Finding out about international acts\nperforming live in Malaysia can be a bit like playing with the lottery: you\nnever know what to expect. There are the popular, well-advertised stadium\nshows, like the Pussycat Dolls and INXS, of course — but more interesting are\nthe smaller shows, promoted through word of mouth at far more intimate venues.\nAnd while the jazz scene frequently throws out these overseas gems, it’s rare\nthat we see any genuine stars from the sphere of world music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prem Joshua, a German disciple of famed\nsitar proponent Ustad Usman Khan, has, to date, released more than a dozen\nalbums fusing the music of East and West; sales for these have made him the\nnumber one best-selling world music artist in India — odd, that Indian\nclassical music should be classed as world music in India. Anyway, this is a\nmoot point: given the reception Joshua received from the several-hundred-strong\ncrowd assembled at the Petaling Jaya Civic Hall auditorium on October 11, 2006,\nhe obviously has a strong and loyal following here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prem<\/em>, a\ncollaborative performance with the talents of the Temple of Fine Arts’ Jyotsna\nPrakash, Prakash Kandasamy and Kumar Karthigesu, was part of that foundation’s\nfund-raising efforts in building a new five-storey ‘Sanctuary of the Arts’ —\nas such, the night of music began with a 15-minute Powerpoint presentation,\nwith requests for participation in a charity raffle. Strange, of course, but\nit’s all for a good cause — and judging by the crowd, TFA was already speaking\nto the converted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fusion Mysticism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s easy to scoff at Westerners who\nwhole-heartedly embrace European mysticism — and the smattering of middle-aged\nEuropeans in saris amongst the audience that night testified to this difficulty\n— so when the curtains rolled back to reveal Joshua (or Prem — he reveals\nthat his assumed name is Hindi for love) on a raised platform it was somewhat\nunsurprising to find he looked like a more grizzled and relaxed version of\nRichard Branson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in spite of the New Age\nhippie-speak coming from his lips, there was something genuinely grounded and\nlikeable about Joshua, not least in his down-to-earth humour and very natural\ninteraction with the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joshua’s opening number set out the\nevening’s agenda: tabla, flute, piano, sitars — and mysterious beats from\nfellow German collaborator Chintan ‘Digital Dervish’ Relenberg at the far end\nof the stage. While the instrumentation, rhythms and lyrical chants of Joshua’s\nmusic are largely sourced from the Indian subcontinent, Prem<\/em>‘s melodies definitely hail from a more Western perspective,\nwith a jazzy approach to key signatures and tempos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The night’s opener, with Jyotsna’s\npiano and Chintan’s keyboard as a driving force, brought to mind the sort of\nfusion that artists like Ananda Shankar were making in the late 1960s, on the\nAmerican West Coast, taking motifs from Indian ragas but spinning them round to\nthe palates of the (then) subculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After this two-song section, Joshua performed the opening track of his latest album, Ahir<\/em>, a smooth piece entitled ‘Namaskar’ — which he explained comes from a reference to the Sufi mystic Hafiz: “The subject tonight is love.” With a similar ingredient mix to the previous material, it was left to a layer of programmed beats to elevate the track into a very pleasant, Cafe Del Mar \/ Ibiza-like slice of ambient pop, with the piano again bleeding in some much needed jazz edginess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was at this point in Prem<\/em> that one of the most sublime\nmoments in Prem<\/em>, for me, occurred. A\nsingle red petal floated down from the roof of the stage, above the performers’\nheads, picked up by stage lights. Whether intentional or accidental — and I\ndon’t think it was something that most of the audience picked up on — that\nlittle bit of drama added a subtle piece of theatre to the performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping It Cool<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Joshua is a master of between-song\nbanter: sitars need careful tuning every so often, and at one point he casually\nmentioned that he was once told he didn’t play as good as Ravi Shankar.\n“But,” said the critic, “You tune faster.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the band largely seated\nalongside Joshua onstage, it was down to interaction between the players to\ngenerate much of the show’s tension. This was hardly lacking: it was clear that\nJoshua and Relenberg enjoyed their interaction with the players, part of the\nTFA’s Inner Space sub-troupe all — especially during Prakash’s driving tabla\nsequence, and the solo sitar duels between Joshua and Kumar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this writer is no expert, it\nseems clear that Joshua is a virtuoso of classical Indian instruments,\neffortlessly switching between flute and sitar amid-piece, often cradling the\nlatter as he gently played with the former. Less convincing were his soprano\nsax parts — not because of any lack of technical skill on Joshua’s part; just\nthat, at a fusion performance such as this, it is an instrument that reminds us\ntoo much of Kenny G.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One criticism of Prem<\/em> may be in the seamlessness of the\nshow. While it’s fantastic to be able to transition seamlessly from one track\nto the next, this does suggest a certain monotone similarity — we were only\nreally sure of how many tracks we’ve heard at the end of a section when Prem\nstopped and let us know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that’s what bothers the most\nabout the evening spent with Prem Joshua: there’s just not enough edge, not\nenough danger. Everything was a little too smooth. While we applaud the way he\nhas embraced concepts like peace and tranquillity, audiences need something\nmore exciting in a live show: we want something that stands up and assaults us\n— more like that frequently supplied by the Malaysian Dhol Foundation, in\nfact; several of whose members of were in that night’s crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prem Joshua is a great musician, and\nhe and Relenberg have crafted some great Buddha Bar style tracks — and a\npotential anthem, in the form of the celebratory ‘Funky Guru’: “Many of us\nneed gurus,” said Joshua by way of introduction, “But don’t find a\nguru that is boring, find a guru that is fun.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fun, indeed — it featured a comical\nvoice-percussion sequence courtesy of Prakash, mimicking the tone of a sagely\nmaharishi. This penultimate piece had audiences itching to get out of their\nseats and start dancing. It was the kind of high-spirited energy that Prem<\/em>, as a live performance, required;\nand Joshua, as a performer, clearly possessed — it just took time to shake it\nout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Matt Armitage has been in Malaysia for seven years and is an avid fan of live music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 24.10.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finding out about international acts performing live in Malaysia can be a bit like playing with the lottery: you never know what to expect. There are the popular, well-advertised stadium shows, like the Pussycat Dolls and INXS, of course — but more interesting are the smaller shows, promoted through word of mouth at far more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3537,3569],"tags":[268,924,568,3942,3943,40,3944,3202,3941,49,566,3945,3947],"language":[7523],"writer":[7709],"class_list":["post-27543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-music-2","category-review","tag-classical","tag-concert","tag-indian","tag-jyotsna-prakash","tag-kumar-karthigesu","tag-music","tag-petaling-jaya-civic-hall","tag-prakash-kandasamy","tag-prem-joshua","tag-review","tag-temple-of-fine-arts","tag-ustad-usman-khan","tag-world-music","language-english","writer-matt-armitage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39143,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27543\/revisions\/39143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27543"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27543"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}