The Bombay Jazz Palace
John Coltrane was obsessed with India; Miles Davis would stay up for days on end listening to his tabla player; Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz all spent several months in Bombay in the 1950s; Charles Mingus had his ashes scattered in the Ganges. For decades, jazz musicians have bought into the modes, polyrhythms and extended time signatures of Indian music.
This collection samples the fruits of these Indo-jazz fusions recorded by Indophile Westerners and jazz-literate Indians alike -- both the exotic and the intellectual, the rootsy and the genteel, the ethereal and the seriously funky. Dig the patter of the tablas, the purr of the tamboura and the liquid funk of the sitar as you enter the Bombay Jazz Palace...
We at Outcaste have dug deep to bring you The Bombay Jazz Palace, a retrospective snapshot of the long gone venue that played host to this new sound - collecting some of the most famed tracks to come out of this era. Sitars and trumpets, tablas and jazz snares, composed by true musical innovators including the jazz guitar/sitar style of Volker Kriegel, the kitsch piano scats of Dave Mackay & Vicky Hamilton and the blaxploitation tabla beats of Lalo Schifrin.
Product Description
UK collection samples the fruits of Indo-jazz fusions recorded by Indophile Westerners & jazz-literate Indians alike, both the exotic & the intellectual, the rootsy & the genteel, the ethereal & the seriously funky. Dig the patter of the tablas, the purr of the tamboura & the liquid funk of the sitar as you enter the Bombay Jazz Palace. Outcaste dug deep to create a retrospective snapshot of the long gone venue that played host to this new sound, collecting some of the most famed tracks to come out of this era. Sitars & trumpets, tablas & jazz snares, composed by true musical innovators including the jazz guitar/sitar style of Volker Kriegel, the kitsch piano scats of Dave Mackay & Vicky Hamilton & the blaxploitation tabla beats of Lalo Schifrin.
Belly dancing with Platforms:
In the midst of the recent Bollywood craze, came the Bombay Jazz Palace a very refreshing compilation of 60s and 70s Indo-Jazz and Funk, that DOES NOT feature any super-soprano fast singing female vocalists. It does, however, feature a really diverse, funky, and peaceful set of Indian inspired Jazz music.
A lot of these tracks could have made for a 70s pimped out cop movie soundtrack with really funky bass lines and Rhodes but with a very natural unassuming Indian backbone of sitars and tablas and flutes. But then other tracks are totally mystical and divine. Each song is unique.
Blues for Hari is one of my favorite songs on the album. It feautures a Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross style off beat vocal. Its really crazy and fun with lyrics Like: "ravi showed him what to do, Ravi wore pajamas too, If you could, Wear pajamas wouldn't you, Dig It!" The flute on this song is totally mind blowing.
Label: Outcaste Records
Catalog#: CASTE 22CD
Format: CD
Country: UK
Released: 2001
Genre: Electronic
Style: Future Jazz
Track Listing:
1. Paul Horn & Nexus - Latin Tala
New York-born flautist Paul Horn is one of a long line of jazz musicians to get seriously obsessed with India - he studied Indian music and religion, taught Transcendental Meditation for several decades and even recorded an album of unaccompanied flute solos inside the Taj Mahal. By the early seventies he'd moved away from cool bop and into 'New Age' meditation soundtracks (he's even worked with whale sounds, for god's sake). 'Latin Tala' is taken from one of his funkier meditation albums, 1975's 'Altitude Of The Sun', produced by Miles Davis cohort Teo Macero and recorded with a vast bank of Indian, African and Latin American percussionists, including Dom Um Romao.
2. Volker Kriegal - Zoom
A distorted guitar lick, a twang of jew's harp and a pounding funk backbeat laced with plenty of slinky sitar stylings. German guitarist Volker Kriegal played sitar on the Dave Pike Set classic 'Mathar', and perfected his own electric brand of Indo-funk around the same time. 'Zoom' comes from his 1971 album 'Spectrum' which features British ECM veteran John Taylor on keyboards.
