Growing into and out of Different Sounds: An Interview with Jacob Galuten

Jacob is a philosophy and cognitive and brain science double major and a computer science minor at Tufts University. Over the past four years, he has worn his hair long, longer, and more recently, short. He has moved in and through the Tufts music scene but currently plays casually, appearing at basement shows on occasion or performing jazz at local restaurants for Valentine’s Day. Jacob stands out as a performer due to his confidence, high-level technical training, and curiosity to be experimental and play with the music he generates.

I have known Jacob since freshman year and have seen him preform at everything from campus events to student parties. We often run into each other at the gym where he conducts ritual like sauna sessions—completed by turning off the lights, pouring essential oil on the coals and playing yogi-prayer music. I thought I was LA until I met Jacob.

I had him meet me at my third-floor Somerville kitchen table on Valentine’s Day. We were both dressed formal-like for the day. Jacob, carrying his saxophone and melodica (we will explain what that is), and wearing a pink button-down to play background Jazz for a local Indian restaurant with his friend and former bandmate, Issac. This is what we talked about:

So Jacob, what is the scope of instruments that you play? Obviously, I’ve seen you play the alto sax and your weird little thing with the keyboard. What is that called?

Jacob: A melodica. It’s a keyboard type device that you blow into to create sound so you have keys and there’s like a tube nozzle, and you blow into it, the air goes and vibrated these little times that are some how turned on by the key.

Weird. For the record, the instrument is sitting on the table.

How do you think your music has evolved since its beginning and then coming to Tufts to now, where you are a senior about to graduate?

Jacob: Well, I stared playing saxophone in the fifth grade and there was only one year that I had to stop. My middle and high school (The New West Charter School in LA), wasn’t a shitty school, like they had good teachers, they kept it clean, but there was low budget, and so there wasn’t much of a music department, and we had to fund everything with bake sales. And even then, we didn’t have that many kids interested in music, and not that much talent, which was mostly a bad thing. But then we got this new director, Joseph Cooper when I joined in seventh grade, and this new director was like, determined to turn the whole thing around and build it up from the ground up. And there wasn’t that much talent. It was kind of like Bad News Bears and there wasn’t that much money or that many instruments for people on the it’s not a super wealthy zip code range, so people couldn’t buy their own instruments. So it was tough to get it up and running, but he kind of found a way to take this, like, hodgepodge group of musicians he was able to find at this small school and make something out of it. And we won a bunch of stuff. And part of how he was able to do that was he saw talent in me, and he kind of, like, put me at the center of a lot of things. He would, write songs himself, specifically orchestrated to work for our weird group. The orchestration was one cello, a trumpet, a guitar, a saxophone, a bass, and a flute. But anyway, there was some pieces he wrote with me as the main soloist, and it gave me, it kind of like shot me forward.

What was your experience making music once you got to Tufts?

Jacob: Well, then I got here, and pretty much immediately, the third it was the first day of classes that I met Isaac in a class called African rhythm systems that I dropped immediately. And he was like, Yo, you want to jam with me and this other dude. And that became Land Urchin, like, I pulled up. It was him, Lucas, Gracie and Jake so, basically most of what became Land Urchin was just there. They were all jamming, maybe for the second time together. And I said, Hey, what’s up? And they played a song, and then I started playing with them, I just joined another song. And then they were all like, wow. That was great. You’re in the band, done. It was, day three of Tufts. And so this thing that I’ve been wanting for so long, to be in a band with other young people, is just given to me instantly.

What was the trajectory of Land Urchin? Because you guys, you aren’t, you aren’t in a that’s no longer a thing, right?

Jacob: Yeah, it kind of just like, you know faded away. Like Isaac and Gracie went abroad, and when they came back, it was everyone just kind of agreed that it wasn’t like happening anymore. It lasted two years.

You guys all still play music on campus though, right?

I still jam with Isaac, yeah, still jam with Lucas. People still have bands and bands trade people a lot, I’d say.

How would you describe the Tufts music scene? Its a small school so do you find that it verges on collaborative or more, I don’t know, incestuous even.

It feels more incestuous, maybe that. I mean, at least in my experience, it’s kind of like, I don’t, I don’t want to see it this way, but it feels almost kind of competitive, and I think that’s a result of it being so small, where it’s like, oh, like, he’s not playing with me anymore, but he’s playing with this other guy that I know. I only know one other sax player, and so it’s like, I don’t want to have any negative feelings towards him but I know that he’s playing in bands that I think make good music with friends of mine, like Systemic flow. I love systemic flow. But if we go out sometime, we might just see them playing, and it’s like, fuck those guys. Even if I don’t really feel that way towards them as people.

In what capacity are you playing music now? For instance, I know you’re about to go to a Valentine’s Day jazz thing but you’re not in an official band.

I’m jamming now with someone from Land Urchin, but we’re not even at Tufts. We’re just there’s this random restaurant in Cambridge called Kashari Mama that’s very homey and sweet. And I’ve met this woman, and she she wanted to know if I play sax for at her restaurant on Valentine’s Day. It’s totally unrelated to the Tufts scene at all. I think that’s nice, because finally, it’s like I started with me, like, I feel like my music journey has been me, like, expanding my bounds, where it’s like I was just in my kind of elementary school at home, and then I was playing in high school, and then all sudden, I was playing at these, like festivals and competitions with my high school. And then I was playing not just at that festivals and competitions where the only audience are, like judges, but now I’m playing it and the other students at school. But now I’m playing it like in, like a college environment where there’s just, it’s just the greater Tufts community. And finally, I feel like I’m getting to a point where I’m just playing now I’m playing in Cambridge.

How do you want to keep music in your life post-graduation?

Alright, so I think this is me preparing for that. It was my last semester. I think this is one of the first examples of how I could maybe I don’t need to be a part of some kind of system, like a school, in order to keep music in my life. And I, ideally, I want to keep doing things like that, where I just, I kind of know how to play, and sometimes just, I do something fun with it, and I bring some joy to some people.

Do you think it has been kind of like changing and evolving into you know, as your skill level has increased, you’re able to use it more in an emotional way. And do you think you do?

Everything you just said is, like, totally accurate. I think the better I get at music, the more of a tool it has become for self expression, for processing my emotions. Because you know, if you’re not good, if you’re if you aren’t skilled, and you’re not able to articulate yourself, it’s like learning a language, right? So if you don’t know any words in Spanish, it’s not going to serve much use to you. And the more you learn, the more you’re like. It’s a medium that you can like do things through you can communicate messages. You can journal to yourself, do whatever you need in this language. The answer is yes. I do. I do.