I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 11, 2018] Junun

I was so excited to get tickets to see Radiohead that I didn’t even consider that there would be an opening band.

I was so excited to get General Admission floor spaces that I didn’t really think about anything else.  I took off from work that day, drove to the City and did not heed the advice of crazy fans who were going to camping out all day.  Rather, I arrived sometime around 5PM.  The line wasn’t that bad, I was able to get a snack and a drink and I had my book with me, so I didn’t mind waiting the 90 minutes until the doors opened.

And when I got in and saw that there weren’t even that many people on the floor, I bought a poster and a water and then I stood in a cluster and waited (with my book).

Eventually the lights dimmed and Junun came on stage.

Even after seeing their performance I didn’t quite understand what was going on with this melding of minds.  So what I’ve learned is that Junun is actually the name of an album.  But the performers and composers go by the unwieldy moniker Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express.  So I get why they were called Junun.

I found the creation of the album to be rather interesting:

Jonny Greenwood contacted Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and inquired about a collaboration.  Greenwood insisted they use no string instruments except those native to the region, and hire only musicians from Rajasthan, India. They were joined by a group they named the Rajasthan Express, incorporating musicians from three musical traditions: the Qawwali, Sufi musicians from Southeast Asia; Muslim Roma; and a brass section who had played in weddings and parades, a tradition brought to India by the British.  Ben Tzur wrote the songs, with Greenwood contributing guitar, bass, keyboards and ondes Martenot (an electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. It is controlled by moving a ring along a wire, which creates wavering, theremin-like sounds).

According to Pitchfork, Junun incorporates “Bollywood-style brass exuberance, the devotional Qawwali music of Sufi Islam, and bowed-string instruments associated with the Manganiar community”. Whereas western music is based on harmonies and chord progressions, Greenwood wanted to use chords sparingly, and instead write using North Indian ragas.  He said: “There’s no major or minor in Indian music, which is very peculiar for someone who’s used to playing with Radiohead and coming up with chord sequences … As soon as you start imposing chords on this kind of music, you pin it down and force melodies onto it to have some sort of harmonic language that they don’t really have, [Indian] music is more ambiguous than that.”

Greenwood and Godrich said they wanted to avoid the “obsession” with high fidelity in recording world music, and instead hoped to capture the “dirt” and “roughness” of music in India. Greenwood said: “When lots of Westerners go to India they make music with lots of respect, but sometimes it feels a bit like there’s too much respect. People can be too wary, too wary to make anything that captures the real roughness of some of this music, especially the way the brass bands play when they’re following processions and weddings down backstreets and the like.”  To capture less polished recordings, some vocals were recorded with the singers using handheld microphones. Some singers sang phonetically in languages they did not know.  The lyrics are in Hebrew, Hindi, and Urdu. All the reverb on the album is natural and was recorded using a large space beneath the fort.

I had seen them perform on Colbert and enjoyed what I heard, but I decided that I would enjoy it for about 10-15 minutes.  And that proved to be the case live as well.  Part of it was that the mix wasn’t very good.  It was very loud.  I had to use earplugs–which i did not have to use for Radiohead.  It must be hard mixing small drums and horns along with guitars and vocals.

The lighting was also poor.  They were swallowed up by the darkness around them and the spotlights were really bright, so even though I was pretty close, I never got very clear pictures.

I try to be open to Indian singing but I really don’t like it all that much.

The music on the other hand was pretty great.  I especially enjoyed watching the drummers.  The guy on the left is Nathu Lal Solanki “Nathuji” was very entertaining and it turns out he is considered one of India’s best drummers.

Shye Ben Tzur is rakishly handsome and quite a frontman.  He played guitar and flute.  I enjoyed watching him do somewhat unconventional moves on the guitar.

Of course I was mostly interested in Jonny Greenwood )which is exactly NOT the point, I know).  he stayed near the back, he played bass and guitar and was pretty unobtrusive.  I actually couldn’t even really hear his contributions.

After a few songs, the two guys on the right came out front and led us all in a kind of sing along, and that was fun.

But mostly I just enjoyed watching the drummers.

SETLIST:

Julus
Hu
Kalandar
Junun
Modeh
Duma Dum Mast Kalandar