RAGMALA - A GARLAND OF RAGAS by BROOKLYN RAGA MASSIVE

World music pioneer Adam Rudolph and his groundbreaking Go: Organic Orchestra join forces with Brooklyn Raga Massive to create monumental new album

3LP 130 gram Classic Black vinyl LP (cut and pressed by Leandro Gonzalez at Stereodisk) packaged in a full color swinging gatefold jacket with artwork by Nancy Jackson

The members of the adventurous BRM collective are deeply steeped in the traditions of Indian classical music. They refuse, however, to be restricted by it; the idea behind the collective, birthed in 2012 in a Prospect Heights bar, is to open the often rigid and hierarchical culture of the music to experimentation and cross-cultural collaboration. This collaboration marks the collective’s most ambitious effort to date in the musical movement that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and New Yorker have recognized as a “Raga Renaissance.”

“This album feels like the culmination of everything I’ve been reaching for throughout my career,” says Rudolph, no small claim from someone who’s been a pioneering voice in jazz and world music for more than 40 years. “Through my music I want to hear the humanity of all these different musicians shine through, and with their voices bring forth something that’s never existed before.”

According to BRM guitarist David Ellenbogen, who co-produced Ragmala, the possibilities offered by Rudolph’s music scratched the very itch that led many of them into BRM’s more exploratory fold to begin with. “I always had a theory that Indian Classical, jazz, West African music and so on could have a synergistic relationship,” Ellenbogen says. “But after spending decades looking through record libraries, I found very few recordings lived up to the potential of these great traditions. I've spoken to other musicians on this album and they said the same thing when they heard these tracks: This is the music we've been searching for."

Press:

"Rudolph's massive catalog is chock-full of sophisticated and fascinating records. Ragmala, however, is his opus, a major work that establishes the ground for infinite possibilities in improvisational interaction for an ensemble, as well giving flesh to an expansive musical language that edifies players and listeners equally. A deeply attractive, aesthetically accessible, yet extremely complex tapestry of sounds, hues, and aural sensations". - Thom Jurek, allmusic.com (5/5 Stars)

"I don't feel equipped to review this album, neither emotionally or technically. It overheats my tiny brain and asks me "spiritual" questions I haven't begun to feel answers for. I don't fear it though, in fact, I am deeply in love with it, but I am a touch overwhelmed by it. It's beautiful, expansive and majestic: it's expansive otherness, its core rasa, reminds me of the feeling I get when listening to my heroes; Cherry, Sanders, Sun Ra, Coltrane. It is an authoritative step forward in the evolution of a truly global, celestial, cosmic "world" music". - Ian Ward, UK Vibe

"While Philadelphia's Painted Bride Art Center has been presenting jazz, improvised and/or experimental music for half a century, it's still entirely possible this was the most sweepingly wide, boundary-defying cross-cultural performance the venue has ever seen." - Geno Thackara, All About Jazz