The Alaya Venture jazzes up conventional South Indian music

The Alaya Venture band members wish to joke that they’re a Beatles cowl band.

The primary time Rohan Krishnamurthy, Prasant Radhakrishnan and Colin Hogan carried out because the Alaya Venture was in 2017 for a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Beatles’ 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band” on the UC Theatre in Berkeley.

However 5 years later, the East Bay trio are now not masking the Beatles and have produced 9 unique songs that make up their self-titled debut album, launched Aug. 15.

The Ayala Venture’s sound is a mixture of jazz, funk and Carnatic percussion, a classical South Indian sound that focuses on vocals, with devices mimicking the human voice through a mix of percussion, accordion and saxophone. Radhakrishnan’s saxophone floats over rhythmic Carnatic percussions by Krishnamurthy, as Hogan’s light piano performs.

The mixture shouldn’t work, and but it does.

Now, all through the month and into November, the Alaya Venture plans to take its distinctive sound to 4 Bay Space libraries of their celebrations of Diwali, the Hindu pageant of sunshine, which this 12 months falls on Monday, Oct. 24. The band additionally plans to carry out at just a few San Francisco venues, together with the Black Cat jazz membership within the Tenderloin on Nov. 13, earlier than heading out on a cross-country tour.

“It’s by no means actually been about making an attempt to mix these (genres),” Radhakrishnan mentioned, however “I began to listen to sure melodies and sure textures of sound, sure harmonies.”

The Alaya Venture’s distinct sound is elevated by Krishnamurthy’s hybrid drum equipment, which provides a South Indian mridanga drum to a basic equipment. Krishnamurthy mentioned the concept behind the hybrid drum equipment was born from his time on the California Jazz Conservatory, studying from longtime drummer instructor Alan Corridor.

“As I used to be forming the sound of the Alaya Venture increasingly, I noticed I wanted this mixed hybrid sound that takes us into the jazz house to the funk house, the Carnatic house, and combines them in new methods,” he defined.

Whereas the band’s jazz components usually change the vocals that normally accompany Carnatic percussion, vocals are nonetheless intrinsic to Carnatic music. To that finish, they often carry out with San Jose vocalist Roopa Mahadevan. She mentioned the group trusts the music “to talk for itself and be genuine.”

“And there’s a circulation there,” she added. “So, my purpose is simply to see how voice can work with that or problem it or simply play and interact with that sort of soundscape.”

In america, the band notes, there aren’t many South Asian classical artists, not to mention these concerned within the Carnatic custom, so that they really feel a very robust connection to 1 one other.

Krishnamurthy and Radhakrishnan met in center faculty in Michigan and began jamming collectively. But it surely wasn’t till they moved to the Bay Space that they lastly got here collectively musically for the Alaya Venture in 2013.

A couple of years later, they reached out to Hogan, an completed multi-instrumentalist in Oakland, asking if he would play accordion on the Beatles anniversary present. Whereas Hogan is the one non-South Asian member of the group, he gained expertise in performing Indian music genres as a baby rising up in San Francisco.

“He was uncovered to loads of South Asian and African rhythmic traditions proper from childhood,” Krishnamurthy mentioned. “His dad truly is a tabla participant as nicely, so he was at all times sort of in tune with (that tradition), and he’s additionally only a phenomenal musician.”

Their friendship with Hogan shortly grew as they performed music collectively.

“All of us actually get pleasure from being collectively,” Radhakrishnan mentioned, “and the music feels very pure.”

They might by no means get as massive because the Beatles, however the Alaya Venture members say their actual purpose is to point out audiences how South Asian music can combine with different kinds and may join with music lovers nicely past the Indian group.

“We sort of have a accountability right here,” Krishnamurthy mentioned. “We’re representing this custom that goes again centuries.”

The Alaya Venture: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24. Free. San Carlos Library, 610 Elm St., San Carlos; 6:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25. Free. Millbrae Library, 1 Library Ave., Millbrae; 6:30-8:30 p.m. Nov. 13. $25-$35. Black Cat, 400 Eddy St., S.F. www.rohanrhythm.com

Correction: An earlier model of this story misstated the area of India whose music the trio performs. It’s South India.