Rajamani
El Sol y la Luna, July 14
Latcho Drom means “safe journey” in Romany, the language of the Gypsy people. It’s also the name of an excellent musical documentary that charts the Gypsy’s 1,000-year exodus, from Indian Rajastani songs to Spanish flamenco. Along with an undeserved negative reputation (Hitler killed them as readily as Jews), the Roma people are justifiably renowned for their music, Django Reinhardt alone being plenty of proof. Oliver Rajamani is Austin’s living Latcho Drom. The Indian-born Rajamani, who’s performed with both master percussionist Glen Velez and the Gipsy Kings, leads a local ensemble specializing in gypsy-flavored music. With lyrics in several Indian/ Pakistani tongues as well as Romany, Rajamani aims to entrance the audience with meditative and animated music. That’s a hard task in our short-attention-span society, let alone in a bustling South Congress eatery like El Sol y la Luna, but Rajamani is seasoned enough to understand the first law of performing: Play to the audience on hand. In addition to Rajamani’s voice, gut-string guitar, goblet drum, and sarod (North Indian lute), the ensemble’s four other musicians contributed more gut-string guitar, hand drums, an oud (short-necked lute), fretless electric bass, harmonium, and for added cross rhythms, ankle-strapped bells and a deftly played cajon (box drum). Rajamani set lists are rare, the open and uninhibited songs chosen based on audience atmosphere, a technique which worked here. Once the mostly acoustic music machine got going, enchilada forks went down and booth-seaters turned their heads to see whence came the music. While the band had tuning problems — the fault of the 105-degree day — their music was so heartfelt that babies smiled and children spontaneously danced. Starting with a sarod/ oud duet, the two-hour set melted into bass ostinato-stoked qawwali chants (Pakistani devotional singing à la Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). While the longer songs flowed well, some were a bit too free, the normally tight fretless bass meandering here and there. Another diversion was the surplus reverb of Rajamani’s amplifier. His full voice doesn’t need it, and the echoey effect imposes artificial distance between artist and audience. The dinner rush thinned after 9pm, but some who stayed did so to add their address to Rajamani’s mailing list — the Roma story convincingly told among the flan and sabrosa sangria.This article appears in July 21 • 2000.