Sarathy Korwar & Upaj Collective - My East Is Your West

The Guardian 80

Gearbox Records

Jazz musicians have been borrowing from Indian music for more than half a century. Sometimes it was just the textures – the drones of the tanpura, the exotic patter of tablas, the zing of a sitar. Sometimes it was deeper – John Coltrane incorporating Hindustani ragas into modal jazz, or Trilok Gurtu mixing konnakol vocal percussion with scat-singing.

It’s a history explored by US-born, India-raised, London-based percussionist Sarathy Korwar on his latest album. Recorded live at the Church of Sound in Clapton earlier this year, it revisits many of the fusions of the last half century – there are pieces by Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, Joe Henderson, John McLaughlin, Abdullah Ibrahim, the Goan guitarist Amancio D’Silva and even Ravi Shankar.