Charles Lloyd’s Mumbai tapes, left alone for seventeen years

In February 2009 Zakir Hussain brought Charles Lloyd to India for his annual “Abbaji” concert, held in memory of his father Alla Rakha. It was Lloyd’s first time there. The album’s producer, Dorothy Darr, keeps her account short in the liner notes: Mumbai, she writes, is “a mass of humanity” — layered sound, saturated colour, unfamiliar flavours.

After the concert they went into Nirvana Studio. The Sangam trio — Lloyd, Hussain and drummer Eric Harland — did not record alone. Carnatic singer Vijay Prakash was there, with bansuri player Rakesh Chaurasia, sarangi player Sabir Khan, keyboardist Ranjit Barot and sitarist Niladri Kumar. A larger ensemble record was the idea.

The plan was to reconvene and finish it. They never did. What stands in for the second session is material from the Sangam archive.

The first single, “Jai Ganga”, is the trio alone. Elsewhere “Sam On The Ganges” takes Lloyd’s old piece “Sombrero Sam” and hears it through an Indian ear. The title jokes; the playing does not.

The record is dedicated to Zakir Hussain. Seventeen years is a long time for tape to wait on a second session that never arrived. It goes out as it is. Sometimes the ending of a record is decided by something other than its author.