the colour of rain

A piano and a voice. Together they weave a world of gushing passion, religious love, ethereal feminine beauty, intense devotion, a plea for deliverance, with a climatic understanding of the soul’s permanence and the body’s ephemerality. Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan collaborate yet again to produce complexity in the barebones combination of a grand piano and carnatic vocals. Maaya is the colour of the rain. Maaya is illusion. Maaya is a prism through which the colours of light get shaped in such a way that the old growth appears greener, and old colours find themselves formed into a rainbow, as the album cover states. The music becomes metaphor for the illusion of romance, or rain. The rain is gentle. It is the wellspring of all things new, refreshing and resurgent. The rain is fury. It prances with abandon, uprooting the old and challenging every form that comes its way. It is Shakthi, virile and potent, changing the course of several destinies as it unleashes its might.

The songs are sheer poetry. From Ponnin Oli of Kamba Ramayanam, where the grass underneath young Sita’s feet speak of her radiance and beauty, to a tryst between a young maiden and her divine lover, set in a garden inhabited  by nightingales, in Punguyil by Kalki Krishnamurthy, the bewitching words carry us to various emotional spaces, while the music remains free from over-dramatization of sounds. Here’s a transliteration (much of the complexity is lost in translation. from here) of Subramaniya Bharathi’s Suttum Vizhi Chudar sung to his permanent muse, Kannama.

Thy glowing eyes – Kannamma
Are they the sun and the moon?
Thy black eyeballs – Kannamma
Is that the dark hue of the sky?
Glittering diamonds-In
thy dark blue silk sari
Are shining stars – seen
in the middle of the night.

Garden flower’s brightness – Is that
thy alluring smile?
Waves of the blue ocean – Are
thy bosom’s thoughts.
Enchanting melody of the cuckoo- Is
thy sweet voice.
Innocent girl are you – Kannamma
I am in love with thee.

You talk of tradition – Kannamma
Who needs that?
For those in a hurry – Kannamma
Is tradition a hurdle?
If elders accept – our wedding
Shall happen later.
Can I wait till then – here
Let me kiss you on the cheek.

Maaya is the colour of the rain. Every song is clear and serene. Maaya is the colour of the rain. It reflects who we are. Maaya is an illusion. It is what we want it to be.

Pungiyil* from the album Maaya by Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan Buy from Charsur More Anil Srinivasan on his website. Annapoorne and Annamacharya Keerthana Kseerabdhi Kanyakaku Neerajanam with Subiksha Rangarajan are recommended.

~posted by nithya [* best enjoyed with filter coffee]

delicium/delirium: dengue fever

You have been here: the beach-side, in the evening? The lights and music at the edge of humanity. Mediocre music heard filtering out of distant doors, the words garbled. Contemplating a long night, to come or perhaps already passed. Attention at the edge of engagement. Confusion: should you go in or not?

You have surely wanted to be here: a foreign land, the beach-side, in the night? A grimy place, humid.. warm.. comfortable.. cheap. Bad beer, perhaps, but plentiful. The lyric of sex hovering around you all evening. The poorly tuned band, and the woman singing in a strange tongue, too fast for you to follow the sounds, but too slow to be exciting. Confusion: should you tune her out or not? Nothing else to do, but no energy to do anything else, either.

This is the delirium of Dengue Fever. The dreamland of Cambodia, captured in the white man’s gaze in City of Ghosts, and brought to life by the wonderfully anachronistic music of Ethan & Zac Holtzmann and Chhom Nimol. Like Arcade Fire, but twisted in the direction of some rather obscure (to Western ears) pop music, from 60′s Cambodia – how did they even discover this stuff in LA? – Dengue Fever is equal parts throwback and re-invention. It’s definitely an unusual sound to create: the screechy guitars reminiscent of bad tapes & tape players, a harsh, flattened bass (courtesy of tinny amplifiers) and Nimol’s high-pitched vocals all conspire to produce a slightly sad, jangling effect (despite the irony of doing all this on modern sound systems).

