Ganavya - Nilam (Leiter)

The Slow Music Movement
3 days ago
2 min read

Updated: 19 hours ago

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's June 13th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is the cover art for Ganavya's Nilam album. It shows a girl in a blue dress walking across a deserted street in an Indian street on a sunny day, with motorcycles and people in the background.

Ganavya was born in New York city born and had quite the upbringing, being raised Tamil Nadu on pilgramage trails to soundtracks of harikathā. She’s also a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, free spirited nomad and genre fluid.

there is a genuine feeling of peace and contentment running through the album, something that she manages to channel to anyone in earshot with THAT voice

She launched her career with a classic jazz standards vocal album, albeit with a deep Indo-twist, before lying low for a few years and returning in 2023 with a flamenco jazz folk fusion duet with Munir Hossn. Since then the music has been coming thick and fast. Nilam is her new release and rather like her youth, she guides the listener with her stunning voice along spiritual, folkloric paths. If you need any more tempting it was recorded at Berlin’s Funkhaus - quite the space and where I once partied all night, and was produced and released by Nils Frahm, who wanted to capture some of the tracks that she sang at her gigs with her long time cohorts bassist Max Ridley and harpist Charles Overton.

Ganavya is wearing a sari and playing a traditional stringed instrument shaped like a bird. She's on a beach. The scene is black and white, with a calm, serene expression.

Apparently the LP’s central theme is, “doing what we need to do to keep carrying on”, something I’m sure many can relate to. Nil in Tamil means land, and Ganavya explains “these songs have always been a place for me to stand, a place for us to be in a way that I don't really know how to describe”, and I can only imagine having just arrived in a new city, then shortly after staring out a several hundred of its citizens that are waiting to be entertained, that having such familiar comforts on your set list must be a blessing.

Oddly tracks like, “Song for Sad Times” and “Pasayadan” seem to convey a sense of saude for those home comforts, perhaps due to her recent incescent touring schedules in recent times? Anomalies aside there is a genuine feeling of peace and contentment running through the album, something that she manages to channel to anyone in earshot with THAT voice. Whether it’s a coping mechanism, spiritually guided or just an astute awareness of self, society and her place in it, or I’m guessing a combination, I’m glad this album is here for when I need it, it’s a balm.