Indian ghazal and modern electronica
– Percussionist Sebastian Åberg breaks new ground
New release from the Country & Eastern label unites two
musical extremes
Sebastian Åberg has been combining tabla studies in India with
drumming on club scenes in Sweden and England during the last ten
years. Two seemingly different worlds that now has merged on his
debut album. ” I know that I’ve found the perfect combination of
modern electronica and Indian art music”, he says.
The first close contact with Indian music took place in 1998 for Sebastian Åberg, who earlier had
been occupied mostly with rock and synth music behind the drums. He went to Panjim on the
south Indian west coast to study tabla for the master Maruti Kurdekar.
- I stayed for a year and during that time the idea of finding new types of meetings between
classical Indian music and more modern western influences began to take shape, he explains.
The studies at Kala Academy gave Sebastian Åberg an opportunity to do an in-depth study of the
strict rules as well as the poetic freedom of classical Indian music - and his love for the complex
and dynamic tabla grew strong. So strong that he two years later returned to India with recording
equipment as only luggage.
- I stayed for six months. During some intensive weeks, I recorded with local musicians. I used
some basic ideas that I had prepared in Sweden for structure and inspiration.
The Sangeet Project was thereby established.
The first meeting
Since then, a lot has happened. Intensive studio work with production and additional recordings
with Swedish musicians - on lapsteel and Turkish doudouk to name a few examples - has finally
ended in seven tracks that Sebastian describes as music that preserves the traditional magic and
structure of the raga, but with ”heavier beats and a more suggestive, electronic feeling”.
- Two things have been important for me during this process. First – that the origin, the raga, is
handled with esteem. Secondly – that the musical meeting between east and west actually
enhances the musical expression, more than becoming a gimmick.
At the end of September it’s time for Sebastian Åberg to prove his case. Two Indian musicians of
world class, Maruti Kurdekar on tabla and the singer Pradip Sarmokadam, will then arrive in
Stockholm to join forces with the Swedish musicians for the first time. The premiere live
appearance at “Country & Eastern Nights” is scheduled for September 27th at the Ethnographic
museum in Stockholm.
That’s of course completely fantastic, Sebastian says smiling. I hope, and believe, that both the
album and the concert also will show that it’s possible to create music that appeals to specialists
on both edges as well as the modern people that stands in between.
Sebastian Aberg