Ragini Trio on giving Indian classics a unique musical twist

The band talk about their hybrid sound and why the tanpura doubles up as the fourth "member" of the band.

Ragini Trio. Courtesy of Clash Magazine

It’s a festive Friday evening in December and at one of Belgium’s great musical institutions, the Royal Conservatory in Ghent, one musician is being far from conservative.

Marco Bardoscia clambers across his double bass and stretches perilously low to wobble a single string and emulate an eastern drone instrument while also trying not to drop his spectacles. It’s quite a sight.

Even more intriguing than that precarious pose is the band’s overall sound.

Ragini Trio are a jazz act who only perform interpretations of Indian classical music and their work is winning friends across the world. Nathan Daems, a saxophonist who channels the sound of Indian flutes, is the founder.

“It’s a concept that we didn’t really premeditate,” says Daems after that rapturously received performance, part of Ghent’s annual Glimps festival. “I transcribe the melodies for myself and that’s the only thing I bring to a rehearsal. Usually the drummer and bass player don’t even listen to the original.”

Ragini Trio began three years ago as a music-school project. Daems had been encouraged to actively explore different genres and decided to combine his prime musical passions.

“I was studying jazz but listening to a lot of Indian classical music,” he says. “Indian classical is mainly about improvisation, just like jazz; they just have different parameters. So I took existing Indian melodies, some recent, some very old, some we don’t know exactly how old, and we started playing them, messing them up a little bit.”

He recruited another local enthusiast, Lander Gyselinck, a prolific young jazz drummer keen to explore Indian percussion, who was also familiar with previous Belgian/Indian jazz crossovers.

“This is something the Belgian scene was already quite known for,” says Gyselinck, “but Ragini Trio take it in a very different way.”

They certainly push their instruments in new directions, particularly the aforementioned double bassist. Bardoscia is “quite a big name” in his native Italy, according to Daems, but having relocated to Brussels he was looking for a new challenge. Ragini Trio stretches him musically and physically.

“I said yes because I’m always excited to do new things,” Bardoscia says, “but I didn’t know anything about Indian music before this collaboration and it took me a while to get in the mood. There is no double bass in the Indian classical repertoire, so I had to invent my role in it. It was kind of interesting to find my own way to approach it.”

The trio's live show spans various areas and eras, from the Hindustani anthem Raga Jog, famously performed by Ravi Shankar, to a traditional finale, the Carnatic Tillana.

Added atmosphere is achieved via their unofficial fourth member: a tanpura box, which drones throughout.

“It’s a recording of the instrument, the tanpura: you just switch it on and you don’t touch it,” says the saxophonist. “It’s the sound that we instantly relate to Indian music.”

That hybrid sound is travelling far beyond Belgium. The band will start recording their second album soon, with an international jazz figure pencilled in as producer, while responses from the Indian classical community have been positive.

Early last year the trio collaborated with the legendary singer Madhup Mudgal, and his compositions also now feature in the band’s repertoire.

“It’s nice to see how Indian musicians enjoy our music,” says Daems. “They appreciate it because they couldn’t play it our way, like we cannot play it exactly their way. Not unless we go to live there for 20 years.”

That might be inconvenient, as the trio play in other bands too, exploring everything from electronica to Ethiopian melodies. No sound is off limits.

“I don’t think of music as ‘genres’,” says Bardoscia. “As Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad.”