SongVault Artist Profile

Julean Rai is a singer/songwriter whose unique brand of funky folk has been capturing audiences for more than a decade across the USA and Europe. Julean, a versatile musician, began playing piano and composing original works in as a teenager in Ohio, where he attended a performing arts high school as a theatre major and film minor. Two years later, he discovered the guitar and within a month was performing live shows and wooing audiences with sophisticated lyrics and rich, soulful vocals far beyond his years. The open road soon beckoned the teenaged troubadour, a magnetic lyrical storyteller and gifted musician who spent the next decade building significant fan bases inside the vibrant music scenes of cities like Austin, Boulder, Santa Fe, Tucson, and New York City.

It was in New York where Julean officially began performing with his backing band, The Rai, a rotating cast of musicians that provides an infectious groove to the dynamic frontman’s musical, vocal, and lyrical foundations. The Rai is ever-changing and always solid, circling from a power-duo to a three-piece folk orchestra to an “E-Street” size stageful of eclectic musicians and back again to Julean himself.

In any form, Julean and the Rai electrifies audiences with its distinctive sound of moody folk and high-energy world fusion, incorporating influences like rock, folk, bluegrass, Arabic and Indian traditional, rai, salsa & rumba, soul, and even electronica into their original music, as most recently exemplified in the 2007,not-to-be missed full-length release, “Muse Tree” and to be heard in the upcoming 2008 release, "Here."

Whether performing solo or with his orchestral counterpart, Julean Rai's mesmeric energy, soulful voice, and catchy hooks are sure to captivate, making each song riveting and exciting and leaving on his audience a musical impression not soon forgotten.