Belden's Miles From India was a labour of love
Mixing jazz and Indian music is a bit like putting ketchup on your curry, according to the man behind the new album Miles From India: A Celebration of the Music of Miles Davis.
The two do blend well, but few would think to combine them. Davis memorably did on 1972's On the Corner, an album that producer Bob Belden recently repackaged and recomposed, and that got Belden thinking.
The self-described “producer, editor, orchestrator, psychologist and contractor" assembled a group of musicians - 18 Miles Davis “alumni" and 16 classically trained musicians from India - to record a two-CD revisiting of the jazz great's most Indian flavoured tunes.
rom his home in Manhattan, Belden notes that the Indian influences in On the Corner are deeper than just the tabla and sitar present on the recording; underneath was a “focused Indian sound. Cross-rhythms that weren't African. You could see there was something there. Take Rated X (a song from the session that was released with the box set). That's a common pulse structure in music that comes from ancient sources - this driving, unrelenting pulse. If you go to YouTube and put in Indian jazz music you'd be amazed what comes up. You hear these pulses and you go, 'That sounds like On the Corner.' “
The recording sessions occurred in six different studios across India and the U. S. over an 11-month period. Bed tracks were laid with the Indian contingent in Mumbai - musicians invited by the album's executive producer, Yusuf Gandhi, such as Indojazz composer Louiz Banks, sitarist Ravi Chari, sarodist Brij Narain, percussionist Taufiq Qureshi and members of world-fusion pioneers Shakti.
Mixing jazz and Indian music is a bit like putting ketchup on your curry, according to the man behind the new album Miles From India: A Celebration of the Music of Miles Davis.
The two do blend well, but few would think to combine them. Davis memorably did on 1972's On the Corner, an album that producer Bob Belden recently repackaged and recomposed, and that got Belden thinking.
The self-described “producer, editor, orchestrator, psychologist and contractor" assembled a group of musicians - 18 Miles Davis “alumni" and 16 classically trained musicians from India - to record a two-CD revisiting of the jazz great's most Indian flavoured tunes.
rom his home in Manhattan, Belden notes that the Indian influences in On the Corner are deeper than just the tabla and sitar present on the recording; underneath was a “focused Indian sound. Cross-rhythms that weren't African. You could see there was something there. Take Rated X (a song from the session that was released with the box set). That's a common pulse structure in music that comes from ancient sources - this driving, unrelenting pulse. If you go to YouTube and put in Indian jazz music you'd be amazed what comes up. You hear these pulses and you go, 'That sounds like On the Corner.' “
The recording sessions occurred in six different studios across India and the U. S. over an 11-month period. Bed tracks were laid with the Indian contingent in Mumbai - musicians invited by the album's executive producer, Yusuf Gandhi, such as Indojazz composer Louiz Banks, sitarist Ravi Chari, sarodist Brij Narain, percussionist Taufiq Qureshi and members of world-fusion pioneers Shakti.
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