by Genu Jay
Genu is an art and a philosophy. It is at its very core a story, spanning lifetimes of love and tragedy. Reincarnation and renewal are its biggest themes. With subtle social and religious contexts that shed light on a personal transformation through the quest of finding the self.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
The GENU Philosophy
All of the music written by songwriter Genu Jay is about the GENU Philosophy. There are three main characters in the story: the protagonist Jackson Rivers, the alien philosopher Genu, and the antagonist the dark mage Cornelius Crick. The story spans two of the lifetimes of Jackson Rivers. In his first life, he is plagued by visions of his tragic second life. Unable to understand the haunting visions, he seeks help from those near and dear to him. Until one day he meets the strange yet compelling Genu. Through their encounters, he is able to understand his life’s purpose. Finding comfort in that revelation, he learns how to fulfill his destiny until he encounters the dark mage and everything changes.
Using the story as a vehicle to explain the meaning behind the songs, Genu Jay takes the stale “I wrote this song” dialog out of the show. Combining his love of writing and theatre, he is able to create a show that is uniquely his own.
The GENU Philosophy was conceptualized while he was in college. After taking a Shakespeare class and being inspired by the play Othello, he started writing notes for his own story. Originally Jay wanted to go to school for sound and stage lighting but was heartbroken to discover that although he had an awesome portfolio, his transcripts weren’t sent in time by his high school. Which left him unable to enter the program.
Drifting through the first couple of years of college he entered the English program in an attempt to still be involved in theatre. Which ended up opening other doors for him. Music was always something he did on the side not his focal point.
A Musical Diary
Jay got into music in his teenage years when he and his skateboard buddies decided to start a punk band. Playing out of a run-down garage, they never saw their music get anywhere which fostered the belief that this was just a hobby not something to actually pursue. Growing up in a family that valued music, he would watch his father play folk tunes to guests after dinner parties in their living room.
His father was always questioning and calculating Jay’s motives for wanting to do music mostly because he had failed in his pursuit of music. After giving up on his dream of playing traditional folk music, he thought it best to teach his son to put his efforts into something else. Jay is however just as stubborn as his father and wouldn’t let those words get to him.
Telling his father “I don’t care if anybody actually listens or buys my music. As long as I have a discography for my own purposes, it will be like my musical diary”. Maintaining that believe he has self-produced seven independent records and two professionally recorded Eps. Most of which can be found on his Bandcamp . genujay.bandcamp.com
His newest release is called Awareness: Love as Action vol. 1. He intends for this to be a three-part release all two tracks long. Since most of his material pertains to the story in one way or another, these releases will be an attempt at analyzing the phenomenon of love more deeply. Hear the first installment of Love as Action on Bandcamp, Spotify, or Youtube.