Nilam Ganavya
- 1 Land 03:12
- 2 Song for Sad Times 03:19
- 3 Not a Burden 03:43
- 4 Sinathavar Mudikkum 02:30
- 5 Nine Jeweled Prayer 09:40
- 6 Pasayadan 05:39
- 7 Sees Fire 03:28
Info for Nilam
New York-born, Tamil Nadu-raised singer and transdisciplinarian Ganavya – “among modern music's most compelling vocalists,” according to the Wall Street Journal – releases her new album, Nilam. It follows last year’s Daughter Of A Temple, Gilles Peterson’s BBC 6 Music Album of the Year, similarly declared one of 2024’s Top 10 Best Global Albums by The Guardian, who applauded Ganavya’s ability to harness “the power of communal harmony to touch something deeper than song.” Co-produced by Nils Frahm at Leiter Studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus complex, the new album by “the singer whose work,” says the New York Times, “feels like prayer…with listeners hanging onto her every word” will be released by Leiter on vinyl and via all digital platforms.
Listening to the remarkable Nilam, it seems implausible now that its inception might ever have been in doubt. So astonishing is its stillness, so profound its communication of sentiment, it feels as if it was always meant to be. A celebration of the ties that bind, and possibly the most tender-hearted music we’ll hear this year, it’s intimate and honest, a poignant expression of gratitude for the blessings which keep us grounded, if only we’ll recognise and welcome them. Indeed, it could have been transmitted directly from soul to stereo, from the way ‘Not A Burden’ lifts a weight off the world’s shoulders to the peaceful ‘Sees Fire’, with ‘Land’’s gentle groove full of space, ‘Nine Jeweled Prayer’ serenely precious, and, throughout, Ganavya’s vocals like ripples on a lagoon.
Yet the truth is it owes its existence to chance – an entity, like truth, to which Ganavya is forever faithful – and the few days between her 2024 Berlin sold out debut and another sold out performance at London’s Union Chapel. This opportunity, she was persuaded by Leiter's co-founder Felix Grimm, could be exploited to capture at last songs she had often performed live. And so, accompanied by long-time touring companions, bassist Max Ridley and harpist Charles Overton – with whom she’s toured over a decade, describing them as “two of [her] most precious friends and teachers” – she entered the hallowed Funkhaus with Frahm behind the desk.
Nilam’s central theme, Ganavya confesses, is “doing what we need to do to keep carrying on.” This perhaps isn’t surprising given her touring not one but two albums in a single year. Earlier in 2024, she’d released the equally acclaimed like the sky i've been too quiet, recorded with Shabaka Hutchings, and a debut single for Leiter, ‘Draw Something Beautiful’, arrived soon after in July. “I feel like I barely made it out this past touring cycle,” she says. “Some days are good, and some days are bad. But the actual singing is always good. I realised, with every bone in my body, that unless you absolutely, absolutely want to be a musician, there's just no sense doing this professionally. And still... I wake up every day and I am certain that I want to keep singing.”
Nilam takes its title from “nil”, the Tamil word for ‘land’, a decision made instinctively, and not just because firm ground was what she was seeking during a difficult period of touring. “The word ‘nil’ can be a command either to move or to stay still,” Ganavya points out. “To the person being senselessly quiet, it is a command to stand up for what is right. To the person being senselessly loud, it is a command to stand still. To me, it is balance, the heart of the true rhythm of life, of change, of land, of landing.” All the same, the word perfectly describes these songs she’s played, on and off, across the years with Ridley and Overton. “The world changes and shifts and everything becomes dizzying as the earth keeps disappearing from under you,” she concludes, “but 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. Music has always been the one true land...”
Ganavya
Ganavya
Tamil Nadu-raised and New York-born critically acclaimed vocalist Ganavya lives, learns, and loves fluidly from the nexus of many frameworks and understandings. Hers is a deeply profound and rooted voice. A multidisciplinary creator, she is a soundsmith and wordsmith. Trained as an improviser, scholar, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist, she maintains an inner library of “spi/ritual” blueprints offered to her by an intergenerational constellation of collaborators, continuously anchoring her practice in pasts, presents and, futures. Much of her childhood was on the pilgrimage trail, learning the storytelling art form of harikathā and singing poetry that critiques hierarchal social structures. She is a co-founder of the non-hierarchical We Have Voice Collective.
Hers is a life of nonlinearity, and singularity. Despite not not being schooled traditionally as a child, she carries degrees in theatre (Broward Community College) and psychology (F.I.U.), with graduate degrees in Contemporary Performance (Berklee College of Music), ethnomusicology (UCLA), and Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry (Harvard). Both as an educator and student, she “wishes to study and bring liberative techniques into this world… study certain dyads: what empowers, who is disempowered; what heals, who is ailing— and wishes to wed the two.”
Recent works include: a film made during the pandamic titled this body is so impermanent... (2021) directed by her close collaborator Polar Music Awardee Peter Sellars, featuring Ganavya (composition, solo voice), legendary calligrapher Wang Dongling, and acclaimed dancer Michael Schumacher (choreography, dance). The piece was created over a 6-month intensive collaborative period, where Ganavya worked from the rural mountains of Oregon, Michael from Amsterdam, Peter from LA, and Wang Dongling from China. Additional works include: 64-hour piece titled Atlas Unlimited: Acts VII - X (2019) where she continuously generated material from the narrative of Zakaria Almoutlak, a Syrian with refugee status; Daughter of a Temple (2019) a 56’51” composed piece for two loudspeakers that drew from Alice Coltrane-Turiyasangitananda’s Monument Eternal, as premiered in the 13th Havana Biennial for Carrie Mae Weems’s The Spirit That Resides; Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra Chapter 7: The Goddess (2019) directed by Peter Sellars, featuring Ganavya (composition, solo voice) and Michael Schumacher (choreography, dance). Her written work includes a collection of 101 short essays titled ether, will appear in the forthcoming issue of Arcana: Musicians on Music, edited by John Zorn.
Selected forthcoming works include words for Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding's forthcoming opera Iphigenia; leading How To Cure A Ghost: The Album, songs made from Fariha Roisin’s poetry; Sister Idea, an album made on WhatsApp with bassist and composer Munir Hossn, and Let’s Go Out and Play, commissioned by the Jerome Foundation for Roulette Intermedium.
This album contains no booklet.