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<\/p>\nRory Jagdeo\u2019s musical journey has taken him from his native Guyana to Canada and Belize, from New York City to Houston and finally to Western North Carolina. Though he had always been immersed in music, work occupied much of his time; it wasn\u2019t until landing in Texas that he began to pursue his musical muse in earnest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all began when I was volunteering for the Houston Blues Society around 2008,\u201d says Jagdeo. \u201cI started to write lyrics, and melody [was] in my head all the time.\u201d Expressing his musical ideas through his voice, guitar and harmonica, he recorded and released an album, Hanging On<\/i>.<\/p>\n
At the center of that album \u2013 recorded with a full band backing him \u2013 is Jagdeo\u2019s shimmering acoustic guitar and soulful harmonica work. The songs are generally upbeat, but with a grounded sense of someone who has experienced life\u2019s up and downs. By 2010, Jagdeo had released a follow-up, Cling and You Die<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Cling and You Die<\/i> expands Jagdeo\u2019s musical worldview, with hints of everything from country and western (\u201cLost Without You\u201d) to the searing hard rock of \u201cAngel in the Wind.\u201d But it wasn\u2019t until 2012 that Jagdeo began performing in public. \u201cIt all started with open mics,\u201d he says, explaining that those informal appearances allowed him to build the confidence he\u2019d need to mount proper performances.<\/p>\n
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And that happened soon enough. By 2016 he had moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. and completed a third album, Coming Home<\/i>. That album finds Jagdeo widening his musical scope even further, to include original songs exploring reggae (\u201cLove is Very Strange Thing\u201d) and returning to his blues roots (\u201c14th<\/sup> Street\u201d).<\/p>\n In the college town Jagdeo says he \u201cwas able to play in some really cool places like a coffee house and a few restaurants.\u201d But it was after his next move \u2013 to Boone \u2013 that Jagdeo felt he had truly found his niche. In addition to performances at farmers\u2019 markets, he started performing in the street.<\/p>\n \u201cI found that busking was my greatest strength,\u201d he says. \u201cI love playing in front of complete strangers, just being out there and jamming out.\u201d He says that to date he has played more than 40 gigs. \u201cAnd at some of those gigs,\u201d he adds, \u201cI\u2019ve played for three hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Jagdeo\u2019s live repertoire is based on songs from his three albums and assorted singles, and is peppered with well-chosen covers of songs by other artists. He mentions that the latter category includes tunes from Bob Dylan, Neil Young and The Bee Gees. \u201cI do a Bob Marley segment as well,\u201d he says, noting that all of the songs feature his harmonica playing.<\/p>\n In 2020 Jagdeo relocated to Asheville. But because of the pandemic, he didn\u2019t schedule any public performances for the whole of the year. That\u2019s changing now. But even though his well-arranged and -produced albums feature a full band, solo performance is his chosen approach for live appearances.<\/p>\n Playing solo, he says, means \u201cI never have to worry about timing, I don\u2019t have to worry where I am in the song, and I have total freedom to take this song wherever I want. I can go slow, I can go fast, I can linger with a solo with my harmonica.\u201d<\/p>\n But, Jagdeo reveals, he actually does work with a band of sorts. Cockeyed Jumbees is one of his latest projects. With a good-natured laugh, he describes it as a \u201cghost\u201d band. \u201cI get very good musicians to play on these songs,\u201d he says, \u201cbut nobody knows who the musicians are!\u201d He explains the origin of the odd band name. In the tropics of Guyana, \u201cJumbees are spiritual entities,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the United States you have these movies about them, but you call them zombies.\u201d<\/p>\n Sadly, Jagdeo\u2019s brother passed away in April 2020, leaving behind unrealized plans to write a series of books. Inspired by his late brother, Rory has taken up that mantle. \u201cI locked myself away from May to September, and I wrote Walkabout: Searching for the Epic Life: A Guyanese Memoir<\/i>,\u201d he says. The book recounts Jagdeo\u2019s twenty years in Guyana; that country\u2019s political, economical and social characteristics; and the story of his musical journey from South America to North Carolina.<\/p>\n As proud as he is of the book, Jagdeo\u2019s primary focus is squarely upon making music. \u201cNow that people are getting back into the swing of things,\u201d he says, \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to playing on a weekly basis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rory Jagdeo\u2019s musical journey has taken him from his native Guyana to Canada and Belize, from New York City to Houston and finally to Western North Carolina. Though he had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,41],"tags":[4603],"class_list":["post-21347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-interview","tag-rory-jagdeo","cat-30-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21349,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21347\/revisions\/21349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}