at New School University’s Mannes Conservatory in New York City. However, she credits a decade of travel, the reality of a life-threatening illness, and the compassion of yoga with helping define her authentic voice. While opera training gave Isahrai a theoretical understanding of music, it is her immersion in different cultures & communities that taught her to blend, sing out and improvise.
A love of travel and work with community building and arts organizations took Isahrai to cities and villages in South Africa, Kenya, India, Israel, Germany, England, Singapore, Thailand and Australia. She also spent extended time in the US cultural havens of New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. Then, in 2004, a spontaneous “2 week” trip led Isahrai to the small fishing town of Zihuatanejo on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. She didn’t speak Spanish and she didn’t even like cerveza but, almost immediately, Mexico felt like the place she should be and so she stayed…. for 5 years.
Mexico revived Isahrai in many ways. After struggling with osteosarcoma and its consequential long term side effects for years, she found ways to live with the painful illness through empathetic daredevil doctors (that do house calls!), natural treatments, and a gnarly balance of clean and hard living. And even on those days when cancer kicked her ass, she had a rockin’ freckled tan, an awesome sarong collection and a bottle of mezcal to help her “fake it ’til I make it.”
All of these detours and the debilitating effects of illness forced Isahrai to give up her songbird plans but the beautiful sunsets and the strong cocktails of Zihuatanejo both healed and loosened her up and she soon found herself singing at a local blues club, serenading friends on their birthdays and joining the band at weddings. One song request led to another and all of the sudden, Isahrai was headlining a Día de los Muertos show at Caprichos, a local Zihua restaurant. Soon after, Isahrai met Paolo, Mauricio and Silvia, three flamenco musicians who were crazy enough to invite this wacky gringa with punk rocker pink & purple hair to sing lead in a new fusion-style band. La Boquita World Music was formed and within a week was booked for sunset shows at a high end hotel in Ixtapa as well as late night gigs at Caprichos. That was January 2008.
In a whirlwind 18 months, La Boquita played hundreds of gigs and put out 3 records of songs that covered everything from deconstructed Cyndi Lauper to Latin-tinged Nina Simone to traditional Mexican ballads to untraditional Christmas carols to… yes, even a bit of opera. They played songs in Spanish, English, Italian, Hebrew, Sanskrit and even a bit of the African Sabaki language, Comorian. All the members of the band moved out of their musical comfort zones as they sampled genres and worked to create a unique sound that was purely La Boquita. The band left their beloved Zihuatanejo and moved to Puerto Vallarta in the fall of 2008 as the house band at the Sheraton Buganvilias Resort. In PV, Isahrai found an amazing community at Yoga Vallarta that allowed her to join her asana practice, her faith and her music through live chanting during classes as well as monthly kirtan sessions. Isahrai worked with Silvia, La Boquita’s percussionist, to learn to play the udus as well as basic drumming techniques on the djembe and began dreaming of owning a harmonium.
It was also in PV that Isahrai started seriously composing music again. A long time fan of sorrow, she expected sad broken-hearted love songs and dark dirges but instead, all of the light that Mexico’s sun had poured into her came pouring back out. “I came to a realization that the universe was giving me this awesome chance to share my story, my daily glee and my love for our global community and I wasn’t about to bitch slap this gift with a bunch of whining.”
Still not exactly sure of what was going to happen next, Isahrai left La Boquita and returned to the United States with the intention of finding her songwriting voice and, perhaps, even unpacking her suitcase for a little while. (Ha!) The second half of 2009 was spent writing and traveling all over California, then across the country to Fort Myers, Florida and then back again to the San Francisco Bay area where she moved into Chill Studios to begin recording her debut solo album of hopeful, whimsical folk music with Charlie Phalen. Along the way, she followed her musical heart by taking up the harmonium and now she’s tackling the ukulele as well. (It’s much easier to carry than the 35 pound harmonium!) Since the release of Making It Up As I Go Along, Isahrai has traveled to Colorado as well as returning to Puerto Vallarta and Zihuatanejo to share her music. Whatever detours come next, though, Isahrai is certain that music will carry her through and she hopes to carry her happy, improvisational melodic message to audiences filled with friends, strangers, yogis, survivors, kids and kids at heart. In other words, her pretty yellow vintage suitcase probably won’t be retiring anytime soon. Isahrai is better than okay with that.
– 1 May 2010
