Karavika Bring Their Gorgeously Dancing Americana-Spiced Indian String Music to Joe’s Pub
Karavika are one of the most interesting, individualistically compelling ensembles in New York. Their new second album Of Earth and Sky – streaming at Bandcamp – blends classical Indian styles with American folk tinges. Like the music of any other culture, Indian music spans the entire emotional spectrum; Karavika’s is on the introspective, hypnotic side, punctuated by purposeful, animated soloing and catchy string riffage. The core of the band is Trina Basu on violin, guitar and vocals, Amali Premawardhana on cello, and Perry Wortman on bass and mandolin, bolstered by Arun Ramamurthy on violin, Roopa Mahadevan on vocals, Jay Gandhi on bansuri, Advait Shah and Sameer Gupta on tabla and Rajna Swaminathan on mrudangam. They’re playing the album release show on August 11 at 7:30 PM at Joe’s Pub. Sarod-percussion duo Camila Celin & Roshni Samlal open the night; general admission is $15.
The album’s opening track, Your Passing Touch builds out of a fluttery bed of strings under spiky mandolin, then hits a catchy, plaintively waltzing groove: you could call it Indian folk noir. A jaunty minor-key blues violin solo is the last thing you’d expect, but it’s tasty and it has bite. A droll false ending sets up a remarkable, parallel mando solo by Wortman. It ends unresolved.
All the Pretty Little Horses begins with a muted, looping pizzicato violin riff anchoring a moody, searching bass solo, then the vocals kick in, a tender lullaby that’s one part Appalachian folk, one part Indian, with a marvelously terse cello solo. The first of two ragas, Raga Behag is probably the shortest raga you’ll ever hear, a plaintive, melismatic violin solo over a steady cello drone that rises a bit as the piece goes on. The Time Is Now sets a warmly nocturnal string melody over alternately scattergun and hypnotically thumping percussion, Premawardhana’s memorably gentle solo setting up a brightly soaring one from Basu.
The second micro-raga, Raga Kalyani blends dancing violin melismatics with gracefully exploratory vocalese. The album’s most epic. anthemic track, peppered with all sorts of cleverly flitting interludes, is Thillana Jaya Ragamalika, Mahadevan’s lilting vocals over a balletesque groove. Young Leaves of the Bodhi Tree is a return to spare, brooding intensity, a quiet showstopper that unfolds with fingerpicked guitar, vocalese harmonies and cello, picking up steam with an emphatically potent bass solo. The final cut is Oh Watch the Stars, a gently triumphant lullaby that perfectly capsulizes Karavika’s vision of a seamless match between the inward-directed but simmering rapture of Indian music and the comfortable rusticity of Americana. Only in New York, folks.
New York Music Daily 