Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas: Rishte

Akhtar, Najma;
Lucas, Gary

WV 450008

When Najma met Gary there was no plan. Gary produced the music (including some songs originally written for Jeff Buckley) and Najma contributed the words (mostly in Urdu) and the melodies, and in the process a beautiful and curious transformation has occurred.
There is blues in the mix - in particular the eerie revival of the Skip James classic Special Rider Blues - and there s Indian music too, as expected (both Daaya and Parda are based on Ghazal styles). Out of this chrysalis of expectation has burst a butterfly whose wings drip psychedelic jewels; a dark and heady funk and fey folk evocations jostle in the powerful title track and a powerful pop sensibility underpins everything. It would be easy to apply simplistic marketing jargon to the music of Rishte: Indo-Blues fusion, east-meets-west and the like. But this is to misunderstand the alchemy that occurred when Najma met Gary - a rare confluence of interests, talents and cosmic synchronicities that have produced an album which is truly more than the sum of its parts: a unique and pungent symbiosis.

CD

Inne

World Village

19-06-2009

794881915125