Gabor Szabo
Jazz Raga

"Raga" is an Indian term that refers to the semantic fields of "color," "emotion," "nuance," "sensation"; in strictly musical terms, it has come to indicate the expressive code characteristic of the classical music of North India, predominantly instrumental and also known as "Hindustani" (in contrast, the "Carnatic" music, the expression of the peoples of South-Central India, is distinguished by the wide space given to choral parts).

Driven by marked (but unjustified) Western ethnocentrism, several musicologists in the recent decades have alluded to Raga as a simple scalar system, similar to the "modes" inherited from Greco-classical music (Lydian, Phrygian, Dorian, etc.) and reintroduced from the 1950s in much improvisation of certain "modal" Jazz; this definition, while seemingly simplifying things by offering the public concepts commonly used in the jazz field and therefore more easily understandable, turns out to be unacceptable when considering the distance that in music, even more than on a geographical map, separates East and West. Each Raga is such, and thus differs from another Raga not because of a peculiar scalar path, but based on its "emotional connotation": we are indeed talking about a form of popular music passed down through generations, and the extra-musical context, whether festive or funereal, in which the performance took place, was decisive in the past. It is true that a rigorous notational code has been devised for Raga, that is, Pandit Bathkande's, largely inspired by Anglo-Saxon nomenclature, but most of the musicians (even contemporary) of the genre pay little attention to it, instead relying on improvisation criteria dictated by mood, situation, and mental schemes often elaborated "on the go," without preliminary organization.

At the beginning of the crucial '60s, this immense heritage of experiences, guaranteed and preserved by a centuries-old tradition, surprisingly began to make contact with certain Western experimental music, and to take new forms (although ethnically characterized) from its blending with Jazz and Rock, considered the privileged language of the young generation of musicians of those years: and thus a "borderline" personality like Ravi Shankar appears on the scene, future idol of the Woodstock Generation but first and foremost inspirer of George Harrison and, consequently, much of the music produced by the "Fab Four" from "Rubber Soul" onwards; a young guitarist from the Southside of Chicago named Mike Bloomfield comes to fill with Eastern influences that unstoppable and frenzied instrumental run that is "East-West" by the Butterfield Blues Band; the Byrds soon transition from electrified Folk of their early days to sprawling atonal guitar "free forms," dragging the rest of a Californian scene more than ever open to a philosophy so full of extra-musical implications.

It is amidst the ferment of this very modern musical climate that the art of a genius and unequalled musician for seriousness and rigor, to whom all music owes something for forty years now, takes shape: Gabor Szabo, Hungarian with Gypsy blood, was actually almost thirty while witnessing the unforeseen developments of those years, and had already left his native country (where Jazz, his preferred music, was opposed by the regime) to move to the United States and perfect his guitar technique in Boston: two albums in a few months ("Gypsy '66" and "Spellbinder"), already indicative of a complex, highly personal and unclassifiable style, suspended between past and present and encompassing sounds equally divided among Europe, Asia, and America, the expression of three worlds that coexist and confront each other in a wonderful "unicum." This is the necessary conceptual prelude that underlies a historical milestone like "Jazz Raga" (the year is 1966, the same as "Revolver," to be clear); from the Indian Raga emerges an original path that arrives at transoceanic Jazz passing through an undefined borderland that resonates with the vibrations of the most genuine, popular Europe; from the sumptuous courtly residences of New Delhi to North American metropolises, transiting through the scorching and steppe-like expanses of the Hungarian "puszta" in summer: with, in the background, the incessant and stubborn whisper of a Swinging London ever closer, an unwavering point of reference for lovers of "new sounds" (as, after all, Szabo deserves to be considered).

A magnificent album, thrilling, earthy, with sensational content and outcomes; and recorded with the collaboration of renowned Jazz musicians, including Bernard Purdie, a brilliant drummer (who we will find years later in Steely Dan) experienced in exotic rhythms, inventor of unusual and imaginative solutions, capable of ranging from Samba to Rock to Cool Jazz; two alternate on bass and double bass, Johnny Gregg and Rob Bushnell, after Szabo had been accompanied by His Majesty Ron Carter (already at Miles Davis' court for much of the Sixties) for the previous records. Seamlessly, and with such ease.