Yesterday morning I decided that I’d check out what’s new in the world of New Age Music and what better place is there to do that, than Echoes.org. So I surfed on over there and looked at the Top 24 Albums for October my curiosity peaked quickly when I read the name of the band that holds the number two spot the Bombay Dub Orchestra with a name like that, they have to be checked out!! At their website I read…..
Bombay Dub Orchestra was formed almost ten years ago following a trip to Bombay, India, by Garry Hughes and Andrew T. Mackay. They’d gone to record with the city’s strings orchestra a few years earlier and decided to take advantage of the relationships they’d built up with musicians in India to create their own project. It took another three years to talk about the idea and a further three years to write, record and release their debut self-titled album. The album featured lush, cinematic, downtempo music. Ambient electronica and Western classical influences were fused with distinctly Indian instrumentation. A large string orchestra, soloists and vocals were recorded in Bombay and additional vocals and instruments were recorded in London. Full Biography
The number two album on the Echoes Top 25 Albums for October is their recently released third album Tales From the Grand Bazaar. The album was recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, London, Bombay, Istanbul, LA & New York and features the likes of Sly & robbie, Asad Khan and Soumik Datta. If you are like me you may have no clue that Sly & Robbie are a prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo, associated primarily with the reggae genre, or that Asad Khan is the new age sitar maestro from Mewati Gharana. Or what the Mewati Gharana is – from Wikipedia:
The Mewati Gharana is an apprenticeship clan and musical family (Gharana) of Hindustani classical music founded in the late 19th century by Utd. Ghagge Nazir Khan of Jodhpur. With its own distinct aesthetic and stylistic views and practices, the gharana is an offshoot of the Gwalior Gharana and acquired its name after the region from which its founding exponent hailed: the Mewat region of Rajasthan. The gharana gained visibility and following the latter-half of the 20th Century after acclaimed contemporary vocalist Pt. Jasraj became popular in the realm of Hindustani Classical music at the same time and is viewed as a figure who revived and popularized the gayaki. Read More
and let’s not forget, or give the impression that I know who Soumik Datta is! According to his website he is a….
28 year old “British Sarod Maestro’ -Time Out, and composer, Soumik Datta is fast being recognized as “one of the the biggest new music talents in Britain” -Vogue. The British Council UK, tour him on a regular international circuit as an ambassador for the Arts. A resident artist for the London based Alchemy Festival and the Rich Mix cultural foundation he has led groundbreaking new arts projects earning him an international reputation today. His top collaborators include Beyonce Knowles, Nitin Sawhney, Raghu Dixit, Bill Bailey, Olivier award winning Akram Khan, Mercury Award winner Talvin Singh, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Javed Akhtar. Protege of the legendary Sarod maestro, Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta, Soumik is also a Masters graduate of Trinity College of Music. His command on Sarod combined with his flair for contemporary composition makes him ‘a unique artist in the vanguard of new British music’ BBC3. Read More
A Sarod? What’s a Sarod?? Time for Wikipedia:
The sarod (or sarode) (Bengali: সরোদ) is a lutelike stringed instrument of India, used mainly in Indian classical music. Along with the sitar, it is among the most popular and prominent instruments in Hindustani (northern Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani) classical music. The sarod is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. It is a fretless instrument able to produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which is important to Indian music. Full Article
Oh, it’s like a sitar or an oud, got it! So now I not only have the Bombay Dub Orchestra to check out, but I also have all their collaborators to check out – all together now – “Too Much Music – too little time!! Here’s “The Orange Terrace” from Tales From the Grand Bazaar!