5/7/2009 - Former AFSer composes "a harmonious concoction"
One sound All the artistes try to stay true to their language and yet sound like one in this project
Wanny Angerer is an AFS Returnee regularly featured in AFS News for her amazing contributions to music and education all throughout the world. Wanny and her band were recently featured in the international press below.
By SHAILAJA TRIPATHI for
The Hindu
In Latin American countries, you would not find a single person left untouched by the magic of Bolero music — soulful ballads on the universal theme of love. “A lover would hire Mariachi — Mexican street musicians — in the night,” says Latin Jazz singer Wanayran Angerer who hails from the Honduras. Though the talented singer has often given a taste of this niche genre through her performances, this time around, Wanny, as she is popularly known, is all set to drench us in love with the romantic ballads blending in the Hindustani classical music.
Ecelectic flavours
Wanny, in collaboration with Mohit Lal on the tabla, Suchet Malhotra on a number of world percussions, Svetlana Radashkevich on the piano, Rajesh Prasanna on the flute and vocalist Sandeep Shrivastava, is working on the CD “Bolero Namaskar.” The album has 11 Bolero tracks combining Latin Jazz and Indian classical music flavours. “I want to tell people that love can be expressed in any language and style. There are African drums called djembe and Peruvian Cajon, besides bongo, piano, flute and tabla. In the track ‘Nosotros’ which means us, Sandeep starts off with alap, I go into the melody followed by a little solo by Sandeep again and in the end we both come together,” explains Wanny. One of the most famous Bolero numbers, “Besame mucho”, also features in the album. The classic is said to be written in 1941 by a 15-year-old Mexican girl. “In this song, Wanny sings in her style and I play the theka trying to match it with her,” says Mohit.
Bolero is soft romantic music which originated around the end of the 19th Century in Cuba, from where it travelled to other Latin American cities and is associated with both song and dance. Wanny clarifies that none of the styles has been altered in this project. “Everything is being done the way it is supposed to be. This is not fusion but collaboration. The common link between Latin Jazz and Hindustani classical music is the scope of improvisation. One single note in Hindustani music can take you anywhere provided the foundation of your knowledge is strong. For me, Hindustani classical has turned out to be the biggest school of music,” says Wanny. Married to Roland Angerer, country director, Plan International (India), Wanny, who came to India three years ago, says she knew that she would work with Indian classical music and therefore learnt Kathak for some time from Gandharva Mahavidyalaya to get a sense of rhythmic structure in Hindustani music.
Three members of this collaboration — Suchet, Svetlana and Wanny —also travel around the world with an even more exhaustive repertoire. Besides Latin Jazz, Bossa Nova and romantic ballads, the trio also belts out invocations in the Honduras’ tribal language Garifuna and in Yoruba spoken by the people of Yoruba religion in Cuba.
See the original article here
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