FROM UK REVIEWS OF FOUND MUSIC, released by Babel Vortex, London, October 2010 and EMI India March 2011 An allaboutjazz.com Editor's Pick of 2010 'Calcutta-born singer Amit Chaudhuri's follow-up to This Is Not Fusion (Babel, 2010) is another captivating and deeply idiosyncratic fusion/not fusion of Hindustani classical music, jazz, rock and blues... If you haven't heard the band before, you're in for a treat—dreamy raga-based discursions which incorporate the acid rock songbook, trumpeter Miles Davis' modal legacy, Delta blues and retro Tin Pan Alley... A quirky, one-of-a-kind, little piece of magic.' Chris May, on www.allaboutjazz.com, the world's leading jazz website "Occasionally, very occasionally, something arrives out of the clear blue sky that, because of its verve, daring, and chutzpah, so tickles your fancy that it double-take ripples into double-take. Found Music is one of those rarities...a series of soundscapes straight out of Chaudhuri's imagination and his memory's darker recesses...Just go with the flow." Ken Hunt, Jazzwise magazine, Britain's leading jazz magazine 'It's a rich and provocative journey he's taking us on... Inspirational... The world music scene is a much more interesting place with the presence of Amit Chaudhuri.' Peter Culshaw, **** Songlines 'Moments of heart-catching beauty...a pleasure to hear.' Fran Hardcastle, londonjazz.blogspot.com 'Whoever said Indian ragas and The Beach Boys can’t mix? Sceptical listeners should head to Rich Mix in Shoreditch tomorrow night as Amit Chaudhuri performs material from his latest album Found Music...With his debut album This Is Not Fusion, Chaudhuri fashioned a distinctive sound that resisted easy definition... The audience at Rich Mix, one of London’s up-and-coming arts centres set on the Bethnal Green Road, can expect some fantastic Indianised re-imaginings of pop songs.' Ben Davies, www.jazzwise.com 'The Beatles' Norwegian Wood sung as a Hindustani raga gives some idea of the breathtaking eclectics of Calcutta-based writer-musician Amit Chaudhuri's second album. It breathes life into what has become a bit of a tired old classic and makes you listen to it anew. The same can be said of his reinterpretations of Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys... The fusion of found sound with inventive musicianship and scat-like delivery makes this a quirky offering which merits repeat listening. The final track Famous Blue Raincoat suite, [which] has a meditation on Miles Davis's version of Concierto de Aranjuez... is as compelling as the originals in its soulful identification.' Len Phelan, Morning Star, Britain's only socialist daily ‘A real 360 degree renaissance geezer.' Bobby Friction BBC Asian Network "Upsettingly multi-talented." Martha Kearney, The Review Show, BBC 2 FROM INDIAN REVIEWS OF FOUND MUSIC, released by EMI, March 2011 'With a glorious new album, writer Amit Chaudhuri firmly establishes himself as one of the most original composers in the country...Chaudhuri takes his exploration to even more daring heights with Found Music. He throws everything into the blender in this one – his extensive knowledge of Hindustani classical, rock, pop, Western classical, blues, jazz, poetry, Hindi film music, and even Lone Ranger comics – to produce an album that is lusciously beautiful... Stunningly evocative.' N Radhakrishnan in Rolling Stone India 'In their plays of high and low, East and West, words and scales, the two Chaudhuri albums transcend genres and defy categorisation, establishing him as a one-off musician occupying a space entirely his own.' Palash Krishna Mehrotra, Rolling Stone India 'Delightfully inventive... Chaudhuri plays with notes with the dexterity of a Covent Garden juggler...some genuine gems that have stuck in my head.' Indrajit Hazra, Hindustan Times 'It is quite obvious by now, to those who have been paying attention to his career, that there is very little Amit Chaudhuri cannot do. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, former Booker judge, respected professor, winner of the Betty Trask Award and Sahitya Akademi Award, he uses the little free time one assumes he has to create fabulous music!... It’s an audacious gamble, and pulled off with much aplomb.' Lindsay Pereira in Midday, Bombay's leading afternoon newspaper 'Amit Chaudhuri’s Found Music is a glorious mix of Hindustani classical, rock, jazz and the blues... Hugely enjoyable.' Asian Age CD Liner Notes Found Music – Amit Chaudhuri Amit Chaudhuri has been performing his distinctive mix of raga, jazz, rock and blues, under the thought-provoking rubric 'This Is Not Fusion', since January 2005. At that time, he explained the negative in his project's title by pointing out that his music was more than simply the result of a physical meeting of musicians from Western and Indian traditions, that it came from 'a space in which musical lineages intersect, and renovate themselves and become altered by this contact', his aim being 'not only to take advantage of these musical intersections between the two traditions, but to attempt to create a language of music and performance out of them' via 'a point of entry into one musical tradition or system through another one'. Chaudhuri refers to these points of entry, which can be anything from a rock song's hook to a phrase from a raga, as 'found music', thereby consciously tapping into the non-musical art world by referencing Marcel Duchamp and his celebrated 'readymades', already existing objects given fresh life courtesy of their incorporation into a new and original art work. On this, Chaudhuri's second album exploring the musical territory opened up by these ideas, said 'found music' comes from a rich and diverse variety of sources. The recording's opening song, 'On Broadway (the Postcolonial Version)', provides a perfect example of the effectiveness of the technique: itself the product of a fusion of an existing Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song with the surefooted commercial instincts of songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, 'On Broadway', in Chaudhuri's version set to raga Gavati, becomes a daydream in the mind of a homesick immigrant Indian cook on Lexington Avenue hoping to make it in New York. 