Friday, February 1, 2008

Avant-Garde and Experimental South Asian Music

I am constantly probing around for more and in my search I recently went out to the Internet looking for musicians who are pushing the boundaries on South Asian music. Not necessarily from people of that origin but anyone pushing the envelope on sounds emanating from that part of earth. I was looking for the avant-garde and experimental musicians who are infusing the amazing heritage of music from South Asia with fresh sounds and ideas? It was, by and large, a disappointing journey and I'd like to believe that this was mostly my failure at finding them.

I heard loads of bhangra, trance, house and hip hop... apparently that last one is called bollyhood. People seem to like that stuff.

In my opinion, the astists who stand out of the crowd are Nitin Sawhney, Karsh Kale, T J Rehmi, Talvin Singh, Badmarsh & Shri, Dj Cheb I Sabbah, Bill Laswell to the league of Badawi, Muslimgauze and Raz Mesinai. If you know of others that you'd like to point out, especially any independent ones, I'd love to hear about them.

3 comments:

Fari said...

Hi thanks for your email!

Not sure most of these are avant garde, that you mentioned though they are really great musician/producers it's a very big title for some rather mainstream beats. Try listening to www.resonancefm.com to get an idea of what avant garde is. I'm just about to go and hear your tracks now! ; )

Ayush Gupta said...

@fari:

Indeed! As I said they stand out from the crowd. The only one from that list that I'd consider avant-grade is Raz Mesinai. Mulimgauze is great and I wish so much that he'd experimented beyond his signature sound.

I'd be sure to checkout resonancefm. Thanks! And yes, do let me know what you think of murm's sound, which -just so we're clear- I am not claiming to be avant-grade!

J-Ram said...

Nice work on the blog! I see you've found a lightening rod for your thoughts. Will listen to Murm.