Topdown Topdown Dialectic

Blending free jazz with South African protest music and rigorous academic study, the Cape Town drummer connects jazz tradition to contemporary oppression, and points a way forward for the music.

Adam Rudolph, Go: Organic Orchestra & Brooklyn Raga Massive - Ragmala: A Garland of Ragas (2019) {Meta Records}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Official Digital Download (bandcamp.com) -> 599 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 282 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2019 Meta Records
Jazz / World Music / Orchestral / Creative Music

On the remarkable new album Ragmala – A Garland of Ragas, Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra and Brooklyn Raga Massive form a singular ensemble that vibrantly bridges musical and cultural distinctions. The result is a breathtaking set of music that carves an egalitarian and communal way forward while reverberating with echoes of the recent and ancient past. Drawing parallels with another ground-breaking and singular epic, Ragmala has already been referred to as a Bitches Brew for the 21st century (Ahmet Ali Arslan of Açık Radyo Istanbul).

Generally speaking, a souvenir is a token of remembrance, a symbol of a past that is meaningful to its creator, dedicatees, addressees, and the whole community for which it is created. A souvenir may quote, recall, evoke, imply, et al., and the realization of these potentialities is always strictly connected with the what, the how, and the why of its existence, structure, and creative/manufacturing process. As such, along the centuries and throughout the cultures of the world, the souvenir has been actualized, experienced, shared, and interpreted as a personal keepsake, a moral memento, a commercial reminder, a socio-political narrative, and so on.

Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov is one of the contenders for the mantle of hot new Russian phenomenon, and he is gifted with the rare combination of incredible speed and a fairly natural manner in slower lyric material. Here he takes on the thankless task of creating something new out of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, which he, like every other winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition going back to Van Cliburn, has been given the opportunity to record.

To be heard with ears half bent, or with one side facing what Maryanne Amacher calls “the third ear”. The great reverence in which the Tanpura is held by Indian classical music, its transcendental but occulted place in the tradition alongside its normal function as a drone, made a strong impression on the composer such that it has taken decades to formulate even a simple Tanpura Study.