If you missed their other shows this week, tonight is the last chance to see what the Dosti Project musicians have been up to over the course of their month-long residency together.
The group of Indian, Pakistani, and American musicians will give two performances at Snug Harbor this evening, showcasing some of the amazing collaborations they’ve created with their (quite) diverse musical talents.
The group includes four Indian musicians: Debanjan Bhattacharjee, a classical sarod player; Mirande Shah, a singer and songwriter trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition; Surojato Roy, a percussionist who specializes in tabla; and Sanaya “Sandunes” Ardeshir, a producer and keyboard player from Mumbai.
It also includes four Pakistani musicians: Natasha Humera Ejaz; a singer/songwriter/guitarist/electronic artist who blends folk, jazz, and electro-pop, Zohaib Hassan; a sixth-generation sarangi player; Imran Fida, a traditional Sufi vocalist and pop singer as well; and Bilal Khan, a prominent producer in the emerging electronic scene the city of Karachi.
The project’s American musicians are Tatiana Silver Hargreaves, an Appalachian-style violin player from Oregon, and Aurora Nealand, a New Orleanian vocalist/saxophonist/clarinetist/accordion player who co-founded Sound Observatory New Orleans (SONO), the organization that coordinated the New Orleans portion of the Dosti Project.
“In America, [New Orleans] is one of the few towns that really has a very strong cultural tradition with music,” said Nealand, who’s excited to be able to share the city’s uniquely vibrant music scene with the visiting musicians.
In turn, the project has provided great opportunities for New Orleanians to discover new ways of experiencing music.
“It’s like a musical yoga,” Nealand said, in describing the introductory section to a traditional Indian/Pakistani rag melody. “It slows down the heartbeat, it focuses you. Especially in this day and age, where there’s so much commercialization of music, it’s a very different way of experiencing it; it’s a really physical thing. That feeling, and that spaciousness, and really just focusing on the sounds and the ways they affect your body.”
(Indeed, her Royal Roses set, going on currently at the Spotted Cat, is certainly Dosti-flavored; a propulsive Eastern-sounding interlude featured Cliff Hines on a guitar that sounded like it was raised by sitars and went on for seemingly an eternity before slipping seamlessly back into Sidney Bechet.)
The Dosti group has been in New Orleans since March 9th, and they kicked off their performance circuit with a spellbinding Open Ears show at the Blue Nile last Tuesday.
The set comprised a sequence of collaborations by pairs and trios, loosely united by a tale of a wayfaring prince MC’d by the dynamic Ejaz. It featured haunting vocals, the warm, rich tones of the tabla at lightning speed, and mesmerizing string melodies, filled out with percussion and accordion.
With an Eastern sense of spaciousness, pieces would stretch out in time, casting a trance-like spell over the room.
At one point, somewhat unexpectedly, Hargreaves’ used both fiddle and vocals to make herself sound uncannily like a train, creating a folksy (American-folksy), plaintive tune a little reminiscent of Tom Rush’s “Panama Limited” if the latter had tugged a bit more at the heartstrings.
Many audience members had been brought along by friends, not really knowing what they were in for, and left raving. Indeed, the subsequent show (a free set at the Tigermen Den last Friday) was so packed that people weren’t able to get in once it had started.
For the Tigermen show, the group was joined by Hines, New Orleans bass player Jason Weaver, and Dosti staff member and songwriter/keyboardist Nandi Plunkett.
Once again, they took turns performing small group collaboration pieces, some of which were rollickingly percussive and others achingly wistful. An Indian-folk styled tune was led by Shah on vocals, Bhattacharjee and Hassan created delicately interwoven string melodies, and Roy’s tabla playing,if possible, was even more impressive than it had been at the Blue Nile show, with fingers moving at inhuman speeds for totally ridiculous amounts of time.
With all these traditional sounds of Southeast Asia fused with the rhythms of New Orleans, the styles and forms of Appalachia, and the shimmering polyrhythms and bass thumps of the electronic wizards, the results were captivating.
In a humorous twist near the end, one piece turned into a playfully-taunting call and response between sarangi and computer.
Tonight’s Snug Harbor shows take place at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., and tickets cost $20. Next up for the Dosti Project is Austin’s SXSW Festival.
SONO is on the rise as an organization promoting creativity and innovative local art; be on the look out for more cool projects, collaborations, residencies from them in the future!
