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20 November 2003
Debashish Bhattacharya and Bob Brozman, Mahima (Riverboat)
Slide guitarist/ Hawaiian music scholar Brozman joins Indian guitarist Bhattacharya (and his tablas-playing brother and, on a few tracks, his vocalist sister) for this collection of elaborate compositions indebted to a vast range of international musical idioms: traditional raga, Hawaiian slack-key guitar, Latin-tinged jazz fusions, California surf guitar duels, and film scores (in both Hollywood and Bollywood styles). In the interweaving of styles the album bears traces of the dense, complicated history of interpenetrating cultures effected by the series of world migrations -- colonialist, imperialist, or otherwise, and thus becomes a kind of document, offering a palpable, concrete, spontaneously revelatory version of that complex, often nebulous history. The reciprocal assimilation at the level of music that this album documents (and foments) suggests the way sociocultural practice can succeed in uniting groups where political practices often fail. But that all makes the music sound much more academic than it really is: no theory is required to enjoy the guitar playing here, which is by turns furiously dexterous and exquisitely expressive.
— Rob Horning
.: posted by Editor 3:26 PM
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