Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I first encountered Georgia Anne Muldrow at Access Music in San Diego in 2009. She and her partner Dudley Perkins were promoting their latest release at the hip-hop specialist shop. Although I bought the album pictured above, I wasn’t entirely sold on the sound. Mama, You Can Bet!, the recording Muldrow just released as Jyoti, is squarely in my wheelhouse. Erykah Badu remains Muldrow’s north star, but she’s elevated her swing-rooted neo-soul into the rarefied cosmos between Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young and Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead. Additional references to Miles Davis and Sun Ra on Muldrow’s empyrean odyssey make Mama, You Can Bet! a contender for my album of the year.