privateSacha Silva : Susurro (SP/IND,2004)***°'

This is an extremely modest, calm and unpretentious exploration of an Indian/Spanish music blend, with overall sophistication and delicate playing. I needed to wait for a perfect moment for an attentive listen, before really being able to hear what is behind the very logical sound of the tracks, with it's not so obvious underlying content. First track, "Sol Y Luna" is a song from the famous poet Federico Garcia Lorca, translated into Hindi. It is incredible how seemingly-obvious Sacha Silva makes the music that at some listens one hardly wonders how perfect Spanish music and Indian song be melt into combination. "Gujarati Harvest Song" is an Indian traditional rearranged with a simple and logical joyful moody acoustic arrangement interpretation by all three artists, including a guitar arrangement. "Sussuro" is a mixture of calm and moody flamenco guitar and Indian singing in different parts. Here the Indian singer interprets in an Indian way flamenco, calmer, warmer and without the usual harsh kind of passion of flamenco singers. The second part has some cello improvisation by Andrew Morgan. Last part has some murmuring tabla, and more emotionally interacting cello. "Sun Below the Horizon" is a moody improvisation on guitar and cello, while when the mood is still calm, two other persons are prepairing dinner and have a Spanish kitchen chat in the background. The improvisation builds up nicely with some additional handclap-rhythmic percussion, which changes colour all the time. When the guitar repeats and fastens a rather Middle Eastern harmonic pattern, the cello starts to improvise on top of that, with a growing glowing energy, and then calmly fades out in the next track, "Epilogue" a clever moody guitar picking track, which seems to be derived from a traditional called "vasishnava janto".

A great album that is especially rewarding when all attention can be given to the music. But even then, I'm sure some people will use it for regular use as background music without noticing what is really behind it all.

Sacha Silva plays guitar and percussion, Andrew Morgan plays cello and percussion, Munya Bandyopadhyay sings Indian vocals, Renu Hossain plays tabla. First three musicians participated as a composer in the arrangements.

Audio :  "sol y luna","gujarati harvest song","susurro part I: lullaby","part II: silencio", "part III: wedding song","sun still below the horizon", "epilogue"
or http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/sachasilva
Extra track not on CD : "improvisations on raga bhairavi"
Homepage : http://www.sachasilva.org/

New 2008 album ->


Migrant Worker Rec.Sacha Silva : Anatomy of a coup (SP/(IND)COL/UK,2008)****'

While Sacha Silva’s band’s previous release showed their own musical vision of an Indian/flamenco blend, with this new release they didn’t focus too directly on this style reference, but took the entity and awareness of it into a next step of a mobilizing experience, directing it as a more global trans/all-world style, while also being aware of social and political changes in the world being contradictory to creative solutions with different parties. The subject of a starting point for this CD, while keeping the same musical fundament and work it out even further with new creative elements, is a concept inspired by events leading to the 2006 military coup in Fiji, -an island group near New Zealand-, which occurred just after Sacha had left the island after a seven-month residence.

The flamenco/Indian music combinations became a more independent contemporary expression, which interacted as a creative idea against the background of awareness of change and social struggle with ideas and freedom, musically expressed by using illustrating flashes of audio fragments referring to the Fiji coup on the news, a speech by Nobel price winner and Cuban political activist and dissident Osvaldo Paya Sardinas (Varela Project), and Castro reading Che Chavarra’s farewell letter.
It was at first not completely clear to me how the musical reference point took position here. But first of all, flamenco with Indian roots might have had already its inner goal for independent freedom from the start, a reason why long ago the first large group of people (musicians) were forced to leave Persia (while originating from India, and because they refused the commission of extra labour, but that's another story), and formed their routes Westwards, leading to what would become the gipsies.
At the same time the group realizes new tendencies that give more fundamentalist power to governments or religion, where freedom is losing its strength, importance and cultural, psychological and creative significance once more. On the other hand they found a way to structuralize the globalizing tendency in music for the World Music genre, which could be a benefit to other tendencies within the World Music focuses and definitions, saving it from dying out by bringing new life to it. 

