Guitarist Ross Hammond and vocalist Jay Nair have offered up some hopeful sounds during this season of joy tinged with a year full of sadness. Their duo effort Hope is what Hammond calls a “hybrid of Carnatic, Hindustani and acoustic blues improvisations,” which is a pretty apt way to describe it. And while that sounds kind of exotic, it’s really as accessible and embracing as all the best global music is.
This is actually the second time Hammond and Nair got together to lay down a set of tracks, the first being Songs of Universal Peace from a couple of years’ prior. Recorded at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Sacramento, CA, the acoustics of Hope are superb; clear with just the right amount of reverb.
With either a steel guitar or resonator guitar, Hammond’s got all he needs to educe that spiritually satisfied affection of traditional Indian folk music. But Hammond also never lets go of the blues feeling always heard from his acoustic guitars, and the real attraction of Hope is that it’s not wholly Indian music but rather a direct, innate merging of East and West with a freedom to let the music flow out on its own terms.
The five trances they make go at a natural length, too often stretching at or beyond ten minutes and it never seems to go on too long. Nair’s vocal sung in Hindi adds to that soothin’ feeling, it goes so well with that resonator or steel guitar, together forming a murmur that eases into your consciousness and stays there until you’re connecting to the calmness of it.
Snag a copy of Hope from Bandcamp.
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