Somehow, Kadri Gopalnath coaxes the tremulous tones of classical Indian music from a saxophone.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published October 2, 2003
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
Lata Kumar of Tampa is a software engineer by profession, a promoter of Indian music by avocation. She’s helping to plan the Saturday performance.
The first time Lata Kumar heard saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath was on the soundtrack of a popular Indian movie called Duet. "It was so fascinating because I never realized that the sax could produce that kind of Indian music," Kumar says.
It's a common reaction to Gopalnath, who has been a revolutionary in playing Indian classical music on that most Western of instruments, the sax. When Kumar, who promotes Indian concerts, learned he was touring the United States, she decided to bring him to the Tampa Bay area.
"This will be his first time in Florida," she says. "He's a little bit on the expensive side, but because he plays an instrument that Americans are familiar with, I thought it would be the best way to introduce Carnatic music to the American audience."
Carnatic music, from South India, is one of the country's two main classical music traditions. The other is Hindustani, from North India, whose best-known interpreter is Ravi Shankar.
Carnatic music is the older of the two, going back thousands of years and inextricably linked to Hinduism. It is traditionally performed by singers and such instruments as the vina and mridanga, but the violin, mandolin and sax are among the newer instruments that have become part of the music in the last century or two.
Gopalnath's approach to classical ragas has opened some ears. Here's what critic Robert Palmer had to say about a 1987 concert he heard by the alto saxophonist:
"He originally played the nadaswaram, a large, throaty South Indian reed instrument, and has been able to transfer the bends, slurs and quavers of the traditional instrument to the Western one with remarkable thoroughness," Palmer wrote in the New York Times. "He is more or less reinventing the alto saxophone, using it to do things neither its Western classical exponents nor the jazz players who have perfected it as an expressive instrument could have imagined."
Gopalnath is part of a long line of Indian musicians who have found crossover popularity, ranging from Shankar, the sitar player made famous when his student, George Harrison, played the instrument on the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, to percussionist Zakir Hussain, who won a Grammy for his collaboration with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart on the album Planet Drum.
Now Indian music seems poised to make an even wider impact in the United States, with the upcoming Broadway production of Bombay Dreams, a musical by film composer A.R. Rahman.
Gopalnath will perform with a violinist and drummer in Saturday's concert on the USF Tampa campus. "He's mainly going to play Carnatic compositions, but toward the end, I've also asked him to play some of his jazz and fusion compositions," Kumar says.
Originally from Madras, Kumar has lived for 13 years in Tampa, where she works as a software engineer and sings in an Indian group called Thaiya Thaiya, which is co-sponsoring the saxophonist's performance along with another organization called Swaralaya. Mainly appealing to an Indian population that she estimates at more than 5,000 in the Tampa Bay area, her previous promotions have included a concert by the prominent singer Hariharan at Blake High School for the Arts in Tampa.
To Western listeners, Indian classical music can be a bit daunting, with its complex system of ragas worked out in ascending and descending patterns over sessions of continuous playing. Full of melody and rhythm but lacking harmony, the effect is reminiscent of that achieved by the repetitive, hypnotic music of minimalists such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Saturday's concert is at the unconventional time of 6 p.m., though not necessarily because of the often long-winded nature of Indian music.
"All our concerts have been starting at 3 in the afternoon," Kumar says. "That's a typical Carnatic music time. But I wanted to go away from it because I wanted to involve the Hindustani and American audiences. Basically I want Kadri Golpanath to have a very good audience and people to know more about him and the music."
PREVIEW: Indian saxophone player Kadri Gopalnath performs at 6 p.m. Saturday in the auditorium of the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., Tampa. $20. (813) 855-1633.
