Root Finder
Percussionist serves up an Indo-futurist manifesto via sophisticated and intense rhythmic investigations.
By Andy Cowan.
Roots manoeuvres: Sarathy Korwar at his most captivating, immediate and inventive.
Fabrice Bourgelle
Sarathy Korwar
★★★★
KALAK
THE LEAF LABEL. CD/DL/LP
AFTER SUBVERTING immigration prejudice on 2019’s More Arriving, a thought provok-ing fusion of jazz and vibrant Mumbai rap, Korwar retains its core instrumental personnel (Danalogue, Tamar Osborn, Al MacSween, Magnus Mehta) for his latest adventure. Where its predecessor was freighted with wordplay that refused to sugar-coat the reality of a migrant’s journey west (laid unsparingly bare on provocative closer Pravasis), the US-born, Indian-raised and London-based composer lets the music do the talking here (bar two spoken-word bookends and some pointed titles), deploying a circular rhythmic notation system, without strict starts or ends, to mirror South Asian notions of cyclicality.