Review of Francesco Jaya's - I Have a Dream Cd

Last summer I had the pleasure of designing a CD jacket and booklet liner for this beautiful audio Cd, and Francesco JaYA's music is getting some insightful reviews be sure to have a peek:

Surely one of the more jubilant and fascinating chant albums I’ve ever heard, Beyond Doubt takes the genre and injects copious amounts of passion, joy, and sheer love of the music itself. The CD is energizing and celebratory. Francesco JaYA is the man driving the project with his powerful singing voice—rich with resonance and emotion—but he is assisted by more than 20 others, particularly the various members annotated as “choir” in the liner notes. Using such modes as “call and response” (commonly associated with gospel music), as well as vocal stylings that hew closer to blues, gospel, and rock music (even though these are mantras), Beyond Doubt holds one surprise after another throughout its eight songs, including an English-language, straight-up, Gospel-inflected number, “I Have a Dream.” Many, but not all, songs start off as a solo mantra by JaYA and build into powerful massed choral efforts, while the music itself features subdued, traditional instrumentation anchoring explosions of unbridled joy, such as on “Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya,” which pulses with rock-like power. This is one powerful album!


Bill Binkelman has been reviewing New Age, ambient, and world-beat music since 1997, first for his own magazine/webzine Wind and Wire (www.windandwire.com), then for New Age Reporter (www.newagereporter.com), and now for New Age Retailer.