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Beyond fusion
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Anoushka Shankar in a quick chat with MANGALA RAMAMOORTHY about her latest album
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Photo: Shaju John
Bandish Anoushka Shankar teams up with Karsh Kale for the album “Breathing Under Water”
Her glamorous image precedes her music. Her new look and her social life make news more often than her music but artiste Anoushka Shankar insists that it is the latter that matter to her.
“Glamour is something very alien to me. It is not something I want to express but what people perceive of me. It is not whether I want to keep this image separate from my music but the fact is that it is separate. I am just the way I am,” she says in a matter-of-fact manner.
The daughter of the illustrious Pandit Ravi Shankar is in news again and this time it’s music all the way. Her latest album with musician Karsh Kale, Breathing Under Water, is an interesting concoction of various genres of music, with classical music as the base. She says it is not fusion or world music, but something that cannot be easily defined.
“You cannot box it in any particular manner, as there are 10 genres in it. Also, I don’t think there’s a need to classify it. When people’s lives are so complex, how can our music be simple,” says the 26-year-old, asserting that the electronic beats haven’t taken away the melody. “It’s a lot less electronic. Even if we composed different sounds electronically, we played a lot of it live for the album.”
Her openness to different musical sensibilities is not surprising, considering that she has learnt music under the shadow of her father who himself has collaborated with international artistes. But how did she decide to jam with multi-instrumentalist, music composer and producer Karsh, a New York-resident?
“It was more like friends getting together to make some good music, as I got to know Karsh while I was recording for my earlier albums in New York. We share a good musical chemistry. We could finish each other’s idea in an unusual manner. That’s when we thought we should together explore Indian classical music, along with the other genres we like and give a today’s spin on it,” says the London-bred.
Norah too
Breathing Under Water has a long list of guest musicians to boast, starting from the likes of her father, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Sting, her half-sister Norah Jones and Pandit Zakir Hussain to Paul Oakenfold, Paula Cole, Shankar Mahadevan and Sunidhi Chauhan.
“We want to tell a story through this music. The people we chose are known for certain things and we thought it would be best told through them,” explains Anoushka.
The story talks about a sailor, his journey and varied emotions. “It is something that travelling musicians like me can relate to. It’s an intense journey. It symbolises our lives away from home and our dear ones. And the process of making the music itself has been a journey. We just said let us keep going.”
The 13-track album is way different from her earlier albums and more because there are too many things she has done for the first time here like writing English lyrics, composing music and playing the electric guitar, piano and the keyboard.
“I wanted to do it. It was a challenge we had taken up. Though I did only a little of English lyrics, it wasn’t easy,” she giggles. From being her father’s girl to being her own, Anoushka has spent over a decade as a performer.
But unlike many of her counterparts, she has only five albums to her credit, including the latest one. Is it a conscious decision? “I cannot make music for the sake of it. I don’t care if it takes me two years or five years to come out with a good album,” she sums up in her crisp American accent.
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