Vijay Iyer and Indian American (not American Indian) Jazz

When I hear about what Asian Indians are up to, I'm usually curious. Not because their people and my people both call themselves Indians but because I'm thinking that any culture that produced chess, Buddhism, and yoga must be on to something.

I recently read a Gary Giddins article about some Asian Indians who are playing jazz. Actually, they're Indian Americans: They are of Indian descent and have Indian names, but they were born in the U.S. and, as Giddins puts it, are "as American as apple pie, or Barack Obama".

Giddins is a good critic and he wrote convincingly about these guys so I wanted to check them out. I YouTubed Rudresh Mahanthappa, the saxophonist who is the predominant subject of the article. The video above is literally the first one that comes up, and it's heat.

It's actually the Vijay Iyer Quartet, the leader and namesake of which is a pianist also discussed in the article, but that's just as well. Giddins describes the division of labor for the first collaboration between Iyer and Mahanthappa as "Iyer focussed on rhythm and Mahanthappa on melody", and I'm much more into the rhythm thing anyway. The drums in particular sound incredible on this video, though I think the reverb is a happy accident of having been recorded live outdoors. I think what you hear are the actual drums followed closely by the amplification of the drums through the PA. In any case, and whatever you want to call them, these cats can lay it down.