Search - Gianni Ricchizzi :: Raga Yaman - Raga Bhupali

Surprisingly Good Hippie!

02/10/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Gianni Ricchizzi is a HIPPIE from ITALY who has taken up Indian classical music on the vichitra veena instrument, which is played with a slide. This instrument has precious few recording artists today. How does a hippie from Italy compare with them?Ricchizzi is no dilettante, although if he and, say, Gopal Krishan were to play the same raga, the difference would be like Mozart and Boulez. Ricchizzi can be accused of playing "light" music, but it's not light music in the despicable sense with short pieces of jhalla at breakneck speed - no, it's a long, truly pretty-sounding alap which feels like floating on clouds. Even the gats are slow. Even the short filler piece is nice. It can't be easy to be a white boy in the Indian classical field, so Nimbus deserves credit for releasing Ricchizzi and packaging him under the rubric of "Indian Classical Masters". Although he may not be a full-fledged master of the music on the Mallikarjun Mansur level, he is heading in the right direction, trying to play the good, old-fashioned way instead of indulging in the nonsense sonic-boom scale exercises so popular today, that many westerners fall for. Also remarkable is the beautiful sound he culls from the veena - in many recordings, the screech from the slide against the strings is a lot louder than the actual music; here, it can rarely be heard at all. Soft!"