Songlines
The conceit of this disc is to take reading from Kipling’s Kim and juxtapose them against a musical interpretation of the passages from the book. Composer Sarah Rodgers draws on a number of Hindustani ragas and talas for source material, using both through-composed sections and leaving room for improvisation. On the whole this works well, and the Indian material is to the fore in all but the title-track where there is more a sense of Rodgers’ Western classical style.
The work was commissioned and performed by clarinettist Geraldine Allen, along with Timothy Walker on guitar and Baluji Shrivastav on sitar, tabla and pakhavaj (two-headed drum). The musicality of all three is superb and the interest level never drops, in large part due to their great skill. However the standout participant for me was the narrator Bhasker Patel, whose reading of Kipling’s prose poem (from surely his best and least problematic work on South Asia) truly brings the words to life and carries you off to the dusty plains and high mountains of northern India.
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