In Sacha’s manifesto he wrote : “We have reached a moment when world music must engage with reality; where it must focus on the world and make music merely a vehicle. For too long, world music has been polarized. On one side, the world fusion product for the mass market which cuts-and-pastes non-Western melodies and rhythms into an easy-to-clap, easy-to-dance, easy-to-hum listening 'experience', stripped of any sort of serious context. On the other side, a small but dedicated group of serious Indian, African, Asian and American artists who preserve and renew their own traditions; each rooted in his or her own time and place yet all lumped together on the "world music" shelf. This is the world music market of today: on one side, an empty blend; on the other, complete separation. What is missing is the genuine encounter: music which speaks to a new global, cross-cultural reality.” Of course, something of a solution to this is a new blend or “new kind of music that defies easy categorization and side-steps the polarized world music market.” I must say that there still are enough musicians who for this kind of contribution deserve Nobel prizes for music, because they make music that works in blending creative sources and make it work, rather than entertain, while it is also these groups who still don’t get the platforms, podiums or the attention they deserve.

This new album has grown with strength since the previous album thanks to so many elements and also great contributions of guests (Benjamin Salmon & Rohin Khemani with percussion on 2, Saleta Suarez Ogando with flute on 3,6 and Adrian Greene’s recitation on 6). And while most of the core remains a perfect blend of mostly Indian singing (in Hindi and Bengali) and styles with flamenco guitar and rhythms, there are also more experimental, emotional and even kind of heavier rock arrangements (on percussion, dramatic phone voice,..), besides a few rhythmic sound experiments with guitar, or experimenting rhythms, and there’s even a cello/chamber arrangement.

The lyrics are also worthy of mention. “Nostalgia”, which sounds more like an Indian cry, -“my past is a river whose waters none can forbid me to drink : he who does not drink will always remain thirsty”. Two tracks were inspired by traditional flamenco poetry, and one more track is based upon Garcia Lorca.

Info & audio : http://cdbaby.com/cd/sachasilva2
& http://www.rohinmusic.com/discography.htm
Homepage (with audio) : http://www.sachasilva.org/
REVIEW PAGE :
INDIAN MUSIC / FLAMENCO FUSIONS :

Indialucía, Sacha Silva

CM RecordsIndialucía : (SP/IND/POL,2005)***°°

First of all I must say I found their introduction to the flamenco origins, extremely interesting.  They explained the emigration of thousands of Indians from the Punjab and Pakistan region. In Persia they split, and just one part went via Palestine, Northern Africa to Spain to a region known where many religions and groups lived in a perfect blend for an extremely long period, and how only in the 19th Century the musical forms very quickly evolved to what we now know as flamenco. It is explained how in India in 2000 bC musical theory was established, and how this influenced the establishment of important schools in Persia around the 9th century. It explains how this theoretical fundament had a further development under Muslim influence in the 13th century. It was Amir Khushro, a minister of the sultan, who introduced amongst other things sitar and tabla. Also a likely explanation is given of how the emigration started. "One of the 11th Century Persian epics reads that King Behram Gour (420-438) asked an Indian rajah, Shankal to send musicians to his court in order to cheer up sad Persians. The rajah sent him 10,000 musicians of both sexes, able to play stringed instruments, sing and dance. However, they did not want to devote themselves to agriculture and after some time they were banished from Persia and went farther west." Of course they adapted other elements on their way before finding places to settle down. Flamenco was in some way also a mentality of the free minded. That's how the Spanish conquerors came to confuse it with the Flemish nature of free living, singing and enjoying themselves during Breughelian times, which in those days was the opposite of the Spanish nature. In the beginning the singing itself was the main core, accompanied by rhythms and eventually anything else. I've also noticed how much the Korean song of the suffering free mind, the pans'ori, which is accompanied by clapping rhythms with almost emotional off-beats, together with kind of ole's by the public, have much in common with the flamenco styled singing. The flamenco guitar was only introduced later. I heard how one Turkish musician in Southern Greece might have introduced a different oud style that was exactly like the flamenco guitar style, so perhaps also there we can trace some welcome adaptation and origin.
One can find of course similarities in flamenco with Indian music. In both styles rhythm is extremely important. The 12 beat rhythm as one of the oldest rhythms in Indian music exist also in flamenco.  While the disciplined Indian raga starts and ends with the recognisable beat with some stretched improvisation, flamenco puts in some extra rhythmical surprises. It also explaines how seguiryias, bulerías, tarantas, soleares or tangos are based upon the ragas bhairavi, bhairav or basant mukhari, and how the melismata and portamento used in Indian music are very close to flamenco but in a more complicated way, and with a wider range. Similarities with the flamenco dance, can be found in the kathak style from the north of India. But I heard also how there exist also certain Moorish styles that might even have more similarities. It does not really matter where each detail originally comes from, but when musicians who have practical and skilled experience recognise the similarities with their own roots of education, there's a chance that the meeting place becomes magical. Just one or two tracks are still lifted out fragments of ideas. All recorded tracks are based upon ideas and discoveries of similarities which are explored to form a combination of both styles, preferable a vivid blend.

