WOEBOT

I've written about a couple of these records in the past here, however I couldn't resist bundling them in again to make that perfect 10.

Ananda Shankar: Ananda Shankar (1970)
Ananda Shankar: Ananda Shankar and His Music (1975)

The revelation for me was the Ananda Shankar. I've seen his records around for years. The resurgance of interest in him came with Talvin Singh and his Anokha club in the mid to late nineties. I went to Anokha in Hoxton Square once and it was rubbish. The problem was the tuning, not the beats. Convincing fusions always happen at the axis of the tuning. That there's a Tabla pattering away in the background means next to nothing if the harmonies are mushy and Western. Given that Ananda was the patron saint at Anokha, I wrote off his stuff as tepid exotica.

How wrong could I have been? The debut on Reprise is tuff. Typified by the majestic "Sagar" a West-Coast Cosmic-Country epic draped in reverberating sitar, Ananda finds a shared nook in the scales of the Honky-Tonk Blues and the Hindustani Alap. And there's nothing limp about it at all, this is bad bwoy music. The cover versions on the debut are also fantastic: "Light My Fire" and "Jumping Jack Flash" ring with dread vibes, the sitar steals the melody and rides it like a jockey on a donkey.

Conventional wisdom is that Ananda's "Ananda Shankar and his music" LP is superior, though this is typical hipster false consciousness at play. Recorded in India, not Hollywood, with local chops it's within a whisker of being a straight-up Bollywood LP. There's nearly as convincing Rock-Raga on a hundred Soundtrack LPs- though perhaps nothing as savage as "Streets of Calcutta". The record is also haunted by the spectre of Ennio, for example on the gently ululating vocal of "Cyrus", again slightly separating it from local produce. Nevertheless for me it's the debut which is interesting.

Emil Richards and The Microtonal Blues Band: Jouney to Bliss (1968)
Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood (1968)

Of course the Alice Coltrane records were in the Impulse frontline, however dig a little further back and you'll discover these. I was hipped to the Emil Richards by Tony Wilds at the quite stunning Hip Wax site. In fact if I recall Tony had a couple of copies of this beauty left. I suppose to call this Indo-jazz is some kind of misnomer. Emil Richards is, after all, principally famous for his vibraphone work. Folks might also want to check out his "Stones: New Sound Element" LP (in this instance hipped to me by ilm's Milton Parker). The vibes's instrumental counter-part is more precisely something like the Balinese Gamelan, the record's general tenor Greenwich Village does Jazz. "Journey to Bliss" the LP is an utterly perfect, daringly light-footed, intricately woven mesh of percussiveness. Even the guitars chicken-scratch and the wurlitzer dodges breaks. The pinnacle of the LP must be the sublime "Mantra" which is your every fantasy of leopard-skin loin-cloths brought luridly to life. "Journey to Bliss" the six-part track itself is more obviously Indo-jazz thanks to some charmingly out-of-tune meandering sitars. But how close the aesthetic of something like is to La Monte Young's early work!

Not nearly as splendid as the Emil Richard's record is Bill Plummer's "Bill Plummer and The Cosmic Brotherhood." Bill, armed with his twin bass concept, played on The Rolling Stones's "Exile on Main Street" fact fans. My friend Christian found a copy of this in a store in Edinburgh in 1992 and we laughed long and hard at Bill on the cover. "Journey to The East" is, however, sort of wonderful and crops up frequently on Jazz compilations. Also, close your eyes and check Bill's cover of "The Look of Love" and the similarity to Ananda's cover-versions is undeniable.

Dewan Motihar Trio/Irene Schweizer Trio/Manfred Schoof/Barney Wilen: Jazz Meets India (1967)

The fruit of a World Jazz festival co-ordinated by legendary German Music Journalist Joachim-Ernst Berendt, this particular LP (there were others in the "Jazz Meets The World" series on MPS) was amongst the most successful. Recorded in 1967 what is perhaps most remarkable about is the protean Krautrock elements therein for The Irene Schweizer Trio who take care of the rhythm section on the LP contains none other than Mani Neumeier on drums and Uli Trepte on bass of Guru Guru. Mani is interviewed extensively in Berendt's liner-notes, discussing the Tabla "the most perfect percussion instrument created by man" and his own invention the "Mani-Tom". There's another Krautrock connection as playing cornet and trumpet beside Barney Wilen is Manfred Schoof who was of course Jaki Liebezeit's boss.

It seems wholly appropriate to me that Indo-jazz, this almost imagined music, almost like an exercise in musical R&D, should play a part in spawning Krautrock but also (and very convincingly) Minimalism and Avant-Disco. Avant-Disco I hear you chafe! I'm sorry but Arthur Russell is nothing if not a re-incarnation of the likes of Emil Richards and Bill Plummer, a beatnik plundering the orient. Let's not forget Russell's training with Ali Akbar Khan- sort of like the logical extension of the whole trip, a hardcore hipster's Indo power-move and his work with Allen Ginsberg.

The Indo Jazzmen: Ragas and Reflections (1968)

This is a curios one, essentially an exploitative take on the Mayer/Harriot records, it manages to be rather sublime, possibly even superior to what it's plagiarising. Saga was a dodgy London-based record label.

Shankar Jaikishan and Rais Khan: Jazz Raga Style (1968)
T.K Ramamoorthy: Jazz Jazz Jazz (1969)

My babies! The entirely Indian side of the coin. Amongst my most obscure and treasured records. The latter I discovered about four years ago and I've caned its quasi-Led-Zeppelin-esque grooves for a while now. The former is more of the same kind of shenanigans which I've picked up subsequently. Proving once and for all how all manner of music falls into this bizarre terrain.

Joe Harriot and John Mayer: Indo-Jazz Suite (1966)
Joe Harriott-John Mayer Double Quintet: Indo-Jazz Fusions (1967)

Innit.