One of the great things about Mahamaya Experience—well, just one of the many great things—is that the music made under that name seems to wander between worlds, the past and present, the then and the now, brilliantly. 2 Prayers is a brilliant example of this deft multi-dimensional footwork in action.
Mahamaya Experience makes music that is very much in the here and now but can just as easily craft sounds that look to the future as easily as they can echo the past. Here, with 2 Prayers we find a bridge being built between the earliest times and today, (and due to the cyclical nature of music, history, thought…well, everything really, the future too), and the music echoes the thoughts and ideas found in The Upanishads, those ancient teachings that represent possibly humanity’s earliest philosophical expressions through poetry, story and meditations.
We start with Ranjit Makkuni’s florid and fabulous sitar solo, a blur of dexterous notes and deft playing, as always wondrous to behold, a short, sharp, shockingly brilliant blend of seemingly impossible runs and unmatched musical agility.
The section titled May All Be Freed From Danger makes itself known in a very different way. A vocal-led and more delicate and drifting piece, a crystalline voice against an ebb and flow of gently chiming percussive sounds, shards of glass-like sonics and shimmering bell sounds, it is the calm oasis, a jazz-infused place of refuge built of plucked lutes and sitars after the brilliant buzz and bustle of what has gone before.
Mahamaya Experience understands the vital role of sound and its ever-changing nature. Inspiration may come from these ancient writings, these first codifications of the human condition, but that wisdom has passed first from thought to oral form and from that vocal teaching to the inflexible written word. So why shouldn’t the message, or at least the feelings and emotions trapped within it, find an outlet through music, too? And if it is to do that, who better to use it as a conduit than Ranjit Makkuni and Mahamaya Experience?
For more information about the music and the inspiration behind it, go HERE
Discover more from Dancing About Architecture
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
[…] might expect from the sound of the subcontinent. But that is what is so great about the music that Mahamaya Experience makes; it is entirely unburdened with the expectations of the audience and is instead focused only […]