Friday March 29, 2024
Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle
Review

Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle

March 2 2007

Kronos Quartet is one of the most popular contemporary classical groups on the international festival circuit. In 2007 they're back - headlining at Womadelaide and visiting other capital cities.

They're in Sydney at the beginning of March and what makes this visit especially exciting is their touring companion: superstar of Indian pop music, Asha Bhosle.

Known as "the golden voice of Bollywood", Bhosle is the widow of Rahul Dev Burman, probably the best known composer of the Indian movie industry's mid-20th century flowering. R.D. Burman's own flair for turning out movie soundtrack hits finding a perfect partner in his wife's unusually expressive voice.

To untrained western ears, Bollywood musicals (and it was a rare Indian movie that didn't have at least six giddily staged songs) are an exuberant mixture of typical Indian instrumentation - sitar, tabla etc - and audacious borrowings from Hollywood. One of the delights of the genre is hearing everything from massed sobbing Korngold violins, shrieking Hitchcock suspense, twanging Duane Eddy guitars, semi-demi salsa moments and all given over to dizzy excesses of schlock, romance, every conceivable dance rhythm, wrapped in the atonal and frantic colours of Hindi pop culture.

Best of Asha BhosleListening to the instrumentation, key and rhythm changes in a typical Burman-Bhosle collaboration such as Dum Maro Dum, from the movie, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna (1971) it becomes instantly apparent that eventually teaming up with Kronos Quartet was as inevitable as night following day.

In the original - a song about the extraordinary effects of western hippie culture on a bemused India - a western rock rhythm with drum kit and jangling guitars is hard up against the screeching voices of a virgin chorus and Bhosle's own more modulated tones.

Reconfigured for Bhosle and the American quartet, the song takes on subtle changes: guitars are replaced by percussive violins and the "psychedelic" FX of 1971 are rendered by a Farfisa organ. Bhosle's voice is also 30-years more subtle and sublime.

Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle

There are other surprises in store and the concerts should be on the Must Do list for early 2007. Meanwhile, hear the fruits of the unique collaboration on You've Stolen My Heart - and prepare your ears for a unique treat.

Public health warning: frequent exposure to Asha Bhosle may be addictive.

Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle: India Calling; Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, March 9; (1st half - 40 minutes, the quartet with Wu Man on pipa; second half - 75 minutes Asha Bhosle joins Kronos to sing her greatest hits). www.sydneyoperahouse.com or ph: 9250 7777.

You've Stolen My Heart - Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle - songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood on Nonesuch Records; The Best of Asha Bhosle - the golden voice of Bollywood on Manteca - www.manteca.co.uk

 

Subscribe

Get all the content of the week delivered straight to your inbox!

Register to Comment
Reset your Password
Registration Login
Registration