All That Jazz ...

A live version of African Village by McCoy Tyler, with Bobby Hutcherson on vibes.
Originally issued on the album 'Time for Tyner'.

 
Outstanding selection, Himadri!
Can't thank you enough for sharing that vid :)
Cantaloupe Island is one of my favourite tracks and I've been a Marcus Miller fan for years.
Now, I need to catch up on the amazing Mr.Sengupta!
 
A different kind of fusion

Superb! Great share!!

I was at the Baba Au Ruhm restaurant in Anjuna, Goa last weekend where there was a guy playing his sitar along with electronic EDM music. Typically I have dismissed this kind of music but listening to it live was like a drug. I could not get enough! This piece of Marcus Miller and Ranajit Sengupta is on the same lines but absolutely next level of course. I don't know Indian classical music well enough but it just seems effortless for Indian musicians to blend in with almost any genre of music like rock or jazz.

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A different kind of fusion

Great share @himadri
Wonderful to see Ranjit Sengupta actually playing and improvising on a jazz standard!
@Nikhil Baba Au Ruhm surely creates the right ambience to let one savour this kind of music. Here music becomes a drug and a drug music ;)
In my own listening experience, I've seen jazz musicians adapt more easily to Indian classical than the other way around. Barring a handful like L. Shankar, Trilok Gurtu, Shankar Mahadevan, Nusrat Fateh and, here, Ranjit Sengupta, many others appear to struggle with the chord structures in jazz. Others generally played their traditional stuff to the accompaniment of jazz instruments, which is not the same thing. On the other hand, jazz musicians like McLaughlin, Toots, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz, Herbie Mann, Garbarek and many many others (remember jazz yatra) actually played notes and melodies that blended jazz and classical.
On another note, when you listen attentively to bollywood music of the 50s and 60s, you see the magical influence of jazz on the hits of that period. Anthony Gonsalves, the arranger who was the first to notate Indian classical music in Western music syntax, wrote arrangements that had trumpets, violins, sitars, accordion, tabla, dholak and drums...upto a 100 instruments all in one song. How challenging must that have been! Listen to 'Baar baar dekho', 'Mera Naam Rin Chin Chin' , 'Ina Mina Dika' and 'Zindagi kaisi hai paheli' not for the main melodic line, but to the instrumentation and you'll be amazed at the way jazz structures have been so beautifully blended into these songs.

Cheers!
 
On another note, when you listen attentively to bollywood music of the 50s and 60s, you see the magical influence of jazz on the hits of that period. Anthony Gonsalves, the arranger who was the first to notate Indian classical music in Western music syntax, wrote arrangements that had trumpets, violins, sitars, accordion, tabla, dholak and drums...upto a 100 instruments all in one song. How challenging must that have been! Listen to 'Baar baar dekho', 'Mera Naam Rin Chin Chin' , 'Ina Mina Dika' and 'Zindagi kaisi hai paheli' not for the main melodic line, but to the instrumentation and you'll be amazed at the way jazz structures have been so beautifully blended into these songs.

Absolutely. I'm not sure when the world will recognize the epic work done by those musicians in the old Hindi movie songs. I think the "Bombay Jazz" discussion was mentioned earlier on this thread but that is another theme that has so much potential.

Baba Au Ruhm surely creates the right ambience to let one savour this kind of music. Here music becomes a drug and a drug music

Very trippy for sure! It was amazing to see that guy just riff with the sitar.
All of us at our table just could not get enough of the music when he started playing.


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World class percussionist Wolfgang Haffner is in India and we were lucky to get a chance to see him play last week.
Here is an outstanding jazz album with a strong supporting cast. Superb stuff!

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I'm going for the concert tomorrow evening:)

Awesome! If they are playing the same set then you will hear the first song of this album "Hippie" to kick things off.
Haffner is an amazing percussionist and has played with the who's who of the jazz world.

Enjoy the show!


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