The intricate vocal acrobatics of north Indian classical music have been fertile ground for exciting fusions in recent years. Singer Arooj Aftab’s delicate variations of Urdu poetry have provided the perfect accompaniment for ambient synth soundscapes and sweeping strings on 2021’s Vulture Prince and 2023’s Love in Exile, while US vocalist Sheherazaad’s 2024 debut Qasr found harmony in Hindi lyrics and finger-picked Spanish guitar.
The latest artist to engage with this experimentation is New York-born and Tamil Nadu-raised vocalist Ganavya. Having previously collaborated with bassist and composer Esperanza Spalding, as well as joining soul collective Sault’s debut live show in 2023, she has now enlisted British jazz artist Shabaka Hutchings to produce her latest album. Across 13 tracks, Ganavya’s warm, ornate Tamil vocals are set to bubbling modular synths and breathy woodwind flutes, producing a mix of spiritual jazz and ambient experimentalism.
Producer Floating Points and multi-instrumentalist Leafcutter John provide eerie synth textures throughout, playing like a whisper of digital wind against Ganavya’s yearning vocals on Not in An Anthropological Mood, or twinkling through arpeggios that mirror her rhythmic sargam vocalisations – an ornamental method of singing the names of musical notes – on the expansive Seal. Countering the electronics are a range of flutes played by Kofi Flexxx, reflecting Ganavya’s breath in their earthy tones on tracks such as El Kebda, Let it Go, while Alina Bzhezhinska’s plaintive harp on Forgive Me My provides gorgeous ornamentation to long, looping vocal phrases.
The overall effect creates an album that revels in downtempo quietude. The mood is mostly dark and restrained but on the final number, I Walk Again, Eyes Towards the Sky, Ganavya soars, melismatically leaping to push her voice almost to breaking point in a fierce show of emotion. It is an unguarded moment of release that reveals the range of Ganavya’s talent as she pushes traditional craft into a newly evocative and atmospheric direction.
Also out this month
Afrobeat keyboardist Dele Sosimi releases his debut album with new band the Estuary 21, The Confluence (Wah Wah 45s). Horn fanfares create a typically joyous Afrobeat sound but there are also intriguing experiments into downtempo grooves, producing jazz-inflected highlight Open Up. Modular synth composer Arushi Jain’s latest album Delight (Leaving Records) layers synth programming to create expansive soundworlds that engagingly blend 80s electronic experimentalism with Indian classical melodies. Farah Kaddour presents an emotive array of Arabic folk compositions on Badā (Asadun Alay Records) – driving, dark and insistent, Kaddour’s finger-picking on the stringed buzuq is fiercely virtuosic.
