Rishte

When Najma met Gary there was no plan. Gary produced the music (including some songs originally written for Jeff Buckley) and Najma contributed the words (mostly in Urdu) and the melodies, and in the process a beautiful and curious transformation has occurred. There is blues in the mix - in particular the eerie revival of the Skip James classic "Special Rider Blues" - and there's Indian music too, as expected (both Daaya and Parda are based on Ghazal styles). Out of this chrysalis of expectation has burst a butterfly whose wings drip psychedelic jewels; a dark and heady funk and fey folk evocations jostle in the powerful title track and a powerful pop sensibility underpins everything.

It would be easy to apply simplistic marketing jargon to the music of 'Rishte': Indo-Blues fusion, east-meets-west and the like. But this is to misunderstand the alchemy that occurred when Najma met Gary - a rare confluence of interests, talents and cosmic synchronicities that have produced an album which is truly more than the sum of its parts: a unique and pungent symbiosis.

"Although I didn t realise it at the time, the first world music album I ever bought was a record by John Mayer and Joe Harriott s Indo-Jazz Fusions more than 40 years ago. In the years since, John McLaughlin and others have continued to fuse jazz and Indian music in highly imaginative fashion, but there have been far fewer attempts to explore the common link between Indian music and that other great musical product of black America, the blues. Step forward the British-Asian singer Najma Akhtar and the American guitarist, Gary Lucas, formerly of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. On his album 'The Edge of Heaven', Lucas reinterpreted classic Chinese pop tunes with a bluesy edge and Akhtar has famously worked with Page and Plant, so both are used to pushing the boundaries of their default styles which may begin to explain why their collaboration here works brilliantly. The concept is at its most obvious on Skip James' "Special Rider Blues", a magical journey from Memphis to Mumbai and back again.

Yet in many ways the rest of the material, jointly composed by Akhtar and Lucas, is even more interesting. Their guitar-vocal duets are accompanied only by tabla and, occasionally, violin. Some of it has a very 1960s hippy, free-festival feel: Naya Dhin even reminded me improbably of early acoustic Tyrannosaurus Rex. As for Akhtar, her voice is a heaven-sent gift. If she had made this album with that other noted blues aficionado, Robert Plant, it would surely sell a million and win a Grammy."
- Nigel Williamson (Songlines)