Muldrow, 37, grew up in a family of jazz musicians in Los Angeles. Her father, Ronald Muldrow, was a guitarist and worked for decades with the soul jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris. Her mother, Rickie Byars-Beckwith, sang with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pianist Roland Hanna.
Alice Coltrane, a friend of the family, gave Muldrow the spiritual name Jyoti, which can mean “light” or “heavenly flame”. Muldrow has been billed as Jyoti for her most jazz-influenced albums, including last year’s critically acclaimed “Mama, You Can Bet!” Which featured daring remakes of Charles Mingus compositions in addition to her own songs.
In the early 2000s, Muldrow came to New York City to study jazz at the New School with a focus on singing. But she got out, she said, because, “I didn’t like the boxes they have for people. I feel like we’re stepping out of the box to survive emotionally as black people. We do this for our emotional uplift. The search for your own inner strength, your own property and your own language – that is what drives this music forward. “
The teenager Muldrow was into electronic music, building beats and developing abstract sounds on drum machines, synthesizers and computers. “The appeal of technology, sound design and sound generation with computers has been my experience as a composer of hearing,” she said. “Regardless of how I look, regardless of my gender, regardless of race, the computer was listening to me.”
One of her mentors and collaborators was Don Preston, who had played keyboards for Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in the 1960s and 1970s and was the musical director of Meredith Monk. He encouraged her to work with the experimental synthesis that she now regards as the “cornerstone” of her music. On “Fifth Shield”, a manifesto from her 2015 album “A Thoughtiverse Unmarred”, she knocked: “I know I’m abstract – it’s not for everyone.”
For Muldrow, the parameters that control the synthesizer tones – attack, decay, sustain, and release – provide lessons outside of the recording studio. “I’ll turn everything into a metaphor,” she said with a laugh. “The way we attack things shapes our lives, the way we hold onto things shapes our lives, the way we let go of things shapes our lives. This is what makes me dig deeper every time I make music. “
