Nistha Raj Debut is Sensational

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NISTHA RAJ

Exit 1

Self-Released

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If you mixed the lonesome fiddle sounds of Mark O’Connor with the sweeping majesty of Alasdair Fraser, and the classical precision of Yehudi Menuhin, you’d still be a few elements short of Nistha Raj. Transpose some of Wu Man’s pipa and Anoushka Shankar’s sitar for violin, add Christylez Bacon’s human beatbox artistry, and filter it through Hindustani traditions and you still come up short. You’d also need to add some tabla, cello, guitar, bass, harmonium, and piano. All of this adds up to a stunning debut release from Ms. Raj, who spent much of her youth in Houston and is classically trained in both Western and Hindustani violin. This is an album of many moods, beginning with “Shivranjnai,” a reworked raga that sounds like Exit I might have been somewhere in Appalachia. Or is it on the road “From China to India,” her meeting-of-cultures masala that’s part Tibetan, part Chinese, and part Hindustani? Perhaps it’s the ingress to an innovative jazz club where an alto saxophone blares, as we hear in “Jayanthi,” or somewhere in Serbia (“Adje Jano”). And just when you think Raj is overcome by wanderlust, she bends her violin notes to emulate the sitar and muse upon traditional alaps and ragas (“Gravity” and “Alibi”). Hell’s bells––she even plays her instrument while sitting cross-legged on the floor. Expected only the unexpected! Rob Weir

Check her out: http://nistharaj.com/galleries/#prettyPhoto/0/