Rajna Swaminathan
Of Agency and Abstraction
Album - Jazz, Music, Worldwide
This music is as rhythmically alive as it gets, yet there are no drums—rather, there is a drum, Rajna Swaminathan’s instrument, the mridangam, known for its use in South Indian Carnatic music (in contrast to the more familiar tabla of North Indian Hindustani music). Aided by co-producer Vijay Iyer, Swaminathan addresses rhythm on a high level in her compositions, creating a clear, richly textured acoustic sound with Stephan Crump’s upright bass, Miles Okazaki’s subtle guitar, María Grand’s tenor sax, Anjna Swaminathan’s violin, and at times Amir ElSaffar’s trumpet and Ganavya Doraiswamy’s voice interweaving through enigmatic beat cycles and melodic frameworks. The languages of Carnatic music and New York improvisation coalesce, and sometimes, in the guitar/bass/drum groove energy of “Ripple Effect” or the slippery metric transitions of “Communitas” and “Rush,” one can hear the mechanics of it all laid bare.
Of Agency and Abstraction
Rajna Swaminathan
This music is as rhythmically alive as it gets, yet there are no drums—rather, there is a drum, Rajna Swaminathan’s instrument, the mridangam, known for its use in South Indian Carnatic music (in contrast to the more familiar tabla of North Indian Hindustani music). Aided by co-producer Vijay Iyer, Swaminathan addresses rhythm on a high level in her compositions, creating a clear, richly textured acoustic sound with Stephan Crump’s upright bass, Miles Okazaki’s subtle guitar, María Grand’s tenor sax, Anjna Swaminathan’s violin, and at times Amir ElSaffar’s trumpet and Ganavya Doraiswamy’s voice interweaving through enigmatic beat cycles and melodic frameworks. The languages of Carnatic music and New York improvisation coalesce, and sometimes, in the guitar/bass/drum groove energy of “Ripple Effect” or the slippery metric transitions of “Communitas” and “Rush,” one can hear the mechanics of it all laid bare.
