Back in the late ’60s at the height of the psych era, there was quite a fad of trying to give traditional Indian music, particularly the one featuring sitar, a rock music background. While most of those had their charm, they often featured inexperienced sitar players who only learned the instrument just enough to produce some decent notes on it.
While the fad itself vanned, a number of experienced players who have lived with the instrument all their life, like Anoushka Shankar, have been able to combine both traditional Indian sitar music with Western musical genres with success making a good balance between the two.
One of the artists who have been able to do that recently is Vancouver-based sitarist and composer Mohamed Assani.
On Wayfinder, his latest album, Assani is able to fully combine his intricate sitar technique with more current electronic music, even EDM. Throughout the album, Assani goes anywhere his fancy can take him – from Indian/Pakistani Classical, Middle Eastern music, jazz, funk, Western harmony, ambient & electronic music, and elsewhere.
What makes his travels so successful is Assani’s ability to embrace and understand all these seemingly disparate sounds and combine them into something entirely coherent and listenable.
While his exquisite sitar playing is the driving force here, the electronic and other instrumentation supporting it does not just have a simple background role but are an integral part of the music, making Wayfinder a great and refreshing listening experience.
