Beginning in February at the Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar, jazz-fusion band Delaques has performed almost every Thursday at 8 p.m. Delaques is a group of five instrumentalists bringing in musical improvisations every week for free.
The Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar has been serving kava— a beverage made from the root of a shrub— since it first opened. However, with the New York State Department of Health updates on a 2020 investigation from the Food and Drug Administration on the safety of kava, beginning in January the lounge was no longer allowed to serve their signature drink. Amid these changes to the space, Delaques Improv has become a new staple of the lounge.
How Delaques Improv began at Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar
Delaques met in 2018, beginning as a band of three with keyboardist Yoshi Aerson, drummer Tony Devivo and bassist Tony Lomonaco. After pausing during COVID-19 quarantine, the group wanted to make music again and later joined saxophonist Paul Jensen and guitarist Josh Palmer.
“We pull from a few different genres,” Aerson said. “There are times where you can see like a lot more of our influence coming from hip-hop or our influence coming from jazz or progressive jazz or progressive rock. Sort of noisy stuff– noisecore stuff that is off the wall atonal. So, I think fusion describes all that in a way that is not too specific.”
Improv isn’t new for them— it’s how they write a lot of their own songs. But they wanted to play even more and push each other to grow musically in a way that couldn’t happen with only weekly rehearsals. Then as the recent New York state regulation prohibiting serving of kava has been put into effect, it’s been a shift within the Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar, something that motivated Delaques Improv even further.
One of the band’s earliest performances took place in the lounge when the group was just a trio. Since then, the lounge hasn’t stopped being a place where they could always perform.
Paul Galgoczy, founder and co-owner, said when Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar first opened in 2014, they built the stages and the room around it as a gathering place for performance.
“[This space] is really good for musicians who are just starting out. Paul, the owner, has done a really good job at providing an environment for people to play and express themselves and try new things, so this was a perfect place for an event like this,” said Devivo.
Because of Galgoczy’s history with the band, he said he was excited about the prospect of improv nights. He said he believes improvisation is one of the truest forms of musical expression.
“It really goes in a lot of different directions, and it stays interesting and so that’s kind of special in a way that any rehearsed schedule of structured songs doesn’t quite capture that,” said Galgoczy.
Delaques Improv includes both slow moving ballads and frenetic upbeat songs, and sometimes both all in one piece – with transitions that make it hard to distinguish when one song finishes and when another begins.
“An improvised set we have no clue what we’re about to do, so it kind of puts us on our metal. Now sometimes I think I know what someone else is going to do because we have habits, but I think the biggest difference is having a plan versus having a goal. An improvised show the plans will change but the goal is the same, be here, be now and give your best,” Aerson said.
What Delaques Improv means as Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar faces regulations
For Delaques doing the improv nights has been not just fun, but about making sure people come out to the lounge through music as this major change for the space is happening.
Where the New York State Department of Health determined that kava could have negative impact on a person’s health, Galgoczy speaks to how kava the drink derived from the shrub is distinct from kava as a dietary supplement and has been used with no ill effect.
Galgoczy said, “The regulation is being applied erroneously and we’re looking for people to recognize that.”
To that end the Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar website encourages people to reach out to state legislators and sign the petition, asking for kava to be recognized as a safe beverage under the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) framework.
“Now more than ever it makes sense to be doing this, to help bring in business for Paul here at the Sacred Root and also for us to get riskier with our sound, to get more tuned in with each other playing. … To bring that process out into the open, that kind of vulnerability is important to be practicing these days too,” Aerson said.
