A vivid
self-portrait in mosaic form, Kavita Shah's Visions (available May 27 on Greg
Osby's Inner Circle Music) heralds the arrival of a strikingly original,
globally minded new voice. The gifted vocalist/composer brings together a rich
variety of musical, cultural, and personal influences into a formidable debut
album that combines a jazz quintet with Indian tablas and the West African
kora.
Visions
interweaves Shah's multicultural background (she's a native New Yorker of
Indian descent fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French) with her wide-ranging
musical tastes (reared on 90s hip-hop, Afro-Cuban music, and bossa nova, she
studied jazz voice and classical piano) and her fascination with
ethnomusicology (which she studied at Harvard). The album was co-produced by
the renowned Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke, a kindred spirit who shares
the singer's cohesive view of a multi-hued musical experience.
"My
experience of diaspora has not exactly been linear, but more like a
kaleidoscope. So musically, I wanted to bring together different elements that
I love, and combine them in a way that may be surprising to others but makes
sense to me," Shah says. "We have one sound," adds Loueke.
"You listen to the album from the beginning to the end, and even if the
textures are different, it has a unity."
Shah's
own cultural heritage pointed to some unexpected directions. Her paternal
grandfather moved from Mumbai to New York in the 1940s, a full generation
before immigration from South Asia became common. After witnessing the birth of
the United Nations, he returned to India as the first publisher to bring
American books to the country, and Shah's father later retraced his path to New
York to attend college. Shah's mother was one of 13 children, born to a father
who insisted on educating his daughters rather than simply marrying them off;
music, seen as a distraction, was forbidden.
"I
didn't grow up in a traditional household," Shah recalls. "My parents
wanted to expose me to music, an opportunity they didn't have growing up, but
not just to Hindi film songs or Indian classical music. They immigrated to New
York in the 1970s, so there was a lot of pop in the house: The Beatles, Michael
Jackson, Frank Sinatra." Both sides of that early musical diversity are
represented on Visions: Shah sings Joni Mitchell's "Little Green" and
Stevie Wonder's "Visions," while one of her first collaborators on
the project was tabla player Stephen Cellucci. The two met while working on
tabla virtuoso Samir Chatterjee's project "Rabi Thakur."
Fourteen
musicians from around the world ultimately contributed to breathing life into
Shah's Visions, including keyboardist Stephen Newcomb, guitarist Michael
Valeanu, bassist Linda Oh, drummer Guilhem Flouzat, percussionist Rogério
Boccato, and a string quartet conducted by Miho Hazama. The album follows an
engaging narrative sweep, tracing the cycle of a day or, from a more melancholy
angle, stages of grief (Shah's father died when she was 18). But through Shah's
restless searching, it possesses a geographic as well as emotional sweep, made
cohesive by her singular, prodigiously confident vision.
"I
haven't been so excited about a project like this in a long time," states
Loueke. "Kavita is a real, true musician. She's a great singer, but the
way she writes music, she's not really thinking just about the voice. It sounds
like she could be a horn player, a saxophone player."
Shah
spent her childhood with the radio dial parked on HOT 97, New York's leading
hip-hop station, which is echoed in her tabla-driven cover of British rapper
M.I.A's hit "Paper Planes." Perhaps her most formative musical
experience came at the age of 10 when she joined the Young People's Chorus of
New York City, an award-winning youth chorus with whom she regularly performed
in more than 15 languages in venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
It was
in the YPC where Shah was first exposed to jazz, and it stuck. "We sang
everything from standards to opera to pop to folk music to contemporary pieces
by major composers like Meredith Monk," Shah recalls. "For me, that
all these types of music could co-exist was quite normal, and in a way, I've
been trying to replicate that experience ever since."
Shah
majored in Latin American Studies at Harvard, living abroad in Peru and then
Brazil, where she conducted research on Afro-Brazilian music in a Bahian
favela. That period is reflected in her rhythmically intoxicating duo with
Lionel Loueke on Edil Pacheco/P. C. Pinheiro's "Oju Oba" as well as
in her own composition "Moray" (winner of ASCAP's Young Jazz
Composers Award), named for an Incan archeological site and inspired by Pablo
Neruda's epic poem "Las Alturas de Macchu Picchu."
After
college, Shah found herself working day jobs at nonprofits like Human Rights
Watch until she received advice from an unexpected, brassy guardian angel:
legendary vocalist Sheila Jordan. "I was on my way to work when the subway
doors opened," Shah recalls, "and there was Sheila Jordan in front of
me. At that time, I didn't have a mentor in jazz and I was a little lost. In 15
minutes on the train, Sheila basically gave me all of her mantras for life -
she took me in and really encouraged me."
With
Jordan's support, Shah went on to receive her Masters in Jazz Voice from
Manhattan School of Music while studying privately with Theo Bleckmann, Peter
Eldridge, Steve Wilson, and Jim McNeely. Wilson's supple reed playing is
featured on three tracks on Visions, while McNeely proved instrumental in
nurturing Shah's innovative arrangements. While at MSM, Shah was named by
DownBeat as Best Graduate Jazz Vocalist, and she has since become an active
member of New York's thriving jazz community, performing regularly at such
venues as Cornelia Street Café, Bar Next Door, 55 Bar, Shapeshifter Lab,
Kitano, and Minton's Playhouse.
The
final piece of the Visions puzzle fell into place from passion rather than
experience. Shah's love for the music of master Malian musicians like Ali Farka
Touré and Toumani Diabaté inspired her to call kora player Yacouba Sissoko, who
eagerly responded to the challenge of her musical mélange.
"It
is so against who I am to pick just one style of music," Shah says.
"Being a global citizen in the 21st century means having a somewhat
disjointed life - scattered memories, connections, and experiences that can be
enriching but also isolating. Visions is my small universe of all the parts
that make me whole."
Shah had
never met Lionel Loueke when she called on him to co-produce the album, but she
recognized a fellow traveler in his own globetrotting sonic
collage."Lionel went above and beyond as a co-producer. He and I share the
same vision for how we approach music, so I think there was an automatic trust,
respect, and appreciation there. He has a really beautiful spirit and we formed
a special relationship; he's been incredibly generous and supportive of my
music."
"I
see myself as a cultural interlocutor. A singer can play an almost mystical
role, connecting these different elements on stage with an audience through the
human voice, through words. With the Visions project, it's amazing to see the
Joni Mitchell fan who has never before seen a kora standing next to the
hardcore jazz fan who would not expect to hear tablas on a Wayne Shorter tune.
I hope that people find something familiar in the music that draws them in, but
then discover something new that might change, even for a second, how they see
the world."
Upcoming
Kavita Shah Performances:
* April
8 / Jazz Museum of Harlem / New York, NY
April 18
/ Philadelphia Museum of Art / Philadelphia, PA
** May
27 / Joe's Pub / New York, NY
June 13
/ Sunside / Paris, France
July 6 /
JazzSchool / Berkeley, CA
July 26
/ Children's Museum of Manhattan / New York, NY
*
International Jazz Conversation Series
** with
special guest Lionel Loueke
Kavita
Shah · Visions · Release Date: May 27, 2014
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