``The jazz-oriented Triloka Records successfully entered the worldbeat realm with Jai Uttal's Footprints, a hauntingly tranquil CD that finds the student of Indian great Ali Akbar Khan combining Indian music with American pop. The largely instrumental Footprints isn't modern secular Indian pop, but rather, is best described as an early-'90s approach to traditional Indian spiritual music. Soulfully blending tradition and technology, Uttal lets loose on acoustic instruments like the dotar, the harmonium and katrals as well as electronic synthesizers. Uttal has inspired company in jazz trumpeter great Don Cherry (who is best known for his assocation with avant-garde innovator Ornette Coleman), vocalist Lakshimi Shankar, tabla player Daniel Paul Karp and bassist Jerry Watts.``
Jai Uttal Featuring Don Cherry & Laksmi Shankar – Footprints
Label: Triloka Records – 183-4
Format: Cassette
Country: US
Released: 1990
Genre: Electronic
Style: Future Jazz, Fusion, Indian Classical, Drone
Tracklist
A1 Footprints 0:00
A2 Caravan 3:55
A3 Andobar Island 8:33
A4 Raghupati 12:39
A5 Madzoub 23:05
B1 Pahari 29:46
B2 Snowview 35:47
B3 Taking The Dust 40:26
B4 Raghupati II 42:50
B5 Bus Has Come 46:27
When I first traveled to India I was overwhelmed by an incredible variety of experiences that had no context in my life up to that point. Foremost among these was a strange and unexpected sense of home coming: of being finally released from an exile I never knew existed. And second was the absolutely mind-blowing array of sounds-music everywhere, seemingly unrelated waves washing over me. Not the music of concert halls, rather the music of temples, the train stations, the dusty back alleys and the Himalayan peaks, voices uninhibited by training but schooled by years maybe lifetimes of reaching for the eternal. Since that time I've listened, studied absorbed and dreamed of mixing these sounds with the American music on which I was raised. Sarods with synths, tablas with drum machines, ancient passions with modern technology. This album is just a beginning, the posibilities are endless when worlds so different begin to touch. - Jai Uttal
Wherever the footprint is found, that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds - Ghalib
...Raghupati is a traditional Indian prayer which has in this modern electronic rendition been freely re-interpreted while at the same time keeping the traditional musical themes and words alive and vibrant...