'Country Hustle', with its plaintive 'Hi ho Silver' chorus and wittily contrived rhymes ('cactus'/'attacked us'), draws on Chaudhuri's childhood love of Lone Ranger comics and culminates in what might be termed a 'con-fusion' (dating back 500-odd years to Christopher Columbus) sparked by the ambiguous term 'Indian'. 'Messages from the Underground (Break on Through)' not only plays with the familiar warning to Tube passengers, 'Mind the gap', but also, via Jim Morrison's 'Break on Through', explores the very notions of mental freedom encapsulated (via its reference to Aldous Huxley's 'doors of perception') in the name of the late singer's band. The Byrds' 'So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star' is utilised to portray a scenario in Bombay before the rock scene there was revived in the late 1990s; John Lennon's 'Norwegian Wood' is set to raga Bageshri, the evening raga in which a woman waits for a reunion with her lover, to the mutual artistic advantage of each element. The power of such carefully arranged collisions was tellingly illustrated, at a recent live performance by Chaudhuri, by the clearly involuntary laugh of delighted surprise from an audience member suddenly recognising another piece of 'found music' included here, Brian Wilson's 'Good Vibrations'. It is the album's closing track, however, which provides the richest, most rewarding example of the effectiveness of Chaudhuri's technique. 'Famous Blue Raincoat Suite' brings together the haunting preamble to Rodrigo's celebrated Concierto de Aranjuez, Leonard Cohen's achingly beautiful sung letter exploring the emotional consequences of a triangular love affair, raga Mishra Kafi and verses from two 1950s Hindi films to create an entirely original and uniquely touching, intimately personal work of art. The characteristic emotional maturity informing Cohen's affecting lyric perhaps provides the key to appreciating Chaudhuri's art. While it is undoubtedly trite to point out that emotions transcend cultural difference, it is none the less pertinent to remind ourselves that the most enduring art, as Duke Ellington suggested, is 'beyond category'. The homesick melancholy of the nostalgic immigrant, the pain consequent upon separation and loss, the acknowledgement of the transience of life and love – all these are, self-evidently, simply human emotional reactions to the various vicissitudes of life rather than feelings specific to members of individual cultures, and it is this universality that accounts for the power, richness and resonance of Chaudhuri's music. Chris Parker Chris Parker is jazz critic for the Vortex, London, and former jazz critic of the Times. Found Music Amit Chaudhuri 1 On Broadway (postcolonial version) (7:35) (Leiber, Jerry; Mann, Barry; Stoller, Mike; Weil, Cynthia) Arr. Chaudhuri 2 Saraswati (6:15) (Chaudhuri) 3 One Fine Day (4:53) (Chaudhuri) 4 Country Hustle (7:14) (Chaudhuri) 5 Rain (8:10) (Chaudhuri) 6 Messages From the Underground (Break on Through) (5.20) (Messages from the Underground, words and music, Chaudhuri; Break on Through, words and music, The Doors) 7 So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star 4:44 (Chaudhuri) 8 Good Vibrations 8:05 (Brian Wilson, Mike Love) Arr. Chaudhuri 9 Norwegian Wood 5:12 (Lennon-McCartney) Arr. Chaudhuri 10 Famous Blue Raincoat Suite (15:15) Arr. Chaudhuri. (Recorded at the concert room, School of Music, University of East Anglia) i. Preamble from Concierto de Arunjiez: (Rodrigo) ii. Raga Mishra Kafi iii. Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen) iv. Hindi film song extracts: 'Yeh raate yeh mausam nadi ka kinara' (Music: Ravi; Lyrics:Shailendra) Film: Dilli Ka Thug 'Yeh mahalon, yeh, takhton, yeh tajon ka duniya' (Music: S D Burman; Lyrics: Sahir), Film: Pyaasa Total time: 72:54:22 All arrangements by Amit Chaudhuri Guitar: Prasenjit Ghosal, except Adam Moore’s solo on ‘Rain’ Keyboards: Indrajit Dey; except Bart Dietrich on ‘Famous Blue Raincoat Suite’ Trumpet: Jonathan Impett Bass: Sanket Bhattacharya; except Mainak Nag Choudhury on ‘Good Vibrations’ Tabla: Ashok Mukherjee Slide guitar on ‘Country Hustle’: Amyt Datta Vocals: Amit Chaudhuri Additional sounds and conch recorded with the help of the staff at Studio Vibrations, Calcutta. Sounds of the London Underground, Jubilee Line, recorded by Roger Elsgood. All songs except the two mentioned below recorded and mixed at Studio Vibrations, Calcutta, in September 2009 and January 2010, by Raja Narayan Deb, Ephram Isaacs, and Saibesh Adak. ‘Famous Blue Raincoat Suite’ recorded by Jason Dixon, December 2009, at the concert room at the School of Music, University of East Anglia, Norwich, and mixed at Dream Digital Studios, Calcutta in February 2010. ‘Good Vibrations’ recorded and mixed at Dream Digital Studios, Calcutta in September 2006 by Anirban Sengupta and Dipankar Chaki. Mastered at the Blue Studio, London, by Andrew Tulloch. Produced by Amit Chaudhuri Thanks are due, first of all, to the terrific musicians who have played with me. To T Suresh and his team at EMI (India), to Oliver Weindling of Babel and the Vortex (London), to my manager Roger Elsgood, and to various friends who have supported and encouraged this project through the years: Partho Chakrabarty, Peter McDonald, Ajay Chowdhury, Martin Pick, Rohit Manchanda, Moira Weigel, Ian Jack, Pankaj Mishra, Jamie McKendrick, Jon Cook, Sunetra Gupta, Sally Bayley, and many others. Thanks, of course, to my listeners. Finally, most of all, my parents, Nages and Bijoya Chaudhuri, my daughter Radha, and my wife Rinka. Inlay design: Sukanya Ghosh