A jazzy fusion of musical traditions in Chennai

One principle is unfailingly shared by any stimulating musical fusion and a compatible marriage. The things the partners do not understand about each other — and maybe, even secretly hate about each other — are the ones that are dotingly wheeled into centre stage. Drawing an inference from that, the measure of a winsome fusion act is the essential unlikelihood of it. It does not end there: The adhesive effect — one that holds it all together — derives from an enthusiastic willingness to display that “unlikelihood-ness” in the most flattering light and angle.

If you parse Paris-based Eclectik Percussion Orchestra’s music, it might seem three parts western with just a poky little space left for an Indian element. However, if one goes beyond the sounds and drill down to the spirit of their jazz-based fusion music, the contrasting features that lend the group its allure come through. The instruments they use and the sounds they generate in fact militate against pigeonholing them into narrow categories of “occidental” and “oriental”, which however one may still resort to, for want for more accurate descriptors.

When EPO performed at the Alliance Francaise of Madras auditorium as the inaugural act of the Madras Jazz Festival (organised by Exodus; Alliance Francaise is one of the sponsors of this year’s edition), time and again, each part was given sufficient time for unhindered, free play before being sucked into the larger fusion (which had a haunting quality to it). This approach was most pronounced when the performance reached the last leg, as if to impress upon an audience about to return to the routines of living, the larger philosophy of acceptance.

What are these parts anyway?

Starting with the essence, the music is built around a stubbornly oriental theme. Called “Le Grand Voyage”, it presents the soul’s journey towards the universal spirit, as it pushes forward against the headwinds of ego, doubtfulness and “this-worldiness”.

How this essentially oriental spiritual theme is woven into an essentially western music form is what gives the fusion its gilt edge.

With the theme in the spotlight, the three-parts western and one-part Indian takes an unceremonious tumble like pins in a bowling alley. The Indian element comes powerfully from flautist Rishabh Prasanna.

After the concert, Rishab remarks to this writer that while performing in India, the flute is what people might notice upfront, and would even give themselves to the mistaken belief that the fusion act is built around it. While performing n the West, the saxaphone-clarinet arrangement and the percussion might seem the dominant elements to the audience.

Rishab notes the fusion act is more enigmatic than it might sound to the superficial ear, with each sound around the other, as closely-knit as clothes.

Before the concert, when this writer met the quartet backstage, a curious question ballooned into the air.

Does their music incorporate something of a frontman concept? A flat ‘no’ was the answer, the four almost offering it in unison.

Rishab came up with a light-hearted quip. “If one of us goes to the front, the others pull him back.”

Nicolas Gégout plays the saxophone and the bass clarinet. For the saxophone arrangement, Nicolas was whistling between a soprano and a tenor saxophone.

A closer peek into the quartet’s tools would reveal EPO’s range to be varied that it is at first sound.

Guy Constant on percussion — who comes within a hair’s breadth of being the frontman, and is the one on stage explaining the spirituality being conveyed by the music — has tools that particularly underline this facet of EPO’s music

Guy — who is fondly called “saint” as he is something of a spiritual seeker, his searches largely anchored in India — notes he experiments with a lot of music traditions.

The percussion sounds he produces are not always from standard instruments. He coaxes them out of unlikely objects, including bowls and katoris, which he picked up in India. The top portions of church bells — which he bought at Jura in France — also contribute to his galaxy of sounds. A Daf from West Asia; caxixi, popular in Africa and South America, ghungroo from India, and a cajon complete the picture of cosmopolitanism and innovation.

The quartet had to leave some instruments behind, and their presence would have further enhanced EPO’s acceptance of far-ranging musical inputs.

Yragaël Unfer, who was on the Claviers percussion, could not fit a marimba into his briefcase, and produced his arresting ting-tongs with his regular synthesiser-oriented percussion instrument. One just wonders how the marimba with its deeper resonance would have moulded EPO’s jazz fusion act.