ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
Harini and Abhijit are a voice/guitar duo that focus on traditional and improvisational music seasoned with contemporary influences. Their interest span Carnatic, Jazz and Latin American music, aiming to bring the emotional core of each of these genres to fresh audiences.
A lot of the music Abhijit is influenced by is other traditional music that speak to jazz- Middle eastern & Armenian music (Dhafer Youssef, Ibrahim Maalouf, Tigran Hamasyan) and West African music (Tinariwen, Toumani Diabate). These are complex modal music forms that have long heritages, but yet have opened themselves up for harmonic exploration. His ultimate goal is to create a similar language for Carnatic and Hindustani music to speak to jazz as well, in a non fusion cliché manner.
Harini says, ” We both have a shared interest for the music we do and traditional improvisation and contemporary sounds are a big portion of it. Having been exposed to a lot of different cultures and musical backgrounds, we just go with the flow and jam till we find a sound and groove that we connect with.
My personal influences have been TM Krishna, Bombay Jayasree, Aruna Sairam, Erykah Badu and Nina Simone. At Berklee, I was in the Balkan and Middle Eastern Ensembles which sparked my love for Middle Eastern sounds and timbre. I also listen to and perform a lot of Latin music and for instance, one would hear an unintentional Flamenco touch to some of my improvisation which is also very folksy.
Now, how the audience perceives our music is completely up to their imagination. It might mean something to us and something completely different to someone listening to us. Thats the beauty of interpretation.”
