An artiste is always celebrated best at home. And when it comes to five-time Grammy-nominated sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar, her music promises to sound loudest in her homecoming tour of her latest album Land of Gold .
The largely-instrumental album, released globally on Deutsche Grammophon, embraces electronics and cross-genre collaborations, and is Anoushka Shankar’s fervent response to the humanitarian trauma of displaced people fleeing conflict and poverty. The five-city live tour, curated by Alchemist Marketing Solutions and supported by Panache Media, will feature Anoushka, accompanied by three exemplary instrumentalists, including hang-player and percussionist Manu Delago, shehnai exponent Sanjeev Shankar and London's top bassist/pianist Tom Farmer.
It’s always a joy bringing my music back home, says Anoushka. “I’m really proud of this particular tour and how the album translates live, so I’m quite excited to share that with people in Bengaluru.”
What inspired this work of art? Anoushka says in the beginning, it came from a sense of outrage. “I started writing this music in response to the refugee crisis that I was watching unfold around me. I was moved by the suffering of people. And in particular, children, and the way they were being treated. I felt very strongly about the situation, perhaps, in contrast to having a child myself at the same time. I had just had my second baby. While I was able to give safety, food and shelter to my baby, so many others couldn’t. It’s really that feeling of injustice that led to the album.” However, the strongly emotional album moves on to an uplifting message of hope in dark times. “As the album evolved, by nature, I always like to work towards hope, because I think that’s essential for human nature. So having expressed the anger, I looked for a solution. So the music veers towards optimism, hope and humanity’s power to reconnect people divided by hatred and fear.”
What is Land of Gold ’s biggest takeaway? Anoushka affirms that’s completely up to the audience. “I don’t like telling people what kind of experience they should have. One of the beauties of music is it can be so personal. So I can put my own emotions into the music for a certain reason and the listener can relate to the same emotions for a totally different reason. My only hope is to make people feel, think and reflect.”
The name Land of Gold is inspired by her realisation that we are all after the same thing. “If one is sitting in a place of good fortune, you can sanctify it more. It could be a palace, riches or a good job. To someone who doesn’t have anything, a land of gold could mean food, a roof or health. At base level, a land of gold could simply be anything that makes you happy. That just felt so important right now since so many people in the world are searching for that,” explains Anoushka.
Collaboration is key in the album, the maestro asserts. Deftly fusing music traditions from India with electronica, jazz, hip-hop, minimalism and more, the genre-blurring album teams her with everyone from Björk’s musical director Matt Robertson and Sri Lankan rap star M.I.A. to American jazz bass dynamo Larry Grenadier, Austrian percussionist genius and one of the album's co-writers Manu Delago, dance legend Akram Khan and English actress/activist Vanessa Redgrave. All-girl children’s choir Girls for Equality also make its debut on the album’s closing song.
Comparing to her previous work, Anoushka reflects that each album is different but also connected in the big picture. “It is the record of the evolution of one artiste. It’s an album that embraces electronica again, which I stayed away from in the last few albums. It’s also connected thematically to the last few albums. So it kind of draws everything together. The difference I think is that I’m more confident in this album than I’ve ever been before. I’ve made it in an unapologetic way. This is an album I wanted to make. I’m taking my instrument and stripping away all of the connotations people have with it allowing it to be free. It doesn’t have to be exotic, classical or Indian. It could just be an instrument, which emotes like us. That’s one of the biggest achievements in this album for me.”
Along the way, Anoushka says she felt increasingly connected to the world. “I’m part of it and the world matters to me. I feel, as an artiste, not as an activist, that I want to use my voice to speak loudly and freely in my music. I don’t want to waste my time here on Earth. I want to use it wisely.”
What’s in store for music lovers in the live tour? Anoushka says she just wants people to come. “It’s hard to explain that this show is unlike anything else. It’s a really strong quartet. The people with me are amazing musicians. The combination of instruments is absolutely unique. But also, within the feel of electronica being played live, we’re doing it different from how it usually is in India. A lot of the times, electronica is played in a triggered way so it’s not really played. But we are actually playing everything live. There’s a whole different energy to the music.”
Catch Land of Gold’s live performance at Dr. Ambedkar Bhavan on December 10 at 7.30 p.m. Tickets on bookmyshow.