3. Georges Garvarenz - Haschish Party
French composer Georges Garvarenz is best known for penning the Charles Aznavour standard 'The Old Fashioned Way' (recorded by everyone from Shirley Bassey to George Burns to Placido Domingo), but he's also explored a variety of exotic genres with his film music. This early-seventies oddity maintains all the dramatic timpani, insistent basslines, string rushes and vocal swoops of his soundtrack work, adding to it a funky backbeat, a distorted guitar and a smidgen of rambling sitar.
4. Dave Mackay & Vicky Hamilton - Blues for Hari
While European Indo-jazz fusion often sought connections with the polyrhythms and modal scales of Hindustani classical music, its US equivalent was often cheesier fare, a tie-dyed, patchouli-scented product with a shake of Indian mysticism. 'Blues For Hari' is one of the more interesting Indo-jazz tracks to come out of the States. It was written by LA saxophonist Tom Scott, the man behind the funky themes for 'Starsky And Hutch', 'Cannon' and 'The Streets Of San Francisco' who went on to MD for Ravi Shankar, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and George Harrison. His 1969 composition, featuring Dave McKay on piano, Ira Shulman on flute and Bill Plummer on sitar, is a 12-bar blues in the odd time-signature of 7/4 which allows Dave and Vicki to pastiche a complex 14-beat tala in octave unison. It's dedicated to Hari Har Rao, an Indian sitar player who lectured at the UCLA in California - dig out his rare-as-hen's teeth LP 'Raga Rock', with a great version of 'Eight Miles High'!
5. The Dave Pike Set - Raga Jeera Swara
Best known for the dancefloor hit 'Mathar', aka 'Indian Vibes', as revived by the likes of Paul Weller and Badmarsh And Shri a few years back, Detroit-born vibist Dave Pike emerged from the West Coast cool scene as an out-and-out bebopper. While based in Germany between 1968 and 1973, his erman quartet incorporated Eastern modes and extended time signaturesinto their music. 'Raga Jeera Swara' is taken from the 1970 album 'Infra Red', and sees Volker Kriegel's sitar and the off-kilter bassline of composer JA Rettenbacher snuggling behind Peter Baumeister's killer breakbeat.
6. Between - Contemplation
Ambitious, folk-tinged prog rock from pianist Peter Michael Hamel's German-based cross-cultural outfit Between. Comprising musicians from Germany, Argentina and the USA, Between recorded six albums for Wergo Spectrum in the late 1970s. The title track from their 1978 album 'Contemplation' sees Robert Eliscu's oboe playing a distinctive Hindustani classical raga over Hamel's mantric piano and the tabla-style percussion of Cotch Black.
7. Lalo Schifrin - Secret Code
An Argentine-born composer and pianist best known for his epic funk scores for films like 'Mission Impossible' and 'Bullet', Schifrin developed his taste for the exotic while training at the Paris Conservatoire with Oliver Messiaen and leading a band with Dizzy Gillespie in New York. This track from the 1970 TV movie 'Double Jeopardy' starts with a loping 6/4 bassline, similar to 'Mission Impossible', with added tabla instrumentation mixed with shimmering harpsichord, flute, Fender Rhodes and those dark, scary horn arrangements that have become a Schifrin trademark.
8. Grupo Batuque - Tabla Samba
Drawing explicit connections between Indo-African drumming and the polyrhythms of north eastern Brazil, Ivan Conti's British-based samba band have put tablas alongside congas, bongos, claves, guiros, xequere, tambour batu and other exotic Latin percussion. Taken from the 1997 Far Out debut 'Samba De Rua', this mixes Afro Brazilian rhythms, Indian talas and a slurring double bass line.
9. Yves Hyatt - Path To Ascension
Another mid 1970s rarity which turned up on the 'Beyond The Valley Of The Beats' compilation recently. It features a gently stroked sitar, clipped wah-wah guitar and a fat breakbeat under what sounds like the sampled strings on an early Mellotron and an effects-laden MiniMoog freakout.
