A jazzy fusion of musical traditions in Chennai

Eclectik Percussion Orchestra gave the tenth edition of the Madras Jazz Festival just the kind of start it needed

One principle is unfailingly shared by any stimulating musical fusion and a compatible marriage. The things the partners do not understand about each other — and maybe, even secretly hate about each other — are the ones that are dotingly wheeled into centre stage. Drawing an inference from that, the measure of a winsome fusion act is the essential unlikelihood of it. It does not end there: The adhesive effect — one that holds it all together — derives from an enthusiastic willingness to display that “unlikelihood-ness” in the most flattering light and angle.

If you parse Paris-based Eclectik Percussion Orchestra’s music, it might seem three parts western with just a poky little space left for an Indian element. However, if one goes beyond the sounds and drill down to the spirit of their jazz-based fusion music, the contrasting features that lend the group its allure come through. The instruments they use and the sounds they generate in fact militate against pigeonholing them into narrow categories of “occidental” and “oriental”, which however one may still resort to, for want for more accurate descriptors.

When EPO performed at the Alliance Francaise of Madras auditorium as the inaugural act of the Madras Jazz Festival (organised by Exodus; Alliance Francaise is one of the sponsors of this year’s edition), time and again, each part was given sufficient time for unhindered, free play before being sucked into the larger fusion (which had a haunting quality to it). This approach was most pronounced when the performance reached the last leg, as if to impress upon an audience about to return to the routines of living, the larger philosophy of acceptance.

What are these parts anyway?

Starting with the essence, the music is built around a stubbornly oriental theme. Called “Le Grand Voyage”, it presents the soul’s journey towards the universal spirit, as it pushes forward against the headwinds of ego, doubtfulness and “this-worldiness”.

How this essentially oriental spiritual theme is woven into an essentially western music form is what gives the fusion its gilt edge.

With the theme in the spotlight, the three-parts western and one-part Indian takes an unceremonious tumble like pins in a bowling alley. The Indian element comes powerfully from flautist Rishabh Prasanna.