Edito de RishteThe origins of Rishte Blues promoter Gary Nesbitt first came across the ?beautiful, angelic? voice of Najma Akhtar while touring a review of legendary blues performers from San Francisco, so it might be said that the blues were in on this project right from the beginning. This was in 1989 but it wasn?t until 2006 that Gary Nesbitt and Najma finally met. They discussed his idea for a project linking Indian music and the blues, and after Najma?s return to the UK he began to cast around for a suitable collaborator. He?d been listening to Gary Lucas?s work with Jeff Buckley and in particular their album Songs to No One. ?I listened again to Gary?s and Jeff Buckley?s?very hip interpretation of Edith Piaf?s Hymne à l'Amour. The track features Gary?s amazing guitar wizardry, using his electronics, while Jeff improvised Piaf?s lyrics. It was at that moment I heard Najma?s voice with Gary?s guitar coming together.? Najma was familiar with and loved Gary Lucas?s work with Buckley. Gary L turned out to be a big fan of Najma?s and expressed a keen interest in working with her. About two months after the initial hookup, in the spring of 2006, Gary L had a gig in London at the Luminaire Club on Kilburn High Road. He invited Najma to the club, where she joined him on stage for an impromptu jam. A few months later she went to New York and they recorded a four song demo together. Everything clicked, the tracks were amazing. It was then that everyone involved knew something very magical was happening. The project absolutely had to continue, and over the next several months Najma returned twice to the States to record the remaining seven songs of what would become Rishte. The music of Rishte When Najma met Gary there was no plan. Gary produced the music (including some songs originally written for Jeff Buckley) and Najma contributed the words (mostly in Urdu) and the melodies, and in the process a beautiful and curious transformation has occurred. There is blues in the mix - in particular the eerie revival of the Skip James classic Special Rider Blues - and there?s Indian music too, as expected (both Daaya and Parda are based on Ghazal styles). Out of this chrysalis of expectation has burst a butterfly whose wings drip psychedelic jewels; a dark and heady funk and fey folk evocations jostle in the powerful title track and a powerful pop sensibility underpins everything. It would be easy to apply simplistic marketing jargon to the music of Rishte: Indo-Blues fusion, east-meets-west and the like. But this is to misunderstand the alchemy that occurred when Najma met Gary - a rare confluence of interests, talents and cosmic synchronicities that have produced an album which is truly more than the sum of its parts: a unique and pungent symbiosis. Lire la suite