January 2002

From the Inside Out
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By Chris M. Slawecki

Music and technology are inextricable companions, and neither one can advance into new territory without the other. Though there may be no consensus as to what such progress means in the world of music (or even what such progress is), almost no one would argue that it is not happening – that music is making no progress.

Modern music that’s progressive in this sense seems to display two particular characteristics. First, it makes the world seem smaller. And not just in the horizontal, geographic dimension of bringing together traditional Western and European with Eastern and African musical cultures. But also in the dimension of time: Music that is more than just traditional, that is genuinely ancient, has become a haven for musicians faced with a society and technology that grows ever more “modern.” In this way, the world over, the past and future of music are at present a lot closer than they used to be.

Second, such progressive music has generated and been advanced by musicians who not only employ new and exotic instruments and techniques, but who use these in unconventional ways on relatively unexplored sources. Recent releases by Karsh Kale and Badawi (Raz Mesinai), two musicians who are using electronics to explore and reshape the music of ancient India and the Middle East respectively, sound uniquely global and modern. And they are. Yet, from a broader perspective, they are really just employing the source material with which they’ve always been surrounded like recombined DNA to generate from the familiar something unfamiliar. In this sense, they are not much different from beboppers who redefined not only pop standards but also conventional definitions of rhythm, melody, and harmony, half a century ago.

Karsh Kale: Realize (Six Degrees)
Karsh Kale (pronounced “Kursh Kuh-lay”) practices classical Indian vocal and tabla and other percussion traditions. He is also a sound-scratchin’, sample-loopin’ electronica and dance music DJ who plays kit drums too. “I don’t even think of them as two different worlds anymore,” he explains. “This record expresses how they’ve become one world for me.”

“The songs on the record were created to be performed, and we treat them the way Indian musicians traditionally do,” he continues, “looking at the songs as a repertoire that can be reinterpreted. So a bhajan (ed: an Indian folk song) can be a drum n’ bass tune and vice versa.”

On Realize, his first full-length solo release, Kale features a wide range of music and musicians including Indian classical vocalists, flutist Ajay Prasanna, Sultan Khan, a recognized master of the stringed sarangi (who also partners with Kale, Bill Laswell and tabla master Zakir Hussain in the foursome Table Beat Science), American flutist Steve Gorn, and vocalist Gigi, who’s a pop star in Ethiopia. For his part, Kale handles pretty much everything else: tablas and drums in various played, programmed and looped forms, plus piano, keyboards, and synthesizers. (He handles them all simultaneously, it seems, in the solo instrumental “Conception.”)

“Empty Hands,” the opening track, provides a great introduction to the rest of this CD, as its Indian flute melodies and vocal chants scuffle in the background for equal space with its spitting, snarling electric guitar hook. “Distance,” the next cut, beats with the pulse of modern electronica but in the context of Indian percussion and vocal chants that continually reach upward to create the feeling of spiritual ascension. “Anja” similarly employs traditional-sounding Indian flute, percussion and chants, but in the thumping environment of a modern dance floor.

“One Step Beyond” is an instrumental that blends Kale’s amazing tabla playing with electronic beats and children’s shouts, opening up an open-air market of kaleidoscopic rhythms, textures, and sounds. The centerpiece to “Light Up The Love” forms from chanted Indian vocals – in scales and melodies that sound like an ancient liturgy – suspended amongst spacey, twinkling electronica clouds and an instrumental drone that haunts like cemetery bagpipes heard from a foggy distance. It’s classic and modern, ancient and futuristic, and represents Kale’s work on Realize in fine fashion.

Badawi: Soldier of Midian (ROIR)
Raz Mesinai, who records and performs as Badawi, was born in Jerusalem. He grew up in New York City though he also spent time with Bedouins in the Sinai Desert. His globetrotting led this youth grew to explore music from around the world, focusing particularly on drums and percussion from Moroccan, Persian, and Afro-Cuban traditions. He’s on the cutting edge of the underground DJ scene in New York City, too, and his work has been featured at such vanguard venues as the Knitting Factory. He has also released two albums under his own name, and performs with John Ward in the ambient duo Sub Dub.

Soldier of Midian, Mesinai’s third album as Badawi, sounds a travelogue of his upbringing. Though it’s similar in technique to Kale’s Realize in that Badawi processes and manipulates his own playing – mostly Middle Eastern and Central Asian flutes and percussions with such exotic names as zarb, daf and bendir – through electronic effects, it creates and inhabits a much darker realm than Realize, one that’s often as pitiless as the glare of the sphinx. Except for bassist Shahzed Ismaily and Carolyn Edwards’ dulcimer on two tracks, Soldier of Midian presents Badawi as an army of one. “‘Badawi’ means ‘Bedouin’ or ‘Desert Dweller,’” he offers, “and represents all nomadic people who, like the sounds and rhythms you will hear on this CD, wander but are never lost.”

These sounds and rhythms are sometimes jarring and sometimes mesmerizing. From the very beginning, you’re immersed in a completely different world: The majority of Midian is simply drumming; electronically treated, smeared, sampled and looped, but drumming nonetheless. The rhythms are angular, without a single tune in “four” but in movements that burst with odd-numbered times. In “Dance of the Centipedes,” Badawi’s relentless drumming builds layer upon layer of sound and harmonics that ascend and descend their own scale, like a million crazy legs performing “Stomp!” “Stampede” could be a King Crimson song from Discipline filtered through a crackling Third World radio, as Ismaily strangles from his fuzzbass a grinding sound that is ominous and magnificent.

These rhythms and the melodies they seem to form like a spectral mist rising from a lake, while angular and harsh, often grow deep and hypnotic; when Edwards’ dulcimer chimes into “The Scorpion and the Serpent (Prepare for Battle)” and “The Storm,” in particular, it seems to heighten their spiritual sense. The similar stringed instrument in “Final Warning” somehow provides counterpoint to and yet dovetails with its percussive pounding rhythm.

“Horse Dance” is the instrumental tour de force on this set, where Badawi sounds a thunderous charge of polyrhythms and crossrhythms that sounds like it could have only been played by the many legendary arms of Vishnu. “Evocation” is more than just the title of this set’s second track: It also describes the mood and intensity of Badawi’s Soldier of Midian.