Spectreview: Sarathy Korwar – More Arriving

-PEARL-

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“Smugger, hooker, teaboy, mistress
Temporary, people, ephemeral, people
Illegal, people, gone, people
Deported, left, more…arriving.”

Over the last few years, London has become a bastion for forward-thinking artists like Alfa Mist and Yussef Kamaal to personalize their interpretations of jazz with their own cultural histories. Sarathy Korwar is no exception: his exquisite debut album, 2016’s Day to Day, organically blended Indian folk music and jazz together into a product that felt genuinely novel, even if the end result was an album that used Indian folk as a vital spice rather than the main ingredient. Now that the UK has turned regrettably towards the xenophobia plaguing other Western countries, Korwar seems to have found a new raison d’être. More Arriving is unapologetically political without being heavy-handed, building its power from biting satire and coolness rather than overt outrage. The focus shifts to percussion, dance rhythms and traditional melismatic vocal performances that place Korwar’s Indian heritage on powerful display, and the result is his deepest, most engrossing album yet.

In a first for his projects, Korwar employs several spoken-word poets and MCs from across India, South Asia and the Middle East to state, explicitly, what his music has only inferred. On “Bol,” Pakistani-raised Zia Ahmed deadpans what he is (i.e. what he is not) in the eyes of the ignorant Englishman over menacing horns and a lithe dance beat. It’s darkly funny, but it’s also a frank expression of stereotyping that’s tragic in its accuracy, and the music swells and recedes in ways that underline the anger and frustration buried in Ahmed’s words. Tonal variations abound, from the claustrophobic, humid 7/8 workout of defining opener “Mumbay” all the way to Deepak Unnikrishnan’s bone-chilling, mic-drop monologue on closer “Pravasis,” and Korwar smartly pairs his compositions to their spirit (or is it the other way around?) as his signature style grows stronger and more refined. Whereas previous works evoked the congested streets of Mumbai, More Arriving feels like a complete immersion, an aggressive dive into the friction of cultural identity that’s positively incendiary. “Mango’s” melange of multi-tonal steely percussion provides a fitting bed for Zia Ahmed’s words on appropriation, while “City of Words’s” 12-minutes are elegantly ponderous, as searching sax solos and ambient vocals paint a paranoid, melancholy portrait of multiple dimensions. Korwar is certainly angry at the West, but More Arriving feels less like an excoriation and more like a reserved airing of grievances, a weary expression of disappointment that simultaneously revels in the inherent, proof-positive beauty in his constantly-maligned heritage. On top of that though, it’s simply an astounding piece of music, paced superbly and performed exquisitely by everyone involved: it feels like a definitive statement by a jazz artist with a unique outlook, and shouldn’t be overlooked by anyone with a passing interest in the field.

Highly recommended for rising heat.