Lotus/Prasant Music 
Prasant Radhakrishnan : East Facing (IND,2007)****
Lotus/Prasant Music Prasant Radhakrishnan : Duality (IND,2004)****
I’d like to mention these albums of Prasant Radhakrishan which I need to listen to with more attention some other time. My first impression is that this is South Indian (Carnatic) traditional raga music led by saxophone. The result compared to any other instrument played for the style is much more a melodic mood/relaxedness but also rather safe mode of the music. This I think works especially meditatively when no percussion elements are added, in duet with violin, like on some track on 'Duality'. On the other album the total group sound is presented more with a bit more full sound. It is a matter of taste what to prefer, but when taken out of the context hearing the sax playing raga’s really solo I notice more of its subtleness, in the very varied movements in melody to be comparable to the 70s Ethiopian sax solos of Gétatchèw Mékurya for instance.
-At many stages in history the treatment of melodies was just about music, not belonging to any specific group. The same could be said about the whole mixture of culture and even religion, while at some stage some claimed to be the owner of this or something and others wanted to sound different losing the universality of things under the name of culture.
This sort of playing on sax recalls to me the heritage of Indian as well as Middle Eastern and Ethiopian ways of treating melody that it was a way to do so common or at least useful on most places in the world. Today western vision on melody still is monotone but it compensated well in incredible clever ways how to go creatively beyond that mono-melodic fact.-
