Rudresh Mahanthappa, Jazz-Trad fusion on Alto Sax

[ancientfifer]

For those interested in rhythmic complexities in traditional folk music, check out this interview on NPRs Fresh Air show on march 10th with Rudresh Mahanthappa. He is an Indian-American alto-sax player who studied extensively with a masterful Indian sax player (the name escapes me) who plays traditional music on the sax. In the interview, he discusses the intracies of the rhythms, accents, sliding and bending notes, point-counterpoint between players. I found it very interesting and in many aspects very enlightening and applicable to Irish Trad and trad-fusion.

Enjoy, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =101644613

Russ

[Denny]

interesting! thanks

Years later, funded by a Guggenheim fellowship, Mahanthappa went to India to work out his ideas with the saxophonist he'd heard on that album, Kadri Gopalnath. By the time they met, Gopalnath had been accepted as a master of South Indian Carnatic music. But it hadn't always been so.

[talasiga]

"The first thing you have to consider with Indian music is there is no harmony — there's only melody and rhythm," Mahanthappa says. "What my vocabulary is informed by is a lot of harmonic stuff. It comes from the fact that you can play this chord, and you can play this chord on top of it." (Rudresh Mahanthappa).

Not quite correct Rudresh Ji. There is harmony in indic music but it's not DELIBERATELY articulated by express chords.

The usual drone usually comprises the modal tonic and its perfect fifth. That is a harmonic interval. The sam vadi and the vadi often (mostly) have a harmonic relationship. The treble side of the percussion is mostly tuned to the modal tonic or another note strongly harmonising with it.

Tamboura (tanpura), in deep classical, is finely tuned so that the drone (comprising the 1st and the 5th) also obtains a minor or major third as an overtone. Thus, while the tamboura is played by "arpeggiation" the nature of the sustain evokes an ambient chord.