Arun Ramamurthy Radically Reinvents Ragas
Although violinist Arun Ramamurthy has extensive training in Indian carnatic music, he’s also a jazz guy. He’s got a lively, intriguing, cross-pollinating new album, Jazz Carnatica,streaming at Bandcamp. It’s an attempt to radically reinvent ragas with his trio, Perry Wortman on bass and Sameer Gupta – leader of Indian jazz band Namaskar, who reinvent old Bollywood themes – on drums. What does this music sound like? Because all but one of the tracks are based on classic ragas, it’s Indian classical music first and foremost. But the rhythms are lithe and dancing and full of pulsing energy, and far more terse than the frequently expansive, slowly unwinding themes of sitar music. If you’ve got friends who might confide something like, “Sure, I like Indian music ok, but it’s so meeeelllllllloooooowwwwww…” play this the next time you see them and they’ll have a change of heart. The trio are playing the album release show on Nov 1 at 8 PM at at Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St. in the West Village; cover is $15.
As much as Ramamurthy’s violin moves around, and it’s always in motion, even when he’s at his most energetic he doesn’t stray far from a central tone. That tension fuels a lot of understated mystery here. The opening track starts out surprisingly funky, with a catchy turnaround and a very cleverly implied two-chord (or two-mode, if you must) vamp. The elegant intro of the second number quickly gives way to a dancing but hypnotic theme, which the band vamps on – Wortman often doubles Ramamurthy’s lines, providing a staccato contrast to Ramamurthy’s lingering sustain.
Marc Cary – who also plays with Gupta in Namaskar – guests on the album’s three central tracks. The first also features another cross-pollinating violinist, Trina Basu – it’s the closest thing here to a psychedelically rustic, Ravi Shankar-style raga, but built around a riff that’s pure blues. The second has Cary adding a little calypso jazz flair and the most traditional jazz vernacular of the tracks here.
The next two tracks build out of moody atmospherics to more lively interplay. Likewise, the seventh track – the one Ramamurthy original, and the best of them all – expands outward from a broodingly chromatic tune to a bouncy bass solo. As the album goes along, Ramamurthy goes deeper into the microtones, his rather severe, intense tone contrasting with Wortman’s bubbly bass on the eight number here. The final one is the closest to the kind of modal jazz that Gupta plays in Namaskar, Ramamurthy choosing his spots. All of the tracks clock in at more than five minutes, sometimes considerably more. Onstage, they’ll probably take them out even further into more psychedelic territory. This is an album that will grab a lot of people: Indian music fans in search of a shot of adrenaline, and jazz fans who thrive on the space between the notes.
Gorgeous Indian-Flavored String Music from Karavika
How many great string ensembles does New York have? An unlimited supply, apparently. One especially intriguing group is the quartet Karavika, who play alternately lush and lively compositions based on Indian motifs that span from Bollywood back to ragas. Violinist Trina Basu and cellist Amali Premawardhana, bassist Perry Wortman and tabla player Avi Shah combine forces for a diversely melodic, often hypnotic original sound that also occasionally reaches toward Appalachian rusticity or a brisk Celtic mood. They’re playing the album release show for their new one, Sunrise, tonight at 7 at Drom.
It takes nerve to open your album with a solid minute of solo drums, but that’s what they do with On the Wing, a brightly swaying blue-sky theme with both American folk and Indian inflections, meticulous madrigalesque counterpoint and a suspenseful, percussive interlude midway through. The carefree Little Road Song is a minuet in disguise, with its tricky tempo changes, vividly rustic arrangement and then an unexpectedly pensive cello solo. The most striking composition here is Song That Floats on the Breeze, with its subtly crescendoing handoffs between violin and cello, allusions to both sitar music and Pink Floyd, and an intense buildup at the end that winds out gracefully in a fluttery star-shower of violin and cello.
The longest song here is the aptly titled Moonbeam, a nocturne that artfully works the album’s only extended minor-key theme through alternately soaring and stately passages to wind up on with an unexpectedly mysterious pulse. The Dancer, which is almost as long, is basically a partita, Basu and Premawardhana switching between austere and animated roles, then building to a full-steam ensemble workout that they take down again with a distantly reflective cello solo. The title track is the most distinctly Indian piece here, from its fluttering staccato intro, to a series of insistent turnarounds and a deliciously incisive, bluesy cello solo that Basu follows with an upwardly swirling, circling sweep. It sounds quite a bit like Brookyn Rider taking an inspired stab at classical Indian music. Whether quiet and reflective or joyously energetic, the melodies are as bright as the musicians’ tone: this is music for celebrating or getting lost in. As you would expect from an ensemble with a new album out, Karavika are busy this month; they’re also at Caffe Vivaldi on 4/20 at 8:30 PM.
Lucid Culture 