It’s amazing what can happen when you open up your mind to new
\nideas.<\/p>\n
I, for one, am not a particular fan of world music – don’t know
\nwhy, just never developed a taste for it. Then, what should arrive
\nin the mail but – ta-da!!! – a disc of music from Nepal from a
\ngroup I had never heard of. But something kept pulling me towards
\nthis disc, and within two hours of going to the post office I had
\nthe disc in my CD player.<\/p>\n
Who knew that the strains of flute, tabla and sitar could be so
\ntherapeutic? Who knew that Sur Sudha, a three-man group, could
\nbypass cultural boundaries to create a language that all could
\nunderstand? Who knew that
\nImages Of Nepal<\/i>, the first of a promised three-disc set,
\nwould be so addictive? Who knew, indeed.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the trio of Prem Rana Autari, Bijada Vaidya and
\nSurendra Shrestha don’t seem like they’re the kind of group to
\nre-invent your thoughts about music. But they’ve spent the better
\npart of a decade taking the culture of Nepal, their homeland,
\naround the world as cultural ambassadors for Nepal. They’re coming
\ninto a scene which, thanks to films like
\nSeven Days In Tibet<\/i> and the recently-released
\nKundun<\/i>, is curious about this area of the world.<\/p>\n
From the first strains of Vaidya’s sitar on “Raja Mati,” Sur
\nSudha almost immediately takes hold of your spirit and eases it.
\nWhen I first listened to this disc, I was having an atrocious day
\nat the office, but as the sitar interwove with Autari’s flute and
\nShrestha’s tabla work, I found myself regaining my temper and
\nfocus. It sounds weird, even possibly stereotypical of this type of
\nmusic, but it
\ndoes<\/i> tend to relax you. (And if you’re a hard-rockin’ person
\nwho doesn’t think they’d be even remotely interested in this, dust
\noff the first album by Led Zeppelin and listen to “Black Mountain
\nSide.” Or listen to any of George Harrison’s experiments with the
\nBeatles. ‘Nuff said.)<\/p>\n
Maybe without the liner notes you wouldn’t know that “Raja Mati”
\nand “Resham Firri” are love songs, or that “Nayaki Kanghada” is an
\nexercise in scales. But Sur Sudha creates a powerful groove with
\ntheir instruments that appeals to the mind as well as the ear that
\nyou won’t feel cheated if you don’t know the story behind the
\nmusic. Oh, sure, all the songs are in a variation of the key of D,
\nbut each song has such a unique feel that you might not notice it
\non the first listen.<\/p>\n
The biggest obstacle Sur Sudha will have to face, obviously, is
\na market raised on rock and roll, unwilling to take a chance on
\nsomething radically different. Well, as someone who originally
\ndidn’t want to listen to
\nImages Of Nepal<\/i>, let me challenge you to give it a try. The
\ndedication and musicianship these three men emote make a
\nfifteen-minute song seem like only seconds, and may even develop a
\ntaste in exploring world music within you.<\/p>\n
If
\nImages Of Nepal<\/i> can win over an old curmudgeon like me, then
\nyou’ll love it as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5921],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-35871","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sur-sudha","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35871"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35871"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}