Mahamaya Experience is a fluid sonic vehicle. It moves between musical traditions and progressive attitudes, between the sounds of Southeast Asia and any other geographic location it sets its sights on. Between the timely and the timeless, between sound and style. There is nowhere that it can not go.
And at the heart of it all is Ranjit Makkuni, and his dexterous and deft sitar playing, the engine room of the whole affair.
“What Will We Do If We Don’t Have Love” is difficult to categorize. Their music always is, but here, this blend of sounds and instrumentation is so unexpected and original that it takes some picking apart. The vocals, beats, and, of course, that mellifluous sitar mark it out as being the sound of the subcontinent, at least to begin with, but even then, those sounds are woven together in a progressive and adventurous way.
Through this, blasts of sassy Stax horns punctuate, and pulse, jazz moves are delivered via instruments your average jazzer wouldn’t recognize, and folk-rock vibes keep the momentum going. And through it all, the sitar, here proving that the guitar has some serious competition as a lead instrument, is king.
It is a heady blend—ornate, adventurous, grand and graceful, elegant and eloquent. Mahamaya Experience creates a new form of world music, world music that is the sum total of cultures and countries, genres, geography, sound, and style. Global music, indeed.
mahamayaexperience.bandcamp.com
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