Zaza, born Zaza Ujmajuridze, was born in Tbilisi, Georgia – a country beautifully set between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea with a culture as ancient as its language.

Besides being a musician, Zaza is a successful oncologist, working in Denmark.

Zaza is initiated into the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition and goes by the spiritual name Nandapriya das. He decided to use Zaza for his recordings, though since it’s easier to remember.

Despite his full-time work as a medical doctor, Nandapriya has translated from English to Georgian about sixty books on India’s spiritual knowledge and produced and printed them. These books were themselves translated and commentated from Sanskrit and Bengali into English by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

This is Nandapriya’s first album. A prolific pianist and singing artist, he started recording fifty years into his life, although he has been composing improvisational music since childhood, when he spent seven years in music school. Although he later chose to go to medical school, music followed him, and he continued to compose occasionally.

As a young man he became a serous adherent of the Krishna consciousness movement, and again music was pushed to the back of his life. Later, family and work responsibilities left him little time for much else. But the dream of making music never left him.

One day, his twelve-year-old daughter asked him to share his music with the public. Bolstered by her enthusiasm and the encouragement of friends, among whom were some professional musicians, Nandapriyafound the support he needed. This led him to an amazing jazz pianist and musician, Professor Carsten Dahl, former head of the jazz conservatory in Copenhagen. Carsten suggested him to try recording music in the studio, maybe even two of them, but the timing wasn’t right and Carsten directed Nandapriya to another wonderful musician, who owned a studio.

The recordings on this album were done quickly, each song taking only 10-30 minutes to record. Kaev Gliemann arranged the music, and Nandapriyadecided to release them as they were – a little raw, but genuine.

Although Nandapriyahad written a number of songs, many still lacked lyrics, so for this album Nandapriyawrote new songs to lyrics he already knew, drawn specifically from old spiritual songs in Bengali and Sanskrit that glorified Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu and their great devotees and spiritual abode.

Nandapriyaused the songs of Narottam das Thakur, a great Bengali pure devotee who lived in fifteenth century India, as well as of Bhaktivinod Thakur, a prominent Vaishnava and writer. Their lives and teachings are as brilliant as the sun.

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For more information about Nandapriya’s music visit: https://zazamusic.dk

The album is available on iTunes.