This is going to be the first of a series of song reviews of “Morning Raga”, I am going to write over next few days.
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Morning Raga is one of my most favorite Indian jazz albums. Its one of the finest experiments to come out of the Bollywood music industry for sure. Purists of Indian classical may not accept it, but I think it is always cool to mix genres. And they have done an excellent job in putting in elements as far apart as Jazz and Carnatic classical into Morning Raga tunes.
All blame goes to Amit Heri and Mani Sharma to create this most innovative sound of this movie. Amit Heri (can be found here on youtube) is a jazz guitar player, and hails form Bangalore. Mani Sharma is a music director, lesser known outside telugu film industry.
Keeping with the theme of the movie, where an Indian classical singer revisits her classical roots with the help of a younger generation band influenced by western music, the music director duo has done justice to both genres (in some tracks at least, while few other tracks are pure pure semi-classical Indian tunes).
The instrumentation on this track creates a solid backing for the vocals improvisation on the top of it. There are no words, but just alaap (hence the name Alaap Jam). The rhtyhm section is all about its groovy bass. Its sad that the song is really short.
If you look at the attached picture, the song is a perfect sound for this image.
If there is a term called Parallel music as in Parallel Cinema, then the music of Morning Raga has to be it.
