Global Music Column – June

Auntie Flo & Sarathy Korwar – Shruti Dances

Drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar has made a career of unifying unexpected collaborators. His 2016 debut album, Day to Day, featured the folk music of the Sidi community from rural Gujarat, mixing west African rhythms with Indian classical melodies, while 2017’s ARE Project was freeform jazz-dance with electronic producer Hieroglyphic Being and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings. 2019’s More Arriving, meanwhile, paired Mumbai rap with tabla and drumkit interplay.

Now Korwar teams up with DJ and producer Brian d’Souza, AKA Auntie Flo, for this dancefloor-focused take on Indian classical. Much like the unfurling repetition of a raga, Shruti Dances plays out as a trance-inducing sequence over its six tracks, underpinned throughout by a drone produced from a shruti box, while Korwar notes time with a thumping 4/4 kick drum and electronically processed tabla rhythms.

Read the review in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 20/05/22]