Listing All Indo-western Fusion Group Options

[anurag]

Keeping gkshyam's exhortation to keep this forum going, here is an idea:

Let's use this opportunity to list and talk about various West based fusion groups/bands, which have incorporated elements of Indian classical music (both carnatic and hindustani) in their productions on a regular basis, so much so that they have almost given rise to a genre of its own.

Let me start with a few that I can readily remember:

1. Shakti and Remember Shakti (John McLaughlin - Acoustic Guitar, Lakshminarayana Shankar - Violin
Zakir Hussain - Tabla, Ramnad V. Raghavan - Mridangam, T. H. Vinayakaram - Ghatam and Mridangam, HPC - flute)

2. Suns of Arqa (creator and mentor Michael Wadada has been continuously investigating the supernatural potential hidden in the Classical Raga structure of the music of India. His mission – to mix the cerebral and illusive cosmological vibrations of Raga, with the mother earth rhythms of Niyabinghi drumming that were surfacing in England in the guise of Dub Reggae : http://www.sunsofarqa.co.uk/)

3. The Gayan Uttejak Orchestra (Laszlo Hortobagyi, the Hungarian ethnomusicologist)

4. Mynta (Indo-Swedish Group) Fazal Qureshi - tabla, kanjira Shankar Mahadevan- vocal, Santiago Jimenez (Cuba) - violin, keyboard, Max Ahman - acoustic guitar, Ola Bolthzen - percussion, Christian paulin - electric bass

I absolutely adore Mynta's creations. Very melodic and appealing.

5. Al Gromer Khan (disciple of Vilayat Khan)

6. dj Cheb i Sabbah (San Francisco-based world-music maestro fuses elements of ICM with his Jewish and Arab musical roots. I love their Shri Durga album.)

7. Krishna Fusion Band (Pravin Godkhindi - flute, Arun Sukumar - Drummer, Srinivas - Guitarist, Caleb - Bass Guitarist, Madhusudan - Tabla, Shivu - Mridangam)

8. And, my favorite group: Tabla Beat Science (Bill Laswell, Zakir Hussain, Trilok Gurtu, Karsha Kale, and Sultan Khan)

I suppose this is a good list to begin with. Please add more but let's keep the likes of Karunesh and Kula Shaker out of this since they don't make their music based on ICM.