The mood is one of loss, kitschy love, lust, and plain heat, but in a nice South-East Asian sort of way (with song titles like Ethanopium, Flowers, I’m Sixteen, Monsoon of Perfume, 22 Nights, We Were Gonna). In one of their rare English-language songs Tiger Phone Card, they declaim:

“You live in Phnom Penh (Zac)
You live in New York City (Chhom)
But I think about you so so so so (together)
So much I forget to eat

If you’re a guy with an Asian chick fetish, grab your feni and listen up.

Hold My Hips from the album Dengue Fever by Dengue Fever Buy from Emusic or Amazon More Dengue Fever at Last.fm

~posted by arvind

weep of the oboe

Tonight,
when the Mariamman flame flickers,
from the aging aalamaram’s sigh,
Bring me your unspoken promises,
Maragadham.
For we shall dance like the bell
and its tether,
to the tune of wind whistles.

And if the temple flame eventually dies,
Maragatham,
our passions will ignite crimson
the rim of the sky.

Tonight,
when I place the
kumkumam on your forehead,
black-red will infuse
into my cold, grey ashes,
that have settled
over five rocks beside a stream
divided by Shiva’s tresses.

[Mariamman = Goddess associated with Durga
Aalamaram = Banyan tree
Maragadham = Emerald. Also a female Tamil name.
Kumkumam = Vermilion]

They Took My Love Away from the album Moon Shines At Night by Djivan Gasparyan Armenian Duduk Buy from cduniverse or Amazon More Djivan Gasparyan at Last.fm

~posted by nithya (all text)

for the love of god

Emotions can be confusing — they are tied to context, but transgressive. They speak to each of us differently — warmth is betrayal to some, ownership is loss to some others. They appear, and re-appear, in the familiar, and in the foreign. How, then, should one handle multiple emotions stemming from a single experience? By doing nothing. Yes, that’s exactly what you do when you listen to the master of Qawwalis — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Give in. Just. Listen.

How else can you respond to a voice that feels like rubbing your hands over yards of silk? Smooth, lilting, gentle, yet variational. It feels like a hot air balloon just released. Anti-gravitate and fearless. It feels like divinity has just presented itself to you in an inconceivable way.

Dub Qawwali is a posthumous album of NFAK’s lesser known songs, remixed by French electronica artiste, Gaudi. What’s remarkable is how Reggae meets Sufi, and does not impose its potency over spiritual expression. Instead, we hear an elegant combination, where the Reggae and Dub actually highlight the individual components of Qawwali. This is not your regular remix fare. Dub Qawwali – dreadlocks behind the veil.

Enter Michael Brook. If Dub Qawwali feels like a blend of music cultures,  Night Song feels monolithic. The opening track, My Heart, My Life is pure epiphany. How it gains momentum! Night Song is for the lovers of dusk and melancholy.

Bethe bethe kaise kaise from the album Dub Qawwali by Gaudi and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Ena akhiyon noo from the album Dub Qawwali by Gaudi and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Buy from Amazon More Dub Qawwali at Last.fm My heart, my life from the album Night Song by Michael Brook and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Buy from Amazon More Night Song at Last.fm

~ posted by nithya

–

specialists in all styles: orchestra baobab

When Orchestra Baobab makes that claim, you want to believe them. Not because it is so endearing (it is), or because it reminds you of a particular touching mixture of hope & pride one might encounter elsewhere (one does) – but because once they get jamming, you end up wishing that a lot more music were as ..  content as theirs is.

Orchestra Baobab was formed in the wake of Senegalese independence, and a notion of ‘negritude‘: pride in being African. At the center of a surge in rediscovery & redefinition (Club Baobab belonged to the brother of the then Senegalese president Leopold Senghor), they found themselves being encouraged to incorporate traditional music into the otherwise standard Cuban son and pachanga that nightclubs in Dakar had popularised since the 40′s. Unlike other contemporary bands like Bembeya Jazz National (from Guinea) or the Super Rail Band (Mali) whose work integrated one single regional style, Orchestra Baobab (like the tree) spread their roots wide. Members included Wolof griot singers Laye M’boup and Thione Seck, Mandinka saxophonist Issa Cissoko, guitarist Barthelemy Attisso (Togo), Cassamance vocalist and songwriter Balla Sidibe, and vocalist/songwriter Rudolphe Gomis from Guinea-Bissau with his Latinate compositions.

