Laila Biali – Laila Biali
I was on tour in Canada with my young musical companions and one of the stops that we stopped at was an incredible venue. There were lots of other people playing in other parts of the venue, different stages. Laila was playing in one of them, but I didn't know that until we were getting ready to go to the airport to go to our next whatever we had to go to after our gig was over. It was a van or a taxi [there] and she was already in it as I got in. She said to me, ‘Oh, I love your music’. I thought good, but who are you? She said, ‘here's something you know of mine,’ and she gave me this disc.

I went home and for three months I was moving so fast, going on so many tours and stuff that I didn't have chance to listen to it. I put it in a stack where I knew that I would see it and I would listen to it when I got a chance. Well, the chance finally came. I put it on and I flipped out. I instantly wrote her and said, ‘if you ever want anybody just to go ‘la la la’ in one of your pieces I volunteer.’ She replied, she got right back to me. She said, ‘I'm sure it'll happen one of these days.’

She’s just general genius. She's a jazz player and the stuff she writes is outrageous. She did a cover of a piece that other people knew [David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’] and this cover is like, I mean, I didn't know that it was a cover until I looked. Then I went and listened to the original piece and listened to what she did with it and was like, oh, excuse me, that is taking it to forget another level like it's another 10 levels.

I listen to her music, like on Spotify, I have a bunch of songs that I dance to and she's one of the ones. I have two or three of her pieces that are part of it. In a single repertoire I go through the same [songs], but that's because going through the same ones, I get to express everything that I consider to be of spirit, which includes downright boogieing [laughs]. Because the body is sacred. It holds all the sacred knowledge and genes and our heads get in the way, but the body knows. When I do the dancing, I go through this cycle and it goes from everything from just deep breathing and prayerfulness to really just having a blast and back to deep breathing and gratitude.