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This music by blind multi–instrumentalist (sitar, surbahar, dilruba and more) Shrivastav is ethereal and esoteric. With drummer Andy Williams from the UK rock band The Doves (and Linda Shanovitch on vocals for the tribute to Buddhist goddess Guan Yin), this is an album which attempts a great sweep (India to West Africa, Japan to the Pacific Islands).
To their great credit Shrivastav and Williams assimilate music [from the referenced cultures] in an engrossing way (the percussive Yemanja from West Africa, the lively tin whistles on Dance of Erzulie from Haiti, the brief and disconcerting Journey to Sedna from Inuit belief) which evoke the stories outlined in the excellent liner notes……….an ambitious project which has worked.
Graham Reid www.perceptivetravel.com, USA
Baluji Shrivastav is fast becoming something of a name in Indian classical music, based in large part on his recurring appearances throughout the U.K. and numerous recordings on ARC . Here, he takes an interesting idea — implementing the sitar in tandem with a number of other musical cultures in order to pay tribute to goddesses from Hinduism and beyond.
The opening track, to the mother goddess Parvati, is straightforward sitar music,
with a deep surbahar end reminiscent of Carnatic-
The Haitian Erzulie gets a much more tropical sound, with whistles and jangling percussion abundant but nary a stringed instrument to be heard…Shrivastav does interesting things musically, but never quite breaks away from Indian classical formats (which indeed he shouldn't). At the same time, instead of incorporating the instruments or ideals of the other cultures' musics, he tends to find something else altogether different, creating an odd third stream in the process
