In 1972 Miles Davis incorporated tablas and sitar in his recording On The Corner, and it's the music from that release that inspired this music. Co-producers Bob Belden and Yusef Gandhi came up with the idea of revisiting Miles' Indian influenced music, (his 1972 recording On The Corner included tablas and sitar), utilizing both musicians who had appeared in the original sessions and Indian Classical musicians. The began by having the musicians in India record their parts for each song, and then took these tracks back to the States where the American jazz musicians were asked to improvise to them. None of the American musicians were allowed to listen to the music prior to the time they actually sat down in the studio to record, ensuring that they were only able to react to what they heard and not pre-plan anything.
As far as I can tell the purpose of this was to ensure that they wouldn't be influenced by any preconceived notions they might have had about the music based on their own experiences. The result of their only being able to react to what the Indian musicians created was not only the creation of almost completely new pieces of music, but an almost perfect fusion of the two styles of music.
While it's difficult for me to pick out specifics to cite as examples, experiencing the music as a whole is overwhelming and it was far too easy to just let myself drift with the sounds and rhythms generated by the musicians, a couple of moments stand out in particular. Vocalist Shankar Mahadevan is one of India's most popular singers and his voice is used in numerous Bollywood productions. On Miles...From India he uses his voice like an instrument so that on "Blue In Green" and "Spanish Green" he "sings" the melody of the tunes.
Most of the time Jazz vocalizations, scat, are staccato exhalations of sound that accentuate the rhythm more than the melody. That's not the case with Shankar's work on these songs, instead he has taken the role of a horn or other lead instrument and recreated their parts with his voice. The result is that both songs have a warmth and emotional depth that can only be achieved via a human voice. Shankar Mahadevan's range and breath control are such that he is able to bring the same sort of expression to his "solos" as that of a horn player, which in turn allows American Wallace Roney's trumpet an opportunity to create beautiful counterpoints and harmonies.
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