What is remarkable about Orchestra Baobab is the sheer effortlessness of the fusion of styles they pulled off. You can hear the Cuban influences (what, exactly? figure it out: we’re not musical structure geeks), but you know that the music is its own thing, not a copy. While it might remind you a lot of things (Attisso cites Congolese guitarist Doctor Nico, Ibrahim Ferrer, Django Reinhardt, BB King, Wes Montgomery and Carlos Santana as influences), you know that you’re hearing something that belongs to itself. This music touches you everywhere.

Consider the evening. Tomorrow is on its way. But consider the evening: it is sufficient for now. Do you have something to drink? A comfortable chair? Someone to love? Good. It is sufficient for now.

Hommage a Tonton Ferrer (“Tribute to Uncle Ferrer“) from the album Specialist in All Styles by Orchestra Baobab Buy from Emusic, Mondomix or Amazon More Orchestra Baobab at Last.fm

~ posted by arvind

black

Dawn is the sacred hour.
Dawn is the sacred hour,
Saffron and rose-coloured it throws open the doors of the sky.

Mists, like evil spirits, shrink and shrivel,
Vanish into thin air.
The sun pierces them through and through.

It lights the recesses of cavelike shrines,
Flashes on the brass and copper vessels of bathers in the river.
Pure grace.

Once the breath goes out, it’s fit to burn.

Your head,
Your turban, artfully arranged, will adorn it,
With the beaks of crows.

Your bones will burn like tinder,
Your hair will burn like hay.

While Vishnu reclines on a serpent called Endless,
Don’t fear death; welcome it.
Once the breath goes out,
Once the breath goes out, it’s fit to burn.

Dawn is the sacred hour.

World,
Secular or social interests as distinguished from the religious or spiritual.

Here’s the cause of it all –
It’s a house of tricks.

Life has slipped away.
No-one is left on the road,
And in each direction, the evening dark has come

Here’s the cause of it all –
(It’s a house of tricks)
It’s a house of tricks.
Ignore the world.
Ignore the world.
Ignore the world.

Kala from the album City of Light Buy from Amazon More Bill Laswell at Last.fm

~posted by nithya

new voices for old stories

It is evening, just past the setting hour. You are in your room, doors closed. Then it begins: a slow strumming, gentle, fluid. An old sound: the kanun, Wikipedia tells you. Now, almost imperceptibly, a flute joins in. Someone is taking long breaths and releasing them with infinite patience. All this while the kanun has been rising and falling, like a flame flickering, trying to stay alive. This is the beginning of the cold: you know it, it will soon be night. You are in your room, doors closed. You are in a field under an orange sky.

You are in your room, doors closed. A voice begins speaking: it is deep, it comes from the belly, comes from the heart. The words are alternately harsh and entreating, staccato and melodic. It is a slow voice. It knows time: it has seen it pass. Its parents have seen it pass. Passage, a long passage, is at the roots of this voice: it has come a long way and there is no need to hurry. The voice is speaking of something old, so old that it does not now matter how long it takes to finish, because the story it is telling has come so far. Because there is time, there is always time. There has been time for thousands of years since this story happened, and there will certainly be time tonight. Under an orange sky, where the heat of the day hangs reluctant, unwilling to make place for the coolness of the night. In a field, where time bows to the ney and the kanun and the measure of the story and the voice beseeching.

You are in your room, doors closed. You are listening to Abed Azrie tell the story of Gilgamesh. You are under an orange sky, cocooned by the warmth of day in a field of night. The voice stops, and the kanun returns to prominence, joined by a violin. You are in your room, doors closed. The voice starts again, and it is clear that the man and his instruments are playing tag, now one speaking, now the other, but always sounding alike, always carrying the same gravity. You are in an orange field under the warm sky listening to a story that began five thousand years ago, in a field like this one, behind closed doors like these.

