Mama, You Can Bet!

When LA-based vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow isn’t releasing such underground R&B gems as *Overload*, she records as the one-woman ensemble Jyoti (a name bestowed on her by the late Alice Coltrane). But *Mama, You Can Bet!*, the third Jyoti release after *Ocotea* and *Denderah*, is the first to feature Muldrow’s singing. There are still instrumental cuts, including “Zane, The Scribe,” “Swing, Kirikou, Swing!,” “Hard Bap Duke,” and “The Cowrie Waltz,” which capture her way with sonic mystery, atmospheric harmony, and abstract funk as compellingly as ever. There are also two head-turning Charles Mingus “Geemixes”: “Beemoanable Lady,” which employs Eric Dolphy’s yearning alto sax as raw material in a collage of Muldrow’s radical design; and “Fabus Foo,” based on “Fables of Faubus,” with its punctuated horn theme lurking strangely within. There are elements of acoustic jazz texture that Muldrow often brings to the fore, but also timbres that evoke West African drumming, or electronic sound sources that are more elusive, even unidentifiable. The sparse and haunting meditations “Orgone” and “Quarrys, Queries” are in a category of their own, evidence of Muldrow’s next-level compositional gift.

The third installment of Georgia Anne Muldrow’s solo jazz project is a powerfully resonant and spiritual record, a call-and-response between herself and a history of Black music.

For Georgia Anne Muldrow, Jyoti -- a name given to her as a youngster by family friend Alice Coltrane -- isn't some whimsical alter ego.

With Mama, You Can Bet!, singer and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow blends the funk, soul, and hip-hop-infused R&B of her eponymo...

Jyoti – aka Georgia Anne Muldrow – mines a rich seam of American free jazz heritage on her astonishing new album Mama, You Can Bet!

Jyoti's (aka Georgia Anne Muldrow) Mama, You Can Bet! is a revelation -- of time, of rhythm, of sound.