(Guy
Buttery & Kanada Narahari)
Multi-award winning South African artist
Guy Buttery teams up with Indian born sitar player and singer, Kanada Narahari
chartering newfound musical territory with a collaborative release titled Nāḍī. The full length album, available
on Vinyl, CD, in an exclusive Deluxe Edition and across all streaming
platforms, is an exploration of the musical languages between South Africa and
India and the previously untold stories surrounding this connection.
Nāḍī was released worldwide on November 8, 2019.
When South African musician Guy Buttery
first sought out Dr Kanada Narahari in late 2016, it was as his patient.
“It was a dark time.” Buttery recalls, “I
had been bedridden for months and had been suffering from debilitating bouts of
fatigue which no diagnosis or medication could help me get to the bottom of.
When I first met Kanada, I was at the stage where even picking up my guitar to
make music had become a joyless and taxing exercise.”
As Buttery searched for a cure, a family
member recommended he see Kanada an Ayurvedic doctor who had relocated to South
Africa from India and set up a practice in Durban. It was during this
consultation, that the musician first experienced how Narahari infused the
healing properties of Indian Classical music into his practice. Rather than
treating him with a smorgasbord of pharmaceuticals, Narahari played his sitar
and set Buttery on a strict daily diet of Raga’s to fast-track his recovery.
Buttery was not only struck by his doctor’s
musical talents but by the powerful healing properties inherent in his sitar
compositions. When he left Narahari’s doctors room that afternoon, he asserts
he was feeling decidedly clearer, lighter and stronger.
“Diving into Kanada’s music was definitely
one of the reasons I'm still here today,” he admits. “The consistent tonal
centre at the heart of Indian Classical Music, literally became my support pillar
over this period. A central core of sorts in which to fall back on, strengthen
and discover.”
Narahari as it turned out, was not only a
prominent music therapist (and one of the only Ayurvedic doctors practicing in
South Africa) but like Buttery, a highly accomplished musician with a devoted
following back in his homeland. Born in a small village along the Western Ghats
in Karnataka, India, Narahari, at the age of nine, had enrolled to study Carnatic
classical vocal and developed an interest in Hindustani Classical music with a
particular passion for the sitar.
From this consultation, a friendship
developed between the two musicians with Buttery soon inviting Narahari to join
him in his studio. But it wasn’t all plain sailing in the beginning. While
Buttery and Narahari’s sensibilities were very much aligned, there were a range
of cultural and musical influences, nuances and inflections that first needed
to be navigated and understood. “I suppose we had to find a common ground.”
Buttery says, before adding, “Which in the end turned out to be pretty uncommon
ground for the both of us.”
It was after a few intensive sessions
together that something exhilarating began to emerge. What began as a few idle
improvisations soon evolved into feverish and lengthier jams. Whenever time
permitted, the musicians would meet, descending deeper into the emerging
sounds, while re-imagining the realms that existed between their African and
Indian heritages. Over the next few months, the duo would rack up over fifteen
hours of recordings in studio, and it was up to Buttery to shape the material
into an album which they collectively titled Nāḍī, which Narahari translates
from the Sanskrit as The Channel or An Internal River.
During this period, Narahari bestowed upon
Buttery, the moniker Panditji while Guy would refer to him, in affectionate
return, as Guruji. Each time the musicians would meet, the studio space would
be cleared by an impromptu ritual, with Guruji burning African Imphepho while
Panditji would chant a Sanskrit mantra dusting Indian Agarbatti clouds over
their instruments.
Once the room had been made hazy with this
aromatic alchemy (with the ancestors welcomed in) the musicians would pick up
their instruments and plunge into shimmering tides of sound. Reflecting on
these sessions, Narahari recalls the immense creative freedom he felt
throughout: “Guy and I tried to wander as much as possible, without any
speculative, preoccupied ideologies or limitations. Love remained at the
forefront of our journey together.”
On a first listen, the tracks on Nāḍī emerge as salty, humid invocations
to the inscrutable depths and misty myths of the Indian ocean - that vast body
of water that stretches between, and laps the shorelines, of the artists’
respective homelands. The music contained in this album was all created and
recorded in Guy’s hometown of Durban in South Africa, home to the largest
Indian community living outside of the subcontinent.
When asked to describe the sound he and
Narahari refined, Buttery prefers to relay a series of evocative images.
“For me” he explains, “Nāḍī is a lighthouse, a beacon that resides at the bottom of the ocean.”
As Buttery envisions it: “what once offered light to guide ships to safety, has
been submerged and re-purposed by marine life as a coral-reef temple.
Similarly, this sunken lighthouse exists as a concealed cenotaph, memorializing
the ancient sea-routes and passages that once connected the two distant lands.”
On paper, this may sound obscure but
listening to the songs, it serves as an apt metaphor.
Across each meditative movement, listeners
are able to relive the journey, immersing themselves in a series of
incantations, replete with high dynamics, delicate African-Indian inflections
and virtuoso string playing of an entirely new order. Further complimenting the
fusion of musical dialects are a range of guest artists and friends including
Shane Cooper on bass, Thandi Ntuli on vocals, Chris Letcher on organ, Ronan
Skillen on tabla and percussion and Julian Redpath on guitar, synth and backing
vocals.
Now like the submerged lighthouse, the
recordings stand as a monument, a marker and snapshot of this fortuitous
meeting, a tribute to the healing gifts of Guruji and Panditji in performance.
It’s already a process that both musicians look back on with reverence and
nostalgia.
Buttery ruminates in closing, that when he
first met Kanada his illness correlated with the biggest drought South Africa
had experienced in many years “…for whatever reason, whenever we would connect
and make music together, the sky would tend to open. Even if it was just a few
drops. This went on for months, until finally the drought dissipated and my
health had been restored.”
By the time the heavens did open across the
East Coast of South Africa, a deep friendship had been forged and with it
abundant musical offerings poured down. A treasured sample of which we able to
share in every time we press play and immerse ourselves in the sacrosanct
musical universe that is Nāḍī.
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