| "A
Sound Can Belong Anywhere..."
When Badal Roy
joined Miles Davis' band back in 1970, he got
a mysterious answer to his question about how to play. "Play
it like a nigger..." is what Miles said. Miles
liked the sound of tablas, but Indian classical music didn't
fit into his concept of electric jazz. So he wanted Badal
to develop a cross-over style. A student and disciple of
Alla Rakha, Badal Roy has received worldwide critical
acclaim, also for his current work with Ornette Coleman's
Prime Time. An imposing discography
includes - apart from Davis - Herbie Mann, John McLaughlin,
Dave Liebman, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Leni Stern, Nana
Vasconcelos, Dizzy Gillespie. Studio owner Tom Tedesco
wrote saying "... Badal's playing of tabla in a jazz
context far surpasses anything ever done.."
A guitarist, sitarist,
singer and composer, Amit Chatterjee has gone through
extensive training in Indian, European and American music
He teaches at the Ethnomusicology department of the University
of Miami. His ambition to forge truely global music is what
he achieves on this recording. Amit has recorded and performed
with great artists such as Joe Zawinul ( from 1983
onwards), Carlos Santana, Eric Johnson, Glen Velez,
Layne Redmond, Dave Liebman, Paul Winter and Paul
Halley- and of course, compatriot Badal Roy.
This album, is a
logical product of Badal's and Amit's friendship and long
sojourn in a world where music is just music.."Sound
must be divested of a caste system," Badal said to
us during his flying visit to Munich, "a sound or a
note doesn't know where it belongs - it can belong anywhere!"
With a childlike gaiety and playfulness paradoxically acquired
only through the courage to take risks - both musicians
unfurl a myriad sounds, colours and moods, Amit phrasing
with bent notes and quarter notes, Badal playing complex
6/4 or 7/8 time cycles. Though they're varying pitch, pace
and volume - combining the rainstick and the matak, the
mridangam or the madol - the guitar sounding plugged or
unplugged, or even sometimes like a sitar - they never lose
the inner coherence, their story: They bring sunshine
to the people - and eternal radiance.
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