feature photo: Ruby Singh
The Vancouver-based percussionist and composer Curtis Andrews self-released his debut albumThe Offering of Curtis Andrews back around 2008, and was satisfied enough with it to not feel the need to follow it up with another album. Lately, though, he’s had a change of heart. Speaking Hands is the once-unthinkable follow-up, a product of ceaseless traveling, listening and learning more about percussive music forms from West Africa to South Africa to South India.
What we find on Speaking Hands is that Andrews has picked up on a lot. These are original songs with exotic flavors but universal appeal. With his multinational ‘The Offering of Curtis Andrews’ ensemble and Andrews’ guru Sri Trichy Sankaran adding Indian percussion on a handful of tracks, Speaking Hands is culturally rich, melodically rich and – of course – rhythmically rich.
We’re premiering “Tight Rope, Short Walk” in the hypnotic video above. It’s definitely on the Carnatic, Indian side of things, but Andrews and his band bring a contemporary freshness to it while making no concessions to modern technology or fads. Led in part by the violin of Kaushik Sivaramakrishnan and the vibes of Mark Duggan, Andrews himself is drumming very much in the cadence of a konnakol speaker commonly heard in this style of music. That’s because of the song’s most prominent feature, this asymmetric, eleven-beat tala rhythmic pattern; to Western ears it’s wobbly but never loses its footing.
Speaking Hands is now out and available for sale on Bandcamp.
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