While the visuals are obviously lost, what is heard here accurately transmits the excitement and sheer ecstasy that flowed from the stage for two hours.įrom the first notes of the opening track "Introspection," the meaning of hybrid is made patently clear as Mahanthappa plays a beautiful and almost pure Carnatic line over guitarist Rez Abassi's droneWest meeting East on its terms. The album itself is a tightened version of an initial (and phenomenal) concert at the Asia Society in New York City and was recorded about a week afterwards, following a subsequent short tour. The result is a music that never remains in either world for very long, constantly vacillating rhythmically, harmonically and melodically between its poles. Improvisation is central to both aesthetics with differing emphases, embodied primarily in the playing of Mahanthappa and alto saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, the "Emperor of the Saxophone" in India.īoth players have worked to extend their playing from its base, either the West or the East, into the other worldMahanthappa exploring his roots and Gopalnath his restless musical imaginationand have met in the middle. Kinsmen is the physical actualization of a long path that started with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa's desire to create a music that is a hybrid ( not a fusion) of American jazz and classical Indian Carnatic music.
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