“The piece is really about finding this middle ground where we’re both comfortable playing in this setting that is half-Western and half-South Indian, and maybe pushing to a point where it actually becomes neither,” says Rudresh.

The idea of an Indo-jazz fusion is certainly nothing new. Elements of Indian music began to find their way into jazz at the same time that they began to infilatrate popular music at large, largely in the 1960s when Miles Davis began to incorporate Indian percussion (mainly table) into his electric, jazz-rock sonic cauldron and John Coltrane studied the classical Indian ragas. In the ‘70s guitarist John McLaughlin brought an Indian musical sensibility to the balls out rock of Mahavishnu Orchestra. These early attempts at fusing the improvisational traditions of two continents consisted largely of grafting elements that the listener could readily identify as ‘Indian’ or ‘exotic’ onto Western jazz and rock music. While the musical results were more sophisticated than the lounge exotica of the late 1950s, they were still mainly the result of outsiders interpreting Indian music through the lens of Western culture. McLaughlin’s project Shakti, which incorporated actual Indian musicians who were steeped in their own musical cultural traditions was a major step forward. Oregon also deserves credit, as original member Colin Wolcott was a Western musician who approached the sitar as an actual instrument to be learned for its own sake rather than a mere textural flavoring.

Mahanthappa Rudresh is part of a new generation of jazz musicians, and one of a few of Indian heritage who have recently appeared on the scene. Like pianist Vijay Iyer, Rudresh is a key figure on New York City’s cutting edge of composer/improvisers along with figures such as Steve Lehman and Liberty Ellman. The son of Indian immigrant parents, Mahanthappa was raised in Boulder, Colorado. He attended Berklee College of Music and gained some firsthand experience of Indian music while touring India with the Berklee All-Stars. In Bangalore he heard musicians such asParween Sultana and Chitti Babu perform music in both the Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) traditions.

After returning home, Rudresh contemplated the similarities and differences in the improvisational traditions of jazz and Indian music. One sticking point was his inability to see his chosen instrument, the saxophone, as fitting into any kind of Indian musical tradition. Then, his brother gave him a copy of a CD entitled Saxophone Indian Style by Kadri Golpalnath, which proved to be the touchstone for Rudresh’s reimagining of the jazz and Indian musical traditions. Manhanthappa had the opportunity to meet Kadri only a few years later, when the latter was playing a concert of Carnatic music in Boston. The two hit it off, and Kadri was also interested in finding a way to combine the two musical traditions without sacrificing the integrity of either. In 2005 Mahanthappa received a commission from the Asia Society to travel to madras and collaborate with Kadri on the music that has been recorded and released on the Pi Records label under the title Kinsmen.

The resulting album is mesmerizing and by turns emphatically rhythmically driven and gorgeously lyrical. “The piece is really about finding this middle ground where we’re both comfortable playing in this setting that is half-Western and half-South Indian, and maybe pushing to a point where it actually becomes neither,” says Rudresh. In that respect, Kinsmen is a real triumph. Following a brief opening section (“Instrospection”) featuring Mahanthappa’s alto sax musing over Rez Abassi’s drone, the rhythmic ostinato figure that defines “Ganesha” demonstrates that improvisational music has its own defining elements no matter what cultures the musicians come from. Mahanthappa and Gopalnath’s alto saxes wind through and over one another, with A. Kanyakumari’s violin also weaving in and out of their lines, providing something not unlike a melding of a Carnatic street band and Ornette Coleman. Bassist Carlo de Rosa and drummer Royal Hartigan provide the dancing energy of a New Orleans brass band while also finding areas to assert the rhythm rather than define it outright. The piece is a major breakthrough in terms of playing music that takes elements from both traditions and combines them to create, not a mere fusion, but something that sounds and feels entirely new.

The brief interlude “Rez –Alap” is an atmospheric feature for guitarist Rez Abassi, and is followed by the one-two punch of “Longing” and “Snake!” ‘Longing’ is a gorgeous jazz ballad that allows Mahanthappa to demonstrate the sheer beauty of his tone on the alto sax. The lyrical melody is broken periodically by a bouncy bass figure that leads back to the beginning of the melody. The form of much of this music owes a lot to its South Indian sources, having little in common with the expected structures of modern jazz, yet somehow managing not to sound all that foreign. “Snake!” again has a very folk-like, street band feel to it, but it should not sound out of place to most modern jazz listeners.

Only the track “Kalyani” sounds a bit like some of the Indo-jazz fusion music heard a few decades ago, with its double alto sax attack imitating more exotic horns and its single line guitar work that is reminiscent of the sitar and/or some of John McLaughlin’s acoustic guitar work with Shakti. The two saxophonists, however, dispel this atmosphere with solos that break into what feels very much like free jazz. Free jazz, in this context, refers more to openly structure blowing than to frenetic lines and fierce overblowing or squawking. Much of this music sounds free, but it is never anarchic or noisy.

Following the brief feature for violinist Kanyakumari, the CD concludes with the fifteen minute “Convergence (Kinsmen)” a kind of statement of purpose that provides the rhythmic drive and scale-oriented structure of a raga and allows the major players plenty of solo space, concluding with a percussion solo and a recapitulation of the piece’s theme. It’s a victorious conclusion to a groundbreaking album that will no doubt prove to be a classic recording and a profound influence on future generations of musicians.

Some of this music reminds me of the way that I once heard Albert Ayler’s music described as a Mexican marching band on LSD. That is to say, it sounds like folk music, but one would have trouble idenifiying the precise source of its elements, and that is because none have been adapted straight from the source, but rather put through a blender and offered up anew. If Kinsmen were presented with no information as to its sources or the backgrounds of the musicians on it, it is safe to say that many listeners would identify some of the elements here as Indian. But just as many might identify it as ‘free jazz’ or ‘modern improvisational music.’ It really doesn’t matter—the music on this disc is by turns exciting, freewheeling, lyrical, explosive, and introspective.