This is music from Alep, or Halab to the Arabs and Aleppo to the Italians. Alep is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It was here when Alexander left Macedonia. It was here when the Ismailis and the Mamluks fought for control of Egypt. It was here when Tamerlane ransacked it before deciding to rape India. It was here when the Ottomans were overlords of Turkey and pushing at the borders of Afghanistan. It was here, at the end of the Silk Road, when silk and peony from China terminated their arduous journey at Antioch. It was here when the French gave Antioch to Turkey and Alep to Syria and the Armenians and the Turkish Christians and the Lebanese were drawn to in this century. It might have even been here since Gilgamesh and Enkidu left behind an unforgettable story. And so it has seen emperors pass, religions clash, travelers settle, and it has absorbed all of the musics and the instruments and the sense of continuity.

So when Abed Azrie does the telling, he begins gently and proceeds slowly, building up the tension, always keeping the mystery. He is the narrator, grief pouring from every third syllable. He is Enkidu, and his wild instruments keep pace. He is the narrator, but from another time and age, and a little French sharpens his indignance. But it is a deep story and deserves contemplation. So you contemplate the shape of his words, the import of his drawl, and the accents his instruments provide to tell you you must feel fear, or awe, or empathy or joy. And you contemplate the silence, behind closed doors, unwilling to open them. Now every other story will feel small, too young, too brash. Every other story will seem forgettable.

And it will not matter that this album was released in 1977, shortly after Azrie moved to Paris, and it took you this long to discover it. And that you do not know of his other vast soaring renditions of Omar Khayyam and other Arabic poetry. It will not even matter that you will not understand ‘spoken word’ as a genre in the same way again.

So listen.

Gilgamesh from the album Épopée de Gilgamesh by Abed Azrié Buy from Emusic, Mondomix or Amazon More Abed Azrie at Last.fm

~posted by arvind

father and son

Dim lights. Accents previously unheard. A generous helping of faces from places unknown. Rows of colourful concoctions travelling undisturbed on trays. A flurry of expensive clothes and shiny shoes. Then, they come and set up stage. And he sings. The silkiness of the Kora reminds me of the legacy. The mesmerizing voice is fresh and baritone. It is that moment when comely ladies and debonair gents get up and dance. This must be NYC. This must be Vieux Farke Toure.

Life’s unfair if you have to carry the torch of legendary parents, but Vieux sizes up decently. Vieux Farka Toure is the sparkling legacy of one of the greatest musicians of our time and perhaps West Africa’s most popular musical name. Similar to his tenacious Dad (which earned him the moniker of “Farka”, which means “Donkey” in Songhai), Vieux (meaning “Old” in Francais) stood against his Dad’s wishes of pursuing a military career and instead took to jamming with his Dad’s records secretly. A wise decision, but sadly his father was not alive to hear his first album. Vieux experiments with electronica and desert blues. Vieux is the new french-speaking voice of traditional Mali.

The good father, Ali Farka Toure is worlds apart — a world closer to Mali than Memphis. His hypnotising Blues scales and soulful voice in Songhay, Fulfulde, Tamasheq, or Bambara transcend boundaries and language barriers. Toure collaborated with Toumani Diabate (oh, that will have to wait) in “In the Heart of the Moon”, and Ry Cooder in “Talking Timbuktu”, two albums that always leave me spellbound. Without further ado, find the files below.

	Mamadou Boutiquer, from the album In the Heart of the Moon Buy it from Amazon
	Diaraby, from the album Talking Timbuktu [Audio http://www.ics.uci.edu/~nsambasi/diaraby.mp3%5D Buy it from Amazon
	Courage, from the album UFOs over Bamako by Vieux Farka Toure Buy from Amazon Listen at Rhapsody

~ posted by nithya

paban das baul & the pure sound of surrender

San Ramon, a backwater city in the Bay area on a lazy June afternoon. In a solidly middle-class hotel, a thoroughly diasporic long-haired Indian and his old Bengali friend are catching up over music. Now, the long-haired one leans over to his laptop and says, listen to this. We are introduced to a rather predictable electronic atmospheric groove, textured by a vaguely Indian string instrument. Utterly mundane. Suddenly the friend sits up with a start, because a singer has broken into chaste Bengali verse: “As you wake in the morning, utter her name: Kali, Kali”.

I speak here of the second of Paban Das Baul’s collaborations with electronic musicians. In Tana Tani, Paban Das works with Calcutta-based Sam Zamam, better known in British Asian breakbeat circles as “State of Bengal” (listen to him in “Flight IC 408″ from Talvin Singh’s iconic Asian Underground album, Anokha). Asian underground musicians are known for their enthusiasm for taking perfectly good folk/classical music from various parts of Asia, and augmenting it with booming bass lines and fractal breakbeats, sometimes producing the musical equivalent of 50 rowdy conversations at once. Bauls are known for being drunk and opiate.

To understand precisely how strange this marriage is, it is useful to take a closer look at the Bauls, a community of ascetic minstrels from Bengal. From the liner notes of the album:

The Bauls are Bengal’s mystical wandering minstrels, keepers of a carnivalesque rave culture that is more than five centuries old. An anarchic sect of nomads, outcastes and ascetics, they have preserved a series of esoteric spiritual teachings which have been passed down for generations. They are regarded by many as being mentally unhinged by their asceticism – in Bengali the word Baul means ‘mad’ or ‘possessed’; in the villages of West Bengal they are described as ‘holy fools’; in Calcutta they are described as ‘God’s troubadours’. They refer to each other as ‘khepa’, meaning ‘furious’. Carrying hand drums and simple stringed instruments, they travel Bengal ‘s farms and villages, temples and shrines, bus-stops and wells, performing songs of love, desire and mysticism, carrying nothing but a patchwork quilt. They literally sing for their supper most nights.

To properly experience the Baul world, one has to enter a liminal zone: the Durga Puja celebrations, held in late September/early October in East India, and wherever there is a sufficient congregation of Bengalis. Durga Puja is a 4 day long affair, with pandals (tent-shrines) sprouting up all over, and a frenzy of idol-making and feasting. In the evenings, the Bauls take the stage, to sing songs of praise to the Goddess. “Stage” is somewhat of a euphemism here – Baul performances are very intimate, with very little separation between the performers and the audience. As with all communal music, this one starts slow and easy, but by and by the hypnotic drumming and the heat of the evening have completely enveloped everyone. You have surrendered to the intoxication of the Bauls.

And so Tana Tani. Music like this cuts deep. It brings back, with deft suddenness, utterly ordinary childhood experiences in a completely alien form. An underground sound.

Baul music is shorn of everything non-essential. At heart it is situated in two things only: people, of whom certain simple things are sufficient to know, and everything else, which is unknown. There is plenty of empty space in Baul music.

State of Bengal respects this: Tana Tani is a subtly crafted album. The beats retreat before the tinny chimes of Indian cymbals and Paban Das Baul’s gently winding ektara, the bass-lines echo and introduce his voice, and synthesised instruments reinforce the melody where necessary. This is well-dressed Baul work, and it is clear that the modernisation suits its rustic soul just fine. I am hard pressed to find similar examples of such sublimation, excepting perhaps the meeting of two blues cultures in Talking Timbuktu.

But enough of the prattle and let us have some of that pure sound of surrender

Moner Manush, from the album Tana Tani
by
Paban Das Baul/State of Bengal

Buy from Amazon or iTunes

~ posted by arvind

misplaced flower power

Strolling through the remnants of the beat generation and tie-dyed counter-culture stores, I chanced upon this particularly religious store-of-sorts in Haight, San Fransisco. What we had there was not a subscription to a specific faith, but a showcase of all gods Eastern. As if, the omission of a deity would invoke the wrath of fire, earth, wind, and water. As I was left perplexed by the multitude of gods and forced to choose a  religious fit, the store also cleverly displayed its clothing and other wares. Of course, I gave in (but that is another story).

And then I heard Amadou and Mariam. And the subsequent mis-labeling as chant music by the store-owner. A few words were exchanged, goodbyes were bid and we both left feeling happy. Amadou and Mariam are a blind couple from Mali, who met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako in 1977. Since then, their fame and entourage have travelled across the world. Seamlessly funking traditional roots, they blend Amadou Bagayoko’s catchy guitar tunes with Mariam Doumbia’s soulful vocals, spiced with elements of jazz, blues, french folk, and electronica. A standing testimony to music transcending obstacles — both somatic and geographic.

Senegal Fast Food, from the album Dimanche a Bamako
by
Amadou & Mariam

Buy from Amazon or iTunes

~ posted by nithya