Mad River Valley musician Mariami was born in The Republic of Georgia, where her musical family instilled in her a great love and affinity for the folk music of her home country. She also heard plenty of American rock, soul and R&B on the radio growing up.
Mariami recently spoke with VPR from New York City about what she calls her life's work: honoring her Georgian roots through her new, modern music and returning to her home country as a teacher and mentor.
On fleeing The Republic of Georgia in the early 1990s amidst a civil war and coming to Vermont:
"My parents left in '92 and then I left in '93 and then we ended up in Vermont because we had friends who led Project Harmony which is based in the Mad River Valley. We came to America and they were like, "Come, bring your kids to Vermont and we did and we fell in love and we never left."
On her earliest musical influences:
"I always grew up with music as the cornerstone of my family. My grandfather was the music director for this dance ensemble and he played piano and accordion and I learned early on from him a lot of Georgian melodic song structure and from a young age, my mother was also a music teacher and then when I moved to Vermont, I was always doing music and theater and dance. Then I went on to do musical theater at Emerson in Boston and then ended up minoring in music and songwriting at Berklee and then writing and recording and releasing my first album kind of toward the end of my senior year. That was sort of my natural trajectory."
On Western music's influence:
"We grew up listening to Motown and R&B and soul and pop. R&B really moved me the most and I find a lot of structural similarities between R&B and soul and Georgian liturgical music. It's like, very spiritual. Those seem to be my most natural and comfortable music styles. The melodies are at times kind of tragic; kind of gut-wrenching like soul songs can be.
"I wouldn't want Georgian folk to by my stamp. I would definitely call R&B/soul my main sound and the Georgian folk are just like the subtle hints in there that give a little esoteric and a little different from what you're used to hearing." — Mariami
"At this point, I kind of want to write music that gets people feeling good. This recent album is like a nice balance of Top 40 R&B sound. There is one song that has kind of a Georgian influence. There's one song that's in Georgian. So, it's like, this is the CD that kind of sealed all of my styles together in one 'Mariami sound.'"
On the importance of bridging the gap between traditional Georgian folk music and her own modern music:
"I would say it's probably my life's work, really, in everything that I kind of do. The more that I explore the sound, the more subtle I want to be with it. It's funny, I got back from Georgia and met with my music director. We were talking about this idea of Georgian folk music and the relatability with the American audience. We want to take elements of it and not water it down but we want to make it digestible and accessible so it's this idea of taking these kind of foreign, exotic sounds that people have never heard and arranging them under the umbrella of contemporary pop and R&B in a way so that when you're listening to it, you know there are some ethnic hints, you know there's something exotic but it wouldn't be like, 'Oh, I'm at a world music show.'
"I wouldn't want Georgian folk to by my stamp. I would definitely call R&B/soul my main sound and the Georgian folk are just like the subtle hints in there that give a little esoteric and a little different from what you're used to hearing."
On visiting her home country, performing and teaching young musicians:
"I hadn't performed in my country before. We performed at the U.S. Embassy and we did like, three or four TV shows. And I was like, 'If I don't go there and win these people's hearts, not only am I going to be poorly representing America but I'm going to be, like, not honoring my Georgian roots. It came with an immense sense of responsibility. Everybody was so receptive and kind of just excited that one of their own Georgians was abroad in the States, putting the Georgian stamp on the Western sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMR6axSAKGE
A video from Mariami's trip to Georgia.
"This was a small taste of what I would love to repeat in 2016 but with my full band. The end of May is Georgian Independence so around that time there are a lot of festivals and outdoor performances... especially in the capitol so I want to team up with the Embassy again and bring my band do a couple more master classes. I didn't even feel like I was working. You know, that's when you kind of know you're doing the right thing when it feels that right."
Mariami will perform Friday, Jan. 22 at BAM in Brooklyn, New York.
