At the Dakota, Indian sitar virtuoso Anoushka…
At the Dakota, Indian sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar highlights plight of refugees
Anoushka Shankar (Courtesy of the artist)
By Dan Emerson | Special to the Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: July 16, 2018 at 11:25 pm | UPDATED: July 17, 2018 at 9:42 am
Indian sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, who performed with her band Monday night at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, used her latest album "Land of Gold" to bring attention to the plight of refugees around the world. The cross-genre collaboration featured vocal performances by rapper M.I.A., German-Turkish singer Alev Lenz and British actress/activist Vanessa Redgrave, along with a children's choir.
None of those vocalists are accompanying Shankar on her current tour, so Monday night's performance featured only instrumental interpretations of the songs on the consciousness-raising concept album, which Shankar and her band were still able to imbue with considerable emotional impact.
Although she began her career as a young performer of Indian classical music, Shankar is no musical purist. That was immediately evident by the array of electronic gear onstage, including about 10 effects pedals at her feet, and by the prerecorded synth drones, chanting and other ethereal, exotic sounds that were used to flesh out the tunes.
Shankar and her quartet skillfully used the combination of traditional Indian instruments and 21st century electronics to produce an evening of engrossing, at times trance-inducing, music. Some of the most emotionally impactful playing was done by Sanjay Shankar — no relation to Anoushka but a former student of her father, Ravi Shankar — on the shehnai, a traditional Indian reed instrument that produces a haunting, vocal-like sound.
Another virtuoso onstage was Manu Delago, a native of Austria who plays hang, a convex steel drum played with the hands and tuned with multiple notes in a diatonic scale. Delago used his four hang drums to produce a seemingly limitless variety of tones and polyrhythms. He was able to play fully fleshed-out melodies using only one of his drums.
Delago, who also served as Shankar's co-writer in producing the album, spent some of his time playing a conventional trap drum set augmented with some electronic drums. The fourth member of the group was British musician Tom Farmer, who divided his time between electronic keyboard and upright bass.
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The minor-key songs that made up much of the set had a somber tone, like Shankar's piece "Crossing the Rubicon," which conveys the internal struggle of refugees trying to cross borders to safety in the face of difficult conditions.
One of the other instrumental pieces was augmented by the recorded voice of a British newscaster reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis.
A less somber, more optimistic piece played later in the set was Shankar's one-world fantasy, "Dissolving Boundaries," which began as a melody played in unison on the 19-string sitar and hang drums.
Shankar and her band will perform again at the Dakota at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Dan Emerson
Dan Emerson is a freelance writer and musician in Minneapolis.
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