“Dziesmu Kamoliņš //Garland of Songs” - Arta Jēkabsone
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
Arta Jēkabsone’s Dziesmu Kamoliņš (Garland of Songs) isn’t just an album — it’s a luminous act of preservation and reinvention. The award-winning Latvian jazz vocalist and composer, now based in New York, has crafted a work that feels at once ancient and entirely new, weaving together the rich threads of her Baltic heritage with the improvisational pulse of global jazz. It’s a record that sounds like memory itself — shimmering, elusive, and profoundly alive.
Across its 11 tracks, Jēkabsone reimagines traditional Latvian folk songs through a deeply personal lens, infusing them with harmonic color and rhythmic playfulness that reveal new emotional dimensions in every melody. These aren’t simple covers — they’re living reinterpretations, songs that breathe and evolve, rooted in tradition but restless in spirit.
From the very first notes, Jēkabsone’s voice anchors the listener — warm, pure, and full of quiet strength. She doesn’t perform these songs so much as embody them, allowing centuries-old folk motifs to merge seamlessly with jazz’s harmonic freedom. There’s something transcendent about hearing her glide between Latvian lyrics and spontaneous melodic phrasing, bridging the sacred and the contemporary in a way that feels both reverent and daring.
The lineup of musicians is as global as the music itself — a collective of brilliant collaborators from across continents, including Snarky Puppy’s Keita Ogawa on percussion, Esperanza Spalding’s Leo Genovese on Rhodes piano, and Moroccan guembri master Samir Langus. Together, they create an organic soundscape that stretches from smoky New York clubs to Latvian forests under the midnight sun. Synth textures from Thailand’s Kengchakaj hum beneath folk violin motifs, while the interplay of basses (both electric and upright) builds a deep, grounding resonance that holds the music’s emotional gravity.
Tracks shift fluidly between moods — from intimate, almost whispered prayers to expansive, cinematic crescendos. One moment, the listener is carried by the heartbeat of a guembri groove; the next, they’re suspended in a cloud of harmonies that feel almost celestial.
What’s most striking, though, is the sincerity that runs through every note. In an era when “folk-jazz fusion” can sometimes feel like an aesthetic experiment, Jēkabsone’s approach is rooted in lived experience. Since moving to New York nearly a decade ago, she has reimagined over 45 Latvian folk songs, translating her homeland’s spirit into a language the world can understand — and feel.
In Dziesmu Kamoliņš, Arta Jēkabsone has found a way to make cultural memory sound utterly modern. It’s both a love letter to Latvia and a bold statement of artistic identity — a reminder that tradition isn’t a relic, but a conversation.
“Dziesmu Kamoliņš //Garland of Songs” is available now on all major streaming platforms