10. Shocking Blue - Acka Raga
'Acka Raga' was originally a throwaway track on the first 'Indo Jazz Fusions' album -- the brainchild of Jamaican-born British saxophonist Joe Harriott and Bengali-born Anglo-Indian violinist John Mayer. This cover version (complete with a tighter rhythm section and a less exploratory sitar line) is by the Dutch pop band Shocking Blue, best known for their 1969 hit 'Venus'. It's taken from their 1969 psych-pop album 'At Home', released on the Pink Elephant label (they also used a sitar on the tracks 'Love Buzz' and 'Water Boy'). The sitar theme also became the basis for a 1999 Mint Royale single, 'From Rusholme With Love'.
11. Diga Rhythm Band - Tal Mala
An on-off member of the Grateful Dead since 1967, drummer Mickey Hart was also a keen ethnomusicologist who'd experimented with various forms of Latin, African and Oriental percussion (check out his corking themes to 'Apocalypse Now'). In 1976, the Dead's Round Records label released 'Diga' by the Diga Rhythm Band, Hart's early experiment in worldbeat fusion. This track, featuring the magnificent Indian fusion percussionist Zakir Hussain, is based around a Hindustani classical tala in 9/4.
12. Shankar-Jaikishan - Bairagi
Global cultural influence can work both ways. Just as western musicians will light up joss sticks and immerse themselves in a romanticised view of India, then Indian musicians can also fetishise western pop and jazz. This track features one of the legendary songwriting teams of Hindi cinema, the pairing of Hyderabad-born Shankar Singh and Gujarati Jai Kishan. Between 1948 and 1971 they had scored nearly 300 movies for the likes of Raj and Shammi Kapoor, winning a clutch of 'Filmfare' awards. This track from the Gramophone Company Of India compilation 'Raga Jazz Style', sees a host of Bollywood sessionmen playing a jazz-tinged Hindustani theme in the quirky time-signature of 5/4, complete with that raw, wailing sax style you get in Indian music.
13. Ananda Shankar - Universal Magic
A 1998 album with the State Of Bengal, a European tour, an appearance at WOMAD and a series of re-releases saw Ravi Shankar's nephew enjoy a huge cult revival just before his tragically premature death in Calcutta in 1999. Feted by Haight Ashbury hippies in the late sixties, Ananda jammed with Jimi Hendrix and recorded a groundbreaking psychedelic raga album for Reprise in 1970, mixing tabla and mridangam with Moog synths and electric guitars. By the seventies he was mixing Indian and Western styles for Indian film, TV and multi-media 'mudavis' (his combinations of music, dance and visuals). This flute-led theme is taken from his album of updated Indian folk themes, 'Melodies From India'.
14. Muhavishla Ravi Hatchud & the Indo Jazz Following - Bombay Palace Pt.1
Born in Central India in 1939, Muhavishla Ravi Hatchud was one of the first Indian musicians to reciprocate the advances of Indo-jazz fusioneers. As a bass player, he founded the Indo Jazz Following in 1961, and this heavy funk track appears to date from the mid-seventies. It's a spartan groove based around a bright electric sitar, playing unison with a xylophone, over a loose breakbeat, a liquid Hammond and a distorted bass guitar line.
1. Paul Horn & Nexus - Latin Tala
2. Volker Kriegal - Zoom
3. Georges Garvarenz - Haschish Party
4. Dave Mackay & Vicky Hamilton - Blues for Hari
5. The Dave Pike Set - Raga Jeera Swara
6. Between - Contemplation
7. Lalo Schifrin - Secret Code
8. Grupo Batuque - Tabla Samba
9. Yves Hyatt - Path To Ascension
10. Shocking Blue - Acka Raga
11. Shanker Family & Friends - Dispute & Violence
12. Shankar-Jaikishan - Bairagi
13. Ananda Shankar - Universal Magic
14. Muhavishla Ravi Hatchud & the Indo Jazz Following - Bombay Palace Part 1
Released 31st July on Outcaste Records. Harv & Sunny (aka Sutrasonic) at Outcaste Records invite you along to the Bombay Jazz Palace, where a delightful array of Eastern influenced, down-tempo jazz/electronica is waiting upon your arrival. So no, its not some exotic porn den - you're only going to get jazz 'n table at this hotel. Worth a look in..
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