Jean Rohe

Something beautiful is headed this way. Beyond the beauty of its bearer is the music she carries in her new album. Jean Rohe will officially release Jean Rohe & The End of the World Show on Oct. 22 at Joe’s Pub in New York City. The live performance of a portion of the album this past July at Rockwood Music Hall, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, swept over us like a sweet, warm wave.

We were entranced the first time we heard her do the lead track, “Umbrella,” live. The songlike call of umbrella street vendors fascinated Jean and planted a musical seed that finally bore fruit. Jean said she’d found the traditional story of Noah’s Ark to be overly harsh: “How could anybody be that bad [to deserve drowning]?” In the album’s liner notes she writes: “It is a little-known fact that tender-hearted sinners like you and I owe our presence on this planet to one merciful umbrella vendor of old who appeared just as the first drops of rain, threatening to engulf our ancestors, began to fall on the lands of Noah.” In her use of the vendor’s call, Jean envisions a retelling of the story in which everyone is miraculously saved by an unlikely source: We come from a place where the rain never fell / Can’t you see the sun straining at the empty well… It was always picnic weather but our mouths were parched and dry / We were thirsty all the time / Now Noah had a house where God kept knocking on the door / Can’t you hear him hammer away on his two-by-fours? The song lyrics describe a revelry as parched throats swallow the first drops of rain. A never-before-seen umbrella vendor suddenly appears, hawking his wares, but they ignore him. When the water keeps rising and Noah has left without them, they fear for their lives: And as the children shouted, searching for air / Our neighbor Noah sailed away … He never turned a tender eye / To the people screaming, babies crying, and … somebody singing “umbrella, umbrella, umbrella.” In their desperation they realize they’ve found their miracle: … the power of the peddler to spare our lives somehow … then so it was we floated on for days / in our overturned umbrellas braving rain and wind and waves … those who love this life of ours / will always find a way to live it / as long as there is joy and awe and somebody singing “umbrella, umbrella, umbrella…”

The redemption in Jean’s story and the swirl of voices, strings and percussion provoke a hair-raising effect that, in itself, is magical. The umbrella vendor’s call stays in the mind, echoing over and over. In addition to “Umbrella,” there are many other tracks on the album to enthuse over. More about that later. Jean’s musical depth and imagination have roots that delve deep into childhood, as a recent interview revealed.


Beginnings

Jean Rohe was born in Paterson, N.J., and grew up mostly in nearby Nutley. She has a brother three years younger, and her parents gave her a lot of independence while growing up.

Her mother is a nurse. Her father, she said, is a professional storyteller. He had been a truck/limo driver and a short-order cook, but lost his job when she was young. So he stayed home much of the time and read to her a lot. She recalled that he read Steinbeck to her while she was in high school. “I was so spoiled,” she said.

Both parents were musically inclined and they formed a family band, performing mostly in folk venues. Jean was 7 or 8 when they had their first family gig. Her father played guitar and everyone sang. Jean’s brother provided comic relief, using noisemakers and puppets. One non-folk venue proved to have a lasting effect on her. This was a steady gig at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island. The family band would play for people as they exited the outdoor show, singing environmentally conscious songs about the sea and its creatures, like “Baby Beluga,” among others. Jean and her brother were 10 and 7 respectively around this time. On occasion, they got to pet the beluga whale on its tongue (it opened its mouth for this). Jean still marvels at the memory.

They had a lot of magical moments with wildlife in their childhood even in the urban world, she said. She believes that it sparked an ability to see beyond what’s on the surface in her daily life. Jean told me she feels a bond with nature and has always felt herself to be an outdoor person in spite of having lived an urban lifestyle. The family band gigs ended when Jean was around 16. Her brother’s interest drifted, Jean left high school for college and the band just “petered out.”


High School Whirl

Overall, high school was, to put it mildly, an uncomfortable experience. Jean was always looking for a way out. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, she was a very busy high schooler. Jean had gotten a guitar when she was 15, but didn’t play it much. She studied with a great piano teacher, jazz pianist and composer Diane Moser, during high school. “The theoretical knowledge that came from those piano lessons has been import - Acoustic Live New York

Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters — even political Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters — constitute a crowded field. Jean Rohe, who grew up playing music with her family across her home state of New Jersey and has since taken her own rich blend of folk, jazz, Brazilian, and other musical forms across the country and internationally, stands out in that field with her rare tunesmithery, her occasionally goose bump-inducing lyrics and her sweet, deceptively gentle soprano. (Both in the melodies and in the way she enunciates the words, one can often hear glimmers of Joni Mitchell.) Although she’s been well received with her band, Jean Rohe and the End of the World Show, she plays alone about equally often, and gave a wonderfully minimalist solo performance on August 3 at Le Poisson Rouge.

The set explored love, politics and impressions of nature and the city, inviting us into the minds of everyday people looking for a fleeting song under a street lamp or a roll in the hay with a charming rogue. (Here is where the lyrics sneak up on the listener. Despite Rohe’s manner and delivery, which can be almost humorously wholesome, she’s not afraid to allow her narrators some adult straight-talk: apparently, the roll in the hay wasn’t that great.)

Rohe’s use of her go-to instrument, the guitar, is subtle. One might not have noticed the guitar line for most of the performance unless one was listening for it, but upon closer inspection it revealed a studied simplicity: a bass line rather than finger picking, a three-note pinch rather than a bigger chord. Rohe is, of course, past the clunky strumming of a greener player, but she also doesn’t try to do too much with the instrument and get in her own way.

The real showstopper of the evening was “Footsy,” a play-by-play account of two people — you guessed it — secretly rubbing and poking each other with their feet under a table. For this, Rohe put the guitar aside and accompanied herself on a traditional Brazilian pandeiro, a tambourine-like hand drum that really needs to be struck, and not just shaken, in order to jingle. To my ears, she nailed the elements of traditional samba percussion on that instrument: the rubber-bouncy pitch modulation that’s achieved by digging the thumb into the drum skin and quickly releasing the pressure as it’s struck, and the particular syncopation with its ever-so-slight speed-up, slow-down, speed-up, slow-down that can’t be notated visually, something like a cart with ever-so-slightly elliptical wheels. The beat itself was vigorous and sexy, and when Rohe dropped it to let her voice jump the precipice alone, her rock-steady internal metronome kept ticking with only a few exquisitely placed, super-offbeat clops on the drum to outline the contours of rhythm before the beat returned.

Rohe ended with a very powerful “message” song: her alternative national anthem, “Arise! Arise!” It can produce the aforementioned goose bumps if you’re not careful, and she coaxed the audience into joining her on the chorus. (Look on YouTube for a handsomely filmed music video of her performing it, accompanied by a diverse “Citizen Choir,” in Judson Memorial Church.) Rohe joked, optimistically, that this song, complete with its uncompromising references to botched illegal abortion, the cruelty of capital punishment, and ethnic cleansing by state and non-state actors, will replace our current national anthem around the year 2030. God only knows where the country will be by then — but if Jean Rohe is still around, all is certainly not lost.

Jean Rohe will be playing at Rockwood Music Hall on Monday, August 19 at 9pm. For more see rockwoodmusichall.com.
- See more at: http://www.indypendent.org/2013/08/17/love-politics-footsy#sthash.6GVR34OB.dpuf - The Indypendent

"Ms. Rohe is a confident and worldly young singer whose original compositions tend toward a coolly imploring tone." -Nate Chinen - New York Times

"A sure-footed young singer-songwriter..." -Nate Chinen - New York Times

"Jean Rohe inhabits a space where jazz, folk, and world music meet. The New York musician was a prize-winning audience favorite at the Montreaux Jazz Festival a few years back – and has a voice that’s clear and sometimes plaintive." -John Schaefer, Soundcheck Host - WNYC New York Public Radio

"Jean has the remarkable ability, typical of all true artists, to hold her vast palette of
technical virtuosity in check and only bring what's needed at any given moment. Hardly the aloof jazz musician we've grown accustomed to, she brings her listeners along for a joyful ride through her soundworld, while challenging them with questions about what it means to be a global
citizen." --William R. Bauer, Ph.D. author of Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter - William R. Bauer, Ph.D. author of Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter

“There are plenty of talented artists out there, but what sets Jean Rohe apart are the suppleness of her voice, the integrity of her vision, and the grace she shows in her wide-ranging journeys across the musical landscape.” - John Platt, DJ

“There are plenty of talented artists out there, but what sets Jean Rohe apart are the suppleness of her voice, the integrity of her vision, and the grace she shows in her wide-ranging journeys across the musical landscape.” - John Platt, DJ

“I am absolutely floored by Lead Me Home. It's some of the best music to hit my iPod in a very long time.” - Joel Hurd, production manager

Your CD arrived at WRUV yesterday and I picked it up last night. I've just finished listening and I think it is terrific! You are talented beyond your years, and you have your own style....a pleasing blend of folk with Latin/Brazilian and a good dash of jazz.
-Jay Paul, world music DJ - WRUV

"Her beautiful, expressive voice and lively rhythms energize her renditions of covers and original pieces."
-Lori Falco - Morristown Green

"Her beautiful, expressive voice and lively rhythms energize her renditions of covers and original pieces."
-Lori Falco - Morristown Green