RISHTE: Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas Rishte

RISHTE: Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas Rishte
RISHTE:Najma Akhtar and Gary Lucas
  • country:India
  • style(s):Blues, Indian
  • label:World Village
  • type:Band, Composer/Songwriter
  • gender:male, female
  • instrumentation:instrumental, vocal
  • artist posted by:LED Artists

Line up

  • Alicia Svigals (Violin)
  • Dibyarka Chatterjee (Tabla)
  • Gary Lucas (Guitar)
  • Najma Akhtar (vocals)
  • Nitin Mitta  (Tabla)

When Najma met Gary there was no plan. Najma knew and respected Gary's work with Jeff Buckley (he coauthored Grace) and Gary had loved Najma's ethereal vocal collaboration with Page and Plant. A couple of gigs later Gary produced the music (including some songs originally written for Buckley) and Najma nailed the words and the melodies for their first album, Rishte. And in the process a beautiful and curious transformation has occurred.

There is blues in the mix - in particular the eerie revival of the Skip James classic Special Rider Blues (Gary's also a Beefheart alumnus) and there's Indian music too, as expected (both Daaya and Parda are based on Ghazal styles). But out of this chrysalis of expectation has burst a butterfly whose wings drip psychedelic jewels. A dark and heady funk and fey folk evocations jostle in the powerful title track and a powerful pop sensibility underpins everything. It would be easy to apply simplistic marketing jargon to the music of Rishte: Indo-Blues fusion, east-meets-west and the like. But this is to misunderstand the alchemy that occurred when Gary met Najma - a rare confluence of interests, talents and cosmic synchronicities that have produced an album which is truly more than the sum of its parts: a unique and pungent fusion.