Tag Archives: fusion

“Coffee Shop Montage” from Morning Raga

January 29, 2009

This is an outstanding track from the movie “Morning Raga”. Instrumentation-wise, that is…

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Indian Ocean, the band

Starts with a crazy drums fill, and the song is a roller coaster ride from there. There are big drops, fast moves, all very dynamic about this song.

The track reminds of the crazy drummer from the movie, enacted by a real life drummer Shaleen Sharma, an engineer by qualification (from IIT-Roorkee) and a musician by choice, one of the founders of the avant-garde music group from Delhi, Indian Ocean and later formed a band named Agosh with other engineer-turned musicians Go-pal and A-nand (hence, AGoSh). So all the craziness and action you see in the movie, are somewhat real.

"Paisa" by Agosh(On the topic, Agosh’ debut album was Paisa, released back in 2000, and composed music for the movie Zor).

Bass and Drums in Morning Raga

Bass and Drums in Morning Raga

The bass playing is awesome. If I am not wrong, it is played by the quintessential bass player of India, Keith Peters. There are portions where he moves as fast as the drums, and there are parts where he plays counters to the drums.

The vocals is rather bland, for the awesome backing instrumentation. The guitar provides a nice rhythm with the wah-wah, and the drums are happening and reminds me of, well, for no better comparison, fast moving Rajdhani Express!

Once again the keyboard shines, like many other tracks from the same movie. The nice flute melody rocks, and later he switches into an organ. More chromatic improvisation follows.

I just wish they had done more with the song, such as a bass solo of sort.

The blame for the music goes to Amit Heri and Mani Sharma, for creating one of the most innovative albums of the decade. While Amit Heri has been in the jazz scene for long, but Mani Sharma is little known beyond the Telugu film industry. If that’s the result of their collaboration, I hope they do much more together in future for us music lovers.

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“City Interlude” from Morning Raga

January 29, 2009

This is the second song from the Morning Raga I am going to write about. I am totally in love with the music, even some 4 yrs after I heard the music for the first time. And pretty sure, this music is always going to live close to me.

The track:

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This song, largely a keyboard solo. Its an instrumental piece, solidly backed by a faithful rhythm section that is very groovy, and continuous. Guitar does a little, but very effective, in providing counters and some interesting rhythm patterns. Otherwise, largely the bass and drums holds the song together.

Morning Raga

Morning Raga

The structure of the song is very simple, so probably doesn’t have the intricacies of few other songs from this album which is colored with Jazz palette. Its a standard verse-chorus-solo-verse structure, but for the nice keyboard solo, the tune rocks!

Released in 2005, this album remains one of the finest of the decade in terms of experimentation, musicianship, and unorthodox treatment.

Music credit:

Amit Heri & Mani Sharma

I believe they do guitars and keyboards, respectively. Yet to find out the other instrumentalists on the band, as soon as I find, I will update here (if you, the reader, know, please write in the comments section below).

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“Alaap Jam” from Morning Raga

January 29, 2009

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.

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