Noah Roen
Let’s take it back to 2004, when a young Nicolle NEILL Jensen first started dabbling in yoga while a student at the defunct College of Santa Fe—when she discovered Balkan music for the first time. Jensen fell in love with both, and has since become not only a celebrated yoga and meditation teacher, but also a member of Balkan-infused band Rumelia Collective and a solo musician who performs and releases albums under the moniker NEILL. This weekend, Jensen is slated to drop a new entry in her ongoing series of elementally-based contemplative electronic jams; a feat she’ll accomplish alongside a day-long yoga event over which she’ll also preside (2:45-9 pm Saturday, March 25. $20-$108. Railyard Performance Center, 1611 Paseo de Peralta, (505) 982-8309). Smoke, the fifth in her series, stays true to NEILL’s droney and edgy beats with overlaid elements like gorgeous vocals and mantras meant to calm, steady and treat the mind. As a yoga event/album release sounds right up Santa Fe’s alley, we spoke with Jensen to learn a little more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As a music/yoga person, when you’re writing your songs, are you considering their potential application to yoga?
Yeah! Something I’ve been saying for a long time is I’m making the music I’d like to listen to but doesn’t necessarily exist. Smoke features electronic pulsing bass and drone and percussion with very beautiful, simple vocals, so it’s meditative, but it has a little edge. It’s not just pretty, it’s also got depth and a little bit of, ‘Ooh, what was that sound?!’ Or, like, a psychedelic surf line a...rock edge. I’m definitely making music I like that I don’t think exists yet, and it’s what I want to hear—contemplative in nature, but not just one thing; it’s probably going to grab your attention a little bit.
I think it’s fair to link my music with yoga, especially this release. I’m a practitioner, a meditator, and because I fell in love with those things and gained benefits from them, I started teaching them. One of the tenets of Buddhism is that suffering is an inherent part of life. Yoga and meditation, the way I teach them, is to alleviate some amount of suffering, and my music is another extension of that—meditative, healing, relaxing, inviting. When you think about yoga music, you probably don’t think about anything interesting, and I don’t either—I don’t like it, it’s boring. But I have lo-fi hip-hop, bass-beats, world music…you can hear that influence.
You’re a member of local Balkan music act Rumelia Collective. Does your work with Balkan sounds seep into the NEILL project, or are you specifically going for a different feel?
I would say it’s definitely just in there, because it’s in who I am. I’ve been playing Balkan music since 2004, so there are percussion instruments I’ll be playing on Saturday that are the same that feature on the stage with Rumelia Collective. And a couple of the same band members will be on the stage making the music happen, too. It’s absolutely influencing [the new music] while it maintains its own personality. There’s no Greek, Turkish or Bulgarian music. The sound, though—there’s an oud on one of the tracks, for example. When I found Balkan music, there was a part of me that felt I recognized it already; it was the sound I was looking for already. [With NEILL] I’m performing with a laptop, I’m playing an Ableton session, but there’s also a doumbek, for example.
Without belaboring the pandemic point, would you say the songs on Smoke were written because of the pandemic?
This is all work that was kind of in-process. I’ve been working with and creating a whole body of work since 2015, and then curating from that body of work for what’s on the next album. All the tracks from Smoke were in process in 2020, 2021, and I just went ahead with [an online] release rather than waiting. I did release it online, but it hasn’t been performed live. At the time, I was shocked the world was shutting down. I had this pretty big life. I was a traveling yoga teacher heading to five different states every year; I was playing in a band—then all of a sudden it was just home, all day, every day. I think it was shock and pause.
But I’m really starting to come more back into my musical self since having my child. On her first birthday, actually, I had my first gig in however long it was. I kind of stepped back into my professional life, and I was, like, carrying an accordion into a meadow on the Southside. It felt really good to...OK, I have this one identity as a person doing a lot, then I have this child and it’s like, ‘Holy, shit, I’m a mother now!’ Now I’m a mother and a musician and a teacher and a person, so I have to be a lot more intentional about how it all works.
