This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on November 23, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
By some cosmic and/or trans-worldly coincidence, Santa Barbara's recent concert life featured two prominent projects in which free-thinking cultural-border crossing was at the heart of the matter. In the space of one week, courtesy of presenter UCSB Arts & Lectures, we bore witness to the moving new Silkroad Ensemble endeavor, American Railroad — shepherded into being by the ensemble’s new director, Rhiannon Giddens — and last week's Campbell Hall hoedown-showdown of Hindustani and “Newgrass” genres.
For that nearly three-hour musical meeting, the colluding parties were mega-banjoist Béla Fleck and double bassist Edgar Meyer from the Western front, and tabla player Zakir Hussain and bansuri player Rakesh Chaurasia, from the Eastern sensibility. Riding high on this year's album As We Speak (freshly anointed with three Grammy nominations), this band of brothers from other shores got along famously.
Each of the concert’s two sets opened with only the primary trio, but the ensemble sound expanded exponentially with the addition of the deeply melodic bansuri master Chaurasia, nephew of bansuri legend Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia. Chaurasia the Younger lends a rich sonority and warm melodic voice to the group’s overall texture, while also evening out the balance of east/west so central to the band’s trans-identity.
Hussain is always a pleasure to hear and watch, and his range of projects conveys the breadth of his unique musicianship. In Santa Barbara, his performances have included work with Ravi Shankar and Santa Barbara's own jazz elder Charles Lloyd's Sangam trio. Just this fall, he was part of the much-celebrated 50th anniversary tour of the Indo-jazz group Shakti, featuring guitar great John McLaughlin (one of the more intricate tunes at Campbell Hall was his spidery tribute to McLaughlin, “J Bhai”). This serious tabla player also has an impish side, as when he played a scintillating duet with Chaurasia, and winkingly inserted the “Smoke on the Water” riff.
Yes, dollops of humor are also allowed in the special musical room these musicians have created. As heard here, in the second successful world-class border-crossing project in a week — it's a tight-knit pact graced by a loose, flowing energy. More, please.