The first track, "Raag & ole", is a real highlight, showing the combinations of rhythmical interpretations in such a perfect blend, with a jazz flavour in the middle. The second, calmer and very moody track, "Nagpur" is completed with a chamber orchestra. Here the Indian 'dhun' is taken in combination with the Andalusian 'sevillanas'. "Herencia Hindu" composed by Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan is based upon the element that both flamenco and Hindustani classical music, have a fundament of 12 beats, is a shortened track which is faded out. "Taliquete" is an only-rhythm track in bulérias mode with foot work and additional tabla with Indian vocals rhythms (forgot the name of this technique). Also included is an old Indian/Pakistani song, "Mohabbat Ka Khazana",  in Quawwali style, a style which sounds very flamenco-like. It is a very joyful and cheerful Indian track with different touches. "Gujari todi" is a raga. On "Kyabathe" they found another perfect melted style of Indian with flamenco. It is a bulérias where sitar and flamenco guitar are in duet, with some vocal enthusiasm. "Indialucia"'s first part is a flamenco guitar piece in zambra style. This is a flamenco form which is deeply rooted in an oriental influence, originating from a Moorish influence, from the time when oud was played before the guitar existed. I still wonder why so little flamenco artists never thought about trying to reestablish the oud, rediscovering its origins in Medieval Europe and Middle East. Also such an investigation could bring new lights. This zambra theme is taken over to a second part with guitar, tabla and sitar mostly. It becomes another perfect blend with great dynamic evolution, with the flamenco guitar taking over the raga style in duet with the sitar. This continues in "Amanecer", an Indian vocal improvisation, which in this case can easily be compared to flamenco.

The recordings were made between 1999 and 2004 mostly in India and Spain, but also some of it in Germany and Poland. It was the result of various ideas from different participators. It seems to be one of the rarest and most serious investigations in search for the perfect blend between the two musical worlds by exploring their similarities in roots. Very good !!

Audio : "Raag and ole", "Herencia hindú", "Taliquete", "Nagpur" & http://cdbaby.com/cd/indialucia & http://www.musicline.de/de/product/4250095880292
Info on cd and instruments : http://mitglied.lycos.de/indienjazz/cds.htm
Video here or here ; TV spot here

Homepage : http://www.indialucia.com
Other reviews : http://www.rasamusic.com/...
German description with sound : https://sslsites.de/galileo-mc.de/...
Polish page of Rafael Cortez with some audio of flamenco CD and this one :
http://www.flamenco.art.pl/index.php?s=main07
Spanish description here

Official page of percussionist Ghata Ghiridar Mudupa : http://www.ghatamudupa.com/discography.htm











GO TO NEXT REVIEW PAGE->
I've made a separate webpage for flamenco sitarist Gualberto on http://progressive.homestead.com/GUALBERTO.html

The raga guitarists and Indian guitarists
are listed all in a different section with many reviews on : http://acidfolkguitar.homestead.com/