Jyoti Supernaturel: crystal balls, world instruments and one long album

Jyoti Supernaturel is a French performer who plays instruments from several traditions and rolls crystal balls across his hands and body in the same show. His Instagram account, @official_jyoti_supernatural, showed about 149,000 followers when we checked. The profile describes him as a musician and an illusionist.

On his 2018 Artisti in Piazza festival card he introduces himself with a long list: natural yogi, equilibrist, contact juggler, illusionist, capoeirista, composer and multi-instrumentalist. By his own account he has performed for 17 years at street festivals and concerts in Europe and Asia and appeared on television in six countries. These figures come from the artist's self-presentation, and we have not verified them independently.

In September 2018 the website Artifex published an interview with him. Jyoti had come to Moscow and stopped by the editorial team, and he told them how he first reached Russia: about ten years before the conversation he flew to Moscow straight from India. Short visits to Moscow and St Petersburg followed, along with a concert at an airfield in Ryazan. Russian audiences, he says, are natural and kind, and they enjoy the music even when his English goes over their heads.

He learned the crystal ball by watching. In the interview Jyoti recalls a man with a ball whom he saw in South America, and his decision to learn the same thing. He also began capoeira there and still practises it. By his account he had no formal training in yoga or kung-fu: he watched, tried things and built his own method. He describes the show as storytelling through movement, and he says he cannot imagine the act without music.

In 2021 that music came out as an album of its own. Miracle of Balance reached streaming services on 12 November 2021, and Apple Music credits the release to Exodus Creative Lab. It has seven tracks and runs two hours and twenty-five minutes. Six of the tracks last between eight and thirteen and a half minutes. Hublo alone stretches to one hour and twenty-two minutes. The other titles are Chillkauns, Gryzom, Pigment, Oxygene, Mkdo and Madhu. Madhu features the project Lucid Mantra / Rudrakshiva, and Hublo adds FLOOR IS LAVA.

The album shares its name with the stage programme Miracle of Balance. The 2018 festival card puts that programme at twenty minutes, with crystal balls balancing on the performer's body. The shortest track on the album runs past eight minutes, and the whole record fills more than two hours. Apple Music files it under Worldwide, with no narrower genre.