The first strains of the kora waft in, carrying the playful melody of the guitar, underscored by the rhythmic tabla—this is Mamalangsingh, the first track from Djan Djan, a collaborative album between Mamadou Diabate, Jeff Lang and Bobby Singh.The album recently won an ARIA award for Best World Music Album.
Djan Djan, which means ‘far away, far away’ in Malian, is far from your average fusion album that simply creates a mish mash of rhythm and melody from different traditions. The music in this album is comfortingly familiar, and yet refreshingly original. Each track is a complex weaving together of the individual artist’ styles, yet the melodies remain simple enough to be hummed long after the album has finished playing. Focusing on no particular theme, Djan Djan is a conversation between three accomplished musicians, and listeners are privy to the wondrous outcome.
Meeting serendipitously at music festivals, the trio began this conversation with an improvised jamming session at the Brunswick Music Festival in Melbourne in 2008. They were in a studio the following morning, recording what have come to be the first five tracks of the album.
“We went into the studio thinking that we understand each other, and like each other, so let’s record together and see what happens with it,” says Singh. “With our kind of music, it is just a conversation. There is no story, you just play music and it either sounds good, or it doesn’t.”
The trio’s recordings sounded good enough for the ABC to commission them for an entire album on the basis of those five tracks. An Australian tour followed, where the three played and improvised upon the older tracks, while also creating new ones. “We all come from an improvisation background,” says Singh. “After the tour we said, that was good fun, so let’s record it (the full album).”
Singh’s tabla takes on a unique guise in this album that does not situate itself in the Indian fusion milieu. Rather, most of the songs are written by Diabete and the tabla flows in harmoniously. “The tabla does lend itself… tabla is rhythm and can fit into a lot of things. I see such projects as an opportunity to learn about others’ rhythms,” says Singh who has worked with global musical traditions ranging from Spanish to Jazz to Balkan and German.
“We play the most complex rhythms in the world on the tabla, but just because other traditions don’t, it doesn’t mean that their music is any lesser. My guru taught me to respect every musical tradition in the world,” says Singh who is a disciple of the renowned tabla player Aneesh Pradhan, and visits India regularly to continue his learning and to perform.
“The amount of fusion that Indian classical musicians are doing now is amazing. When I went (to India) 10 years ago and said I was playing tabla with flamenco music, the reaction I would get is, ‘but that isn’t classical’,” he says. “Some musicians of the older generation still don’t accept it, which is fine. But Zakirji (Hussain) is like ‘It’s Rock? Bring it on. It’s pop? Let’s try it.’ Because of him and his celebrity status, he has made it a lot more acceptable.”
With such little scope for classical Indian music when Singh started off in Australia 10 years ago, he had no choice but to make more fusion music at the time. Ironically, it is his fusion music that has led to an increasing interest in his classical performances. “They see my fusion show and then get interested, so they check out what else I am doing.” Singh runs pure classical baithak style sessions twice a month. “In fusion you cannot see the whole language of the table. If you want to see what the tabla can really do, you need to hear Indian classical music.”
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