In Session: Mowgli Giannitti of Satyrdagg

ALBANY – Managing a traditional four-piece band is hard enough. Hell, sometimes even a solo career is daunting! One person that bucks all of that, and goes forward with amazing musical and creative ambition and energy is Mowgli Giannitti. With his band, Satyrdagg, Giannitti blends jazz, fusion, neo-soul, and rock to create a massive production of talent and innovative arrangements. Utilizing either a small or large-scale project – sometimes performing alongside a litany of singers and horns – Giannitti’s brainchild, Satyrdagg, is an organizational and musical tour de force to behold.

I had a chance to sit down with Mowgli this past week. What follows is our conversation.

Lucas Garrett: Thank you, Mowgli, for sitting down today to talk. How are you doing?

Mowgli Giannitti: Pretty good!

LG: Tell us about your band, Satyrdagg.

MG: It’s a modular band that ranges in players. The smallest is a four-piece band, and the largest that it’s written for right now is twelve. Usually, there’s about six of us. For the bigger gigs, I bring in the four horns, three vocalists, percussion, drums, guitar, keyboard… They’re all songs I wrote: the music; words; horn arrangements. They’re mostly about metaphysical stuff, or love songs, or a combination of both.

LG: Where did the name come from?

MG: The name is a nod to several things. One, it’s a spin on the word, ‘Saturday.’ Saturday is a day of the week that is wide open, where the fewest people have to go to their jobs or schools. I envision this band, someday, evolving into more of a community event, rather than a concert in a venue. Something that’s paired with other forms of art, whether it’s at a garden, art gallery, or farmer’s market. I love the idea of it being an educational thing as well: a program where people get involved as students, and they’re playing in the band, as well as offering other skills and abilities to the project. Whether it’s visual arts, dance, permaculture, or medicine. Just the whole thing being an educational thing that, hopefully, could be offered in a way that addresses questions of accessibility and social justice.

LG: It sounds like a community-minded, multimedia project.

MG: That’s what I’d love to do. Myself, as the composer and manager – I’m not trying to also become a dance choreographer, puppet maker… I love to collaborate. I want to work with people that have made that their life focus.

LG: You have people from all over in your band. I’ve heard of you in the area, definitely, and I know Jeanine (Ouderkirk), who’s amazing in her own right. Where the hell did you meet all these people?

MG: Hahaha. I met them all in different places: some of them I met in high school; some of them in college; and the rest I met on gigs. It’s this rotating thing…

LG: That’s how the jazz culture is, anyway.

MG: Exactly.

LG: It’s about the community. I have a hard time getting four people together, and they all live within 20 miles of one another. How do you manage all that?

MG: It’s a lot of work. It’s generally like, “OK, we have a gig coming up.” I’ll make sure a drummer’s available; I’ll make sure a chords player is available; I’ll accept a gig. For rehearsals, I email everyone and ask when they’re free. I’ll use a poll, and that helps a lot. It’s a lot of hounding people.

LG: With all the moving parts, are you able to develop a camaraderie, or is that hard to build in a project like this?

MG: Yeah. There’s definitely a limit on complexity that comes with having rotating players, but I’ve tried to surmount that by approaching it as a challenge of arranging and bandleading. The charts, parts, and notation need to be really crystal clear. When we rehearse, I need to have a very clear idea of what we’re doing in rehearsal, and how to do that. It’s tended to work out pretty well. Everything has been building up to recording.

We have an EP, Satyrdagg: Live, that’ll release in late October. We’re in the middle of recording an album that’ll release in late spring/early summer of 2024. Once we have those, it’ll be a lot easier for players to come onto gigs. When that happens, I hope to have a two-week run of shows.

LG: Hearing how something sounds in your head is one part, but getting it on paper is a whole other thing. When it comes to playing it, it might not sound – or feel – the way you want it to. Has that ever happened to you?

MG: Yeah! I feel that’s part of the life-long journey of composing music. Figuring out how to make the margin between what you hear and what you get [to be] smaller. In the beginning, it’s a chasm: it’s so vast and seems impossible. The more time you spend doing it… it’s so much trial-and-error. The more familiar your music sounds, the quicker of a journey that is.

LG: Especially with jazz. If you look at The Real Book and the melodies that are written out, a lot of times you don’t play it the way it’s written. It’s about knowing the vocabulary, and building on what people that came before you have done. When you’re all so far apart from one another, I can’t imagine there’s a lot of time to try different interpretations.

MG: Right, that is a challenge. I love when people show up to gigs and it’s a reunion of friends. I had a teacher that said, “A gig is worth 1000 rehearsals,” and I think that building a sense of rapport, camaraderie, and familiarizing each other with each other’s language, rhythmically and harmonically, happens a lot in a live setting. It happens quickly in a live setting.

LG: Where can we see the band next? What’s on the horizon?

MG: We’re going to be celebrating the EP release with two shows in Burlington, VT at the end of the month. On Oct. 21^st, we’re at Radio Bean, with special guests, All Night Boogie Band. That show starts at 8:00 pm. On the 27^th, we’ll be at Levity Mountain Barn, with a start time of 8:00 pm.

LG: Mowgli, it was nice getting a chance to talk with you! Good luck with everything!

MG: Thanks!