The works of Ganavya Doraiswamy and Rajna Swaminathan offer a highly personal take on Carnatic music (South Indian classical music) that seamlessly blends ideas from different time periods and genres. On Doraiswamy’s debut album, 2018’s Aikyam: Onnu (Yāttirai), the vocalist and composer suffuses jazz standards such as George Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Hoagy Carmichael's “Skylark” with a spirit all her own, singing in a mix of English and Tamil, using styles beholden to the tradition of vocal jazz as well as to Carnatic music, and interweaving the material with Tamil anticolonial songs and Indian spirituals.…
The works of Ganavya Doraiswamy and Rajna Swaminathan offer a highly personal take on Carnatic music (South Indian classical music) that seamlessly blends ideas from different time periods and genres. On Doraiswamy’s debut album, 2018’s Aikyam: Onnu (Yāttirai), the vocalist and composer suffuses jazz standards such as George Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Hoagy Carmichael's “Skylark” with a spirit all her own, singing in a mix of English and Tamil, using styles beholden to the tradition of vocal jazz as well as to Carnatic music, and interweaving the material with Tamil anticolonial songs and Indian spirituals.…