DEVA Mahal doesn’t call any one place home, but there’s a big space in her heart reserved for Wellington.
“It’s wonderful coming back, I feel I can breathe again. In the aeroplane on the way back I was looking up at the sky and I could feel the weight lifting off my shoulders. I had a little tear in my eye,” she says.
Mahal’s visiting from New York, where she’s been living since 2007. She’s catching up with her family, who all live in Wellington, and touring a new EP from her band Fredricks Brown – Out of the Rain.
“I left for New York with the idea that I could try to immerse myself in the music scene in the US. My father always told me to surround myself with people who are greater than yourself and while I did have that in New Zealand, I’d just been here so long. I wanted to put my feet in a different ocean and see if I sank or swam.”
Mahal’s father is Grammy Award-winning blues musician Taj Mahal. Her brother is Imon Starr, the charismatic ex-Rhombus frontman who now heads intergalactic local band Olmecha Supreme. With such an impressive musical lineage, was there pressure to head into music?
“Music was just something we did as a family. As I get older and more acquainted with what my father’s done in his 40-year career, I get to thinking ‘God, I haven’t even touched what he’d done by 19’. But it’s not pressure; it’s an understanding of the commitment needed to get the result I’m looking for - to get to a place where I can create something of my own spirit and mind that sustains my life.”
Fredricks Brown fuse soul, jazz and something very groovy with great originality, and it’s all tied together with Mahal’s voice, reminiscent of India Arie and Lauryn Hill, while retaining its own sound.  
All three key band members are ex-patriate New Zealanders, but the band began in New York when Mahal ran into old friend and keyboard player Stephanie Brown.
The two had performed together before, and all it took was one meeting to rekindle their musical connection.
“Right away we started making music any way we possibly could.”
In 2009, the duo became a trio with the addition of trumpet player Michael Taylor.
Taylor joined the group on stage a few times, then Mahal and Brown discovered he “kind of” played guitar.
“It was all very ‘Wellington’. Everyone plays a bit of something here, it’s the DIY attitude in us.”
With guitar, keys and vocals the trio was complete.
“It started feeling like a family. We got on the road and it became apparent that we were definitely a triad.”
Mahal returns to New York soon.
“It’s a very self-focused place and it makes you look over every aspect of yourself with a fine-toothed comb - and I’m a Capricorn so I’m already self-critical,” she laughs.
“When I arrived there it was with a fresh, wide-eyed view. Within a year you begin to feel the weight of the city - one minute you’re ready to leave and the next something happens that could only happen there.”
Playing Yoko Ono’s recent birthday tribute to John Lennon at the Beacon Theatre, Cyndi Lauper and Patti Smith turned up to watch the band soundcheck.
“That gets the adrenaline pumping beyond belief. In New York you’re living with the people you idolise, and because you train and walk everywhere the people who live there are forced to interact. It’s invaluable.”
Is the United States home now?
“Home is the people and the experiences around me, and where my family is. I like to say I’m a citizen of the world. It sounds orbital and flaky, but that’s where I’m at at the moment.”