For the first couple of tracks ganavya’s new album Nilam seems to owe as much to trip hop as Indian classical raga, which is to say that it lands somewhere between early solo Björk on the stunning Debut and Post and the lustrous, moonlit works of Arooj Aftab, with the opener ‘Land’ redolent of ‘Venus as a Boy’ – as the singer intones ‘his approach to love is earned’, a more rounded and enduring sentiment than ‘he believes in beauty’, the right ballast for an abiding relationship – while ‘Song for Sad Times’ echoes the Vulture Prince centrepiece ‘Mohabbat’, a ghazal which blends consuming passion with a note of defiance.
Yet the vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and self-described ‘unabashed wanderer’ draws from her own deep well. After self-publishing her debut album Aikyam: One, which was recorded back in 2018, her breakthrough came just last year with the release of like the sky i’ve been too quiet on Native Rebel Recordings. A deeply compassionate and deftly ebullient work, the acclaimed record saw her collaborate with jazz-inflected crossover artists like Shabaka Hutchings, Floating Points and Carlos Niño: at the fulcrum of scenes from bustling London to breezy California and well regarded for their own efforts like Shabaka’s flute album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, while Floating Points also helmed the late Pharoah Sanders highlight Promises and Niño steered André 3000’s ambient foray New Blue Sun.
After signing with LEITER and capturing the Carnatic cycles of ‘draw something beautiful’ with Nils Frahm at his Berlin studio – a pristine single with the memorable refrain ‘if i could i would draw something beautiful into the holes that were punched in your heart’ – ganavya initiated a mass gathering in Houston. A celebratory ritual caught on tape, Daughter of a Temple brought together more than thirty cross-disciplinary artists including Vijay Iyer, Wayne Shorter, Immanuel Wilkins and Esperanza Spalding, its songs stretching from ‘Om Supreme’ – which reminded me of Van Morrison’s stream-of-consciousness album closer ‘Almost Independence Day’ with its visions of fireworks and a cool night on the harbour – to an Alice Coltrane spiritual medley and an interpretation of John Coltrane’s classic A Love Supreme, which featured the theatre director Peter Sellars reading from the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra.
Nilam – a title which indicates ‘land’ in her native Tamil – is the product of some unexpected downtime between ganavya’s sold-out 2024 debut in Berlin and her show several days later at Union Chapel in Islington. Descending swiftly on the studio, the album therefore features her touring band members, a cast of familiar faces and fellow travellers which includes Max Ridley on the double bass and Charles Overton on the harp, Shahzad Ismaily whose guitar and shakers contribute to the limpid and loping quality of ‘Land’, and Nils Frahm who plays variously the harmonium, the heavenly celesta and the Cristal Baschet a mid-century invention of the Baschet brothers whose fifty-six chromatically tuned glass rods are gently rubbed by moist fingertips.
At this intersection of fortuity and familiarity, ganavya brings all of her experience to bear and offers a fleshed-out version of songs which have evolved through years of live performance. Born in New York City but raised in Tamil Nadu, where she spent time on the pilgrimage trail singing and dancing and being immersed in harikathā, a mode of narrative storytelling typically involving epics and puranas which are recited to the accompaniment of the mridangam, after the ardour and longing of the first few tracks the lengthy standout ‘Nine Jeweled Prayer’ allows ganavya to develop the breadth of her palette as it draws not only from the devotional music and folk songs of Tamil Nadu but also evokes for instance the Filipino genre of kundiman, whose love songs are characterised by their flowing rhythms and emotionally heightened intervals.
Charles Overton’s harp resembles slack-key or fingerpicked guitar, as ganavya is also joined for ‘Nine Jeweled Prayer’ by Frahm on the celesta and the voices of Ganesan and Vidya Doraiswamy. Meanwhile on the stripped-back and solitary ‘Sinathavar Mudikkum’ – a Thiruppugazh or prayer to the lord Murugan which she used to sing with her family every evening – ganavya plays a reconstructed yāzh, an ancient Tamil harp which she serendipitously came across through a friend of her cousin before embarking on the daunting prospect of having it transported to Berlin.
While she readily conjures still pools and expresses typical themes of heartache and yearning, she can switch between steep meditations and displays of more heightened emotion, evinced by the soaring vocal lines towards the close of ‘Pasayadan’, an abhang or ‘song without end’ from the pilgrimage tradition which here embodies both soothing and caustic properties. That leads into the more languid and pellucid ‘Sees Fire’ which closes out Nilam, as ganavya singing once more in English and joined by the cellist Jordi Rosales posits the wonder of childhood against the spectre of a burning world.
