The Cedar Presents
DÁLAVA
Saturday, March 21, 2026 / Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
All Ages
Seated
$30 Advance, $35 Day of Show
*For Cedar Presented shows, a $4 facility fee is included in the ticket price (Ticket fee info here).
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
For Cedar presented shows, online ticket sales typically end one hour before the door time, and then, based on availability, tickets will be available at the door. Tickets purchased at the door will include a $1 Eventbrite fee.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Dálava sources Moravian (Czech) folk songs that were collected by lead vocalist Julia Ulehla’s great-grandfather in his village, and renders them in an improvisatory, cinematic musical language. The duo has received critical acclaim for the unique ways in which they blend folk tradition and avant-garde and experimental elements.
Julia Úlehla and Dálava
Dálava, the genre-defying ensemble led by vocalist Julia Úlehlawith guitarist Aram Bajakian (Lou Reed, John Zorn, Diana Krall), returns with Understories, a deeply evocative new album that explores uncharted territories of sound. Seamlessly weaving Moravian folk traditions with an experimental, improvisational approach, Understories takes the listener on a journey through captivating sonic worlds. Dálava’s music has received critical acclaim for its expressive depth: fRoots extolled their prior release as “so overwhelming and so intense that it is hard to put into any category…. Saying that The Book of Transfigurations is a masterpiece is not an exaggeration.”
Most of the pieces in Dálava’s repertoire are inspired by a collection of folk songs compiled in the book Živá Píseň (Living Song) written by Úlehla’s great-grandfather. A biologist and ethnomusicoloist, Vladimír Úlehla (1888-1947) meticulously transcribed hundreds of folk songs from his hometown, the Moravian village of Strážnice in southeast Czechia. On Understories Julia Úlehla exhibits an ineffable kinship to these songs, a deeply-rooted living bond to the land of her father’s and great-grandfather’s birth. The American-born daughter of a refugee from communist Czechoslovakia, Julia Úlehla directs Dálava’s interpretations of these centuries-old transcriptions, ensuring they are conferred with a respect not only for the music as a historical artifact, but as living, breathing organisms that speak to their metaphysical universality. Dálava, which means ‘the disappearing line on the horizon, where sky and land merge into each other,’ is an apt description of the group’s approach: The music resides in that indeterminate, liminal space between past and future, magic and realism, neither primordial nor of this world. The album is a sonic exploration that transcends time and borders, fusing disparate traditions into a singular, emotionally charged experience.
Úlehla asserts that Understories marks a departure from her previous Dálava releases: “It used to really matter to me what my family and other Czechs —especially tradition bearers — thought about what I was doing with these songs. But at the time we made this record it felt like I was tuned to a layer of reality that was not human, fumbling through some strange form of unbidden mysticism. I’ve come to realize that to encounter the realm that the record yearns to conjure, a listener needs to be willing to venture down below — to descend through subterranean layers or meet the “understories” carried in folk song’s palimpsestic layers, some of which are fugitive and full of grief. Rather than provide a translation of the lyrical content of the songs, the song titles mark the stages of an underworld journey — what the Greeks called katabasis. “Open your ear to the great below” — the crossroad opens. “Escape velocity” — a song in which a girl leaves home and turns herself into a speckled bird corresponds to a protagonist’s decision to leave for the great below and the transformation that will be required.”
To learn more about Dálava: