Rudresh Mahanthappa is a New York-based jazz musician. Rudresh often collaborates with fellow musician and New Yorker Vijay Iyer.

In this interview we get to hear a rare behind-the-scene look on how Rudresh conceived and worked on his jazz album titled Mother Tongue: Do You Speak Indian?

Mother Tongue was released by Pi Recordings in 2004 and has
Rudresh Mahanthappa: alto saxophone, Vijay Iyer: piano, François Moutin: bass, Elliot Humberto Kavee: drums. The album made the Jazzmatazz Top 10 list for 2004.

Born and brought up in the US, Rudresh was often asked if he spoke Indian? The idea for the album was born when Rudresh and his wife were searching for a priest to conduct their wedding ceremony in English. And that is when he heard that all too familiar question: Do you speak Indian?

Once he got the idea for the album Rudresh had a challenging time trying to get audio samples