Jazz was never meant to be monothematic — the nature of the genre is experimental and giving. In their freshman album, Raagaverse is taking advantage of this malleability by infusing classical Hindustani vocality with the improv and complexity of jazz to pave their own silky and microtonal rhythm.
Raagaverse is comprised of vocalist Shruti Ramani, bassist Jodi Proznick, keyboardist Noah Franche-Nolan and percussionist Nicholas Bracewell. The Indo-jazz fusion group released their first album Jaya, a tribute to Ramani’s mother, and celebrated it with family, friends and music-goers at the Fox Cabaret on May 9.
“It’s a full circle, this journey that we’ve been on,” Ramani said to the audience at a packed venue. “We’ve created something we’re really proud of that is precious to us.”
It only seemed natural for the Fox to be the chosen venue for the band to, as Ramani said, “cut the ribbon” on their LP. On the very same stage two years ago, the quartet performed for the first time together before the idea of Raagaverse was even conceived.
Raagaverse’s album release show only featured the quartet. But listeners of Jaya can expect a healthy sprinkling of string soundscapes. When Ramani first heard the string quartet they partnered with perform in the studio, she was moved to tears.
“I got goosebumps,” Ramani said. “I never thought I would ever have this opportunity to do something like this and have the money to do it and pay everyone well.”
Jaya’s curation was supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Back in October, Ramani performed with UBC Bands for their opening season show Tarot. Although she didn’t necessarily see herself returning to academia after completing her undergrad, she’ll be attending UBC this fall to begin graduate studies in ethnomusicology.
Growing up, Ramani trained in a style of Hindustani music developed thousands of years ago in the city of Agra. She also experimented a bit with contemporary Indian music in languages like Hindi and Tamil.
English is Ramani’s fifth language and she didn’t get into Western pop, classic rock or other English music until her teenage years — but she recalled how hearing jazz for the first time was a “profound, life-changing experience.”
“I heard Ella Fitzgerald singing a ballad … There was a whole string section behind her and I got goosebumps. I had tears in my eyes.”
Indian classical music centres melody and rhythm, with most pieces being a solo instrument or voice and some form of percussion. Jazz’s harmony and chords created a textural quality that instantly intrigued Ramani. She quit the classical music program she was in at the time and moved to Canada to study jazz at Capilano University.
Since then, her goal as a composer has been to marry the intricate melodies of Hindustani music with the improvisational nature and dense harmonies of jazz. For Ramani, the two balance each other out, resulting in the sound that is Raagaverse.
“When you look at jazz music, it's really not complete without improvisation,” Ramani explained. “[In Indian classical music], we improvise within the same scale for hours on end. But in jazz, you have so many different scales you can borrow from … there's the freedom in jazz.”
Hindustani music shares that same improvisational pull, but the rules of the scale that constitute the genre reels in the polyphonic and unexplored nature of jazz in a way that methodizes the soundscape into something “ethereal,” what Ramani described as taking “the best of both worlds.”
Ramani has worked with her mentor for over 15 years and is still learning. It was crucial to her to find fellow musicians that could approach this project with a sense of care and an open mind.
“Some of this music that Raagaverse plays is, again, thousands of years old, and from a tradition that is very protected and cherished and celebrated, and also, in some ways, worshipped. It's not just given out to everyone — the knowledge is only shared with people that show their dedication towards music, so it's quite protected.”
She found this support in Proznick, Franche-Nolan and Bracewell. The group’s personalities blend into a unique dynamic — a perfect balance, just like their music.
“We've never played the same tune in the same way,” Ramani said glowingly. “That in itself is magical, because we can rewrite the same story to sound different and feel different each time.”
Ramani and Proznick are frequent collaborators outside of Raagaverse — they recently toured together with the Ostara Project, a femme jazz supergroup composed of powerhouses like vocalist Laila Biali and saxophonist Allison Au, who Ramani named as two of her main musical inspirations at the moment.
“I love playing with women or femmes in general. There's a sense of safety musically and also on a human level. Playing with Jodi, I felt that warmth that I had been missing.”
Ramani also recognized Franche-Nolan as being one of the best keyboardists and composers she’s worked with, the two having a “chemistry, musically, that is unmatched,” that they plan to explore this summer.
The duo will be teaming up to record a jazz album this August. Until then, you can see them live, or buy Jaya now on Bandcamp — as Ramani put it jokingly at the show, this is how “you can support musicians the real way, which is to pay for their music.”
There was something special in the air that Thursday at the Fox. To our left, two friends donning black clothes sipped Heinekens and swayed to the low murmur of the ambient sound as vibrant saris of purple and pink swayed between the high top tables. To our right, the sound of a drink spilling on the ground as someone clumsily greeted friends, laughing and scrambling to mop up the mess with a bartender trailing behind with a dish towel.
You could feel the room exhale. People had let their guard down as soon as they walked in the door.
“It means a lot to us that you are here, you’re celebrating what this band is trying to do, what we’re trying to do together,” Ramani said while looking out to the crowd before the group’s last song of the night.
“[And celebrating] the kind of musical diversity in the landscape that is much needed that makes this whole Vancouver scene much more beautiful, and much more worth being around.”
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