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You're at a Beat the Devil show for the first time.

The drummer and bassist hit the stage followed by a petite Indian woman who begins singing.

"Typical reaction: shock and awe," wrote The Village Voice.

Shilpa Ray's voice has a stirring timelessness to it — hypnotic, uneasy and ultimately transfixing. Her bluesy jazz band, the guitarless Beat the Devil, will perform in Tucson Monday night as part of its first Western tour.

Ray, 27, was raised in a strict Hindu home where no Western music was allowed. As a child, she sang classical Indian songs for pageants and other events.

"It seemed more mechanical to me," she said. "I didn't like it because I couldn't understand what it was I was saying or doing."

Ray was in middle school when Nirvana broke big, and she became curious about all the fuss.

"Everybody's talking about this band and I had no idea what that was or where it came from," she said.

She quickly found herself smuggling rock biographies from her local library into her house and sifting through her older sister's secret record collection. Ray says she always wrote poetry, but it wasn't until she was in college that she thought of turning it into music.

"It all just kind of came together after a long time," she said. She found her bassist, Mishka Shubaly, in 2005 on the Web site Craig's List, and she met the band's current drummer after a performance.

The New York City band (its name comes from an old Humphrey Bogart film) has drawn a slew of rave reviews for its live shows. Along the way, Ray has been called everything from the city's best frontperson (Time Out NY) to "a petite powerhouse" (The New York Times). The band boasts only an EP, but a full-length CD is on the way.

"I don't know what they're talking about because we don't have like a laser light show or anything," Ray said of the band's performances. "There's no costumes, we wear whatever. We're like the most unfashionable band. We just get up there."

Ray, who has been known to play a snow shovel onstage, says all she knows about her performances are that they "feel really good."

Things also are fuzzy for her parents, who still don't fully understand her career path and why she's not more like her sister, who owns her own software developing firm.

"They still think I'm going to go get my master's and get a real job," she said.

Solar Culture has moved most of its major concerts to other music venues in Tucson following safety concerns about Downtown warehouses reported several weeks ago in the Star.

Monday night's Beat the Devil show will remain at the longtime venue, 31 E. Toole Ave. Solar Culture currently has other concerts and art shows scheduled through December.