IndiaPost.com - Anoushka, Karsh create world music

India Post News Service

NEW YORK: Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale -- two of the most visionary talents working and pioneering the overlap of today's popular world music scene - have collaborated to create a genre-hopping sonic journey within the many varied worlds in which these two artists exist.

The creation - Breathing Under Water -- is a 12-track album that features artists across the spectrum from Pandit Ravi Shankar, Sting, Norah Jones, Midival Punditz and Noah Lembersky to Vishwa Mohan Bhat, Shankar Mahadevan and Sunidhi Chauhan.

Breathing Under Water plays like a modern gypsy travelogue through the alluring world of Anoushka, the 25-yr old sitarist, composer and daughter of legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar; and producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Karsh. Anoushka and Karsh may come across as an unlikely pair to be making music together, but as India Post discovered, they blend in perfect jugalbandi whether in creating music or in their views on music.

Excerpts from a joint interview:

Q. How did the two of you meet and decide to create an album?

Karsh: We actually met through mutual friends and have known each other for a few years and we've been listening to each other's music. It was around the time Anoushka was finishing her album Rise and I was releasing my album Broken English when we got together through our circle of musicians and artists that brought us together.

Anoushka: We didn't get into this planning to make a record necessarily. We were spending a lot of time together and more than saying let's make a record and so recording our first piece of music, it was making the first piece of music that made us want to make more because surprisingly it's easy to work together.

Q. You two come from two different genres of music. What was the common ground between you?

Anoushka: Karsh is already coming from a space where he is making music that's beyond being from one place or another. As for me, I've started out as a classical sitar player. With my last record Rise, I was stepping out as a composer as opposed to an instrumentalist, to create something out of the box. So we both are coming from places that exist in more than one space. We both have a lot of commonality because we both are rooted in Indian classical music.

Q. The album features artists as varied as Pt. Ravi Shankar and popular Bollywood singer Sunidhi Chauhan. How did that happen?

Karsh: When we sat down to record an album we started talking about who we want to work with, and then started casting a list of people that we would love to work with. People like Sunidhi, Shankar Mahadevan and Vishwa Mohan Bhat were on this list even before we reached out to them to see if they would be interested; and then of course Sting and Panditji (Ravi Shankar)…….

Anoushka:: …… were kind of the ultimate because we didn't even think they would do it necessarily. It's not necessarily the styles that they come from but it's about what they could represent on the record, kind of like casting a film. Stylistically, someone like my father has a presence and weight coming from a space that is our main inspiration.

For him to be there really lends an important voice to the record. And then from there, with someone like Sunidhi, her voice will speak to an audience to whom classical music may not speak to. So that was needed.

Karsh: It just happens to be an evolution of who we are. We live all over the world, we've grown up in different cities… Anoushka: …. we are fusion!

Karsh: This is actually the natural music that would come out of us and to stay in one form is not necessarily true to who we are as human beings. Not just us but the generation of people today.

Anoushka: You can simplify it by referring to Indians growing up in the West, but it goes beyond that. The exposure that they get to other cultures, whether musical or life oriented is so great that everyone's mixed up in that way. And we are just making honest music at the end of the day and not necessarily being scientific or doing an experiment.

Q. So, what is that kind of music that's turning people on in today's world? Anoushka: Unfortunately it's not an easy question to answer, because it's so huge…

Karsh: There's a lot of pop music, rock music or hip hop or electronic music. But all over the world, whether in India or the West, Europe or East Asia -- they've always thrived in popular music. Pop music is universal all over the world, so I guess it's the most popular genre.

Q. Who do you think will listen to Breathing Under Water?

Anoushka: There's a lot on this record, which means different aspects of it will speak to a lot of different people. But then more specifically, there are a lot of people like us who will be looking at a more narrow interpretation of music; it's an intelligent music listener who will appreciate that kind of music.

Karsh: We live in a world where people are travelling a lot more, and not necessarily physically. They are travelling through ……. Anoushka: …… time and space…… Karsh: …… so much information is being shared and there's so much music that's available. I think the album will hopefully appeal to that kind of sentiment -- to people who are not thinking in a regional way anymore.

Anoushka: When you think of iPods or iPhones that have revolutionized the way people listen to music, where they download music from one another, from one country to another and put it all together on one play list… I think a record like this speaks to people like that as well.

Q. Will we get to see a concert with you and your sister Norah Jones?

Anoushka: I get asked about that a lot. The only way I foresee that happening is maybe for some very special event or a benefit or to mark an occasion of some kind. But it wouldn't make a lot of sense unless she and I had a lot of stuff and material together, which we don't. There's really no connection to make a concert together that makes sense.

Q. Was working on Breathing Under Water a big break for Karsh?

Karsh: Being able to do this album was a huge opportunity for me as an artist to grow. Besides obviously working with Anoushka, working with people like Sting and Pt. Ravi Shankar -- they are moments I will always remember in my life as pinnacle moments, to see something change in me. What I was working towards all these years bore fruits for the first time.