Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Sarathy Korwar: Bismillah
This intricate weave of styles stitched together by jazz, samples and percussion can sometimes come off as oddly stateless and shapeless, but over the full distance offers multiculti surprises and entrancemnts throughout.
It isn't proscriptive “world music”, but it is most definitely music of this world.
And sometimes well out of it too.
Some background then: Born in the US, multi-percussionst Korwar grew up in India, learned tabla from age 10 but was drawn to the out-there edges of jazz as explored by the likes of John Coltrane (and at a guess the cosmic consciousness of Sun Ra).
He picked up Western percussion along the way and moved to London where he fell in with the hip end of the urban jazz culture and found a supporter in world music aficionado and DJ Gilles Peterson.
And as to Day to Day?
This genre-defying debut album sits astride Indian folk music (dhun), experimental jazz and contemporary electronica. With a smattering of Indian folkloric voices and sounds woven through.
Out of that colourful collage, comes this psyche-swirl of challenging and restless styles where post-bop sax sits atop roiling Indo-African percussive rhythms. Or dirt-street Indian folk melodies and sounds provide the leaping-off point for a journey through disembodied, electronica-created landscapes.
My guess is most folks will have heard nothng like this before.
Is you ready for this much difficult and rewarding enjoyment?
Stay the distance with the posted track: It get be fusion-funky, y'all!
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