The Seattle band Anjuman combines the melodies of traditional East Indian music with the rhythmic vitality of Afro-Cuban drumming from 9 p.m. to midnight Saturday, March 29 at the Star Bar in downtown Anacortes. Admission is free.
Formed three years ago, Anjuman recently completed recording its debut album at London Bridge Studios. The CD will be available at a release party and performance March 22 at the Columbia City Theater in Seattle. The band has performed at the Northwest Folklife Festival, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle University, several beat walks and at cafes and lounges.
The band features Seth Littlefield on drums, Brandon McIntosh on sarod, Phil Georgas on bass and kathak/salsa dancer Archana Kumar. At the Anacortes show, they’ll be joined by sitarist Sri Neeraj Prem of Dehli, India.
McIntosh, a native of Redmond, completed a percussion degree at Central Washington University and moved to Kolkata, India to study the sarod. A brother to the sitar, the sarod can have as many as 25 strings–McIntosh’s instrument sports 23 — stretched over a goatskin head. “It’s one of the most difficult Indian instruments,’’ says McIntosh. “It’s not because it has so many strings ... you have to use the tip of your fingernails (instead of the meat of the finger).’’ Also, “it has no frets, so you have to have a great pitch,’’ he adds.
McIntosh remembers being introduced to Indian instruments through recordings by Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, but hearing Indian musicians on sarod “floored me.’’ Returning to the United States, he teamed up with former college classmate Littlefield — the two had performed together in a rock band called Indian John Hill — and mixed their musical influences, Indian and Afro-Cuban. The songs are based on old Indian compositions, but like a jazz group, about 95 percent of the music around the melody is improvised by the musicians, McIntosh says.
