Ravish Momin’s Infinite Groove
L-R: Skye Steele (Violin); Greg Heffernan (cello); Ravish Momin (percussion, voice, composition)
Drummer/composer Ravish Momin and Trio Tarana will be playing on the Warhol’s Sound Series on Friday, June 25 in a show that will also feature local artist DJ J. Malls. I got a chance to Skype with Ravish a few days ago and we had a free-wheeling discussion about his musical vision, the positive influence or Pittsburgh and the Warhol, and the challenges of creating innovative music in an ever more conservative industry. As always, I include the full audio below and recommend that, but here are some highlights to pique your curiosity.
Probably the biggest understatement one could make about the sound of Trio Tarana is that it reflects diverse influences. There is clearly strong influence of Indian classical music, of jazz, electronic elements, and rock. And, partly because of the instrumentation (drums, violin and cello), Trio Tarana sounds as much like a chamber music ensemble as a jazz combo. Yet, for all that diversity of influences, the music forms a seamless whole. To Ravish Momin, this develops as an organic and intuitive process which he describes as, “Taking all these influences that were latent inside me and having them come out.”
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Ravish’s official bio starts with his love for poetry, then how he completed a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU, and finally about studying classical Indian percussion. He speaks fondly of Pittsburgh and his time at CMU as the place where his passion for music was nurtured.
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Talking about the current configuration of Trio Tarana, Ravish get’s very excited about the band’s integration of technology and why it makes sense to him.
“We’re living in this electronic age, we’re talking on Skype, we have our iPhones, we’re texting—we’re doing all of this electronic stuff, but somehow when we go to music all of a sudden it has be three guys with acoustic instruments, and we leave everything behind, all of this technology, and for me it was like, ‘Wow, why can’t I find a way to bring in all this technology in and organic way that’s not being done?’”
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One of the most compelling aspects of Trio Tarana is that no matter how far afield the players move from each other, one can always sense how it all fits into a groove, even when that groove is based on a complex, asymmetrical time signature. The idea of groove-driven jazz is very significant to Ravish, and he speaks with a lot of energy about its importance to his music.
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One of the biggest problems facing truly innovative musicians is that music industry is wary of anything that cannot be categorized and packaged simply. While this is a source of frustration for Ravish, he had positive things to say about the role the Warhol and Pittsburgh play in helping develop and audience for cutting-edge music.
“Places like the Warhol Museum are very few and far between in the United States.”
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Ravish Momin and Trio Tarana play at the Warhol at 8; doors are at 7:30. Check out the Warhol Web site for more information about the show and about tickets.
Listen to the full interview.
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UPDATE: There’s lot’s of good audio and video on on Ravish Momin’s Web site, but I thought this clip summed up nicely a lot of the things we were talking about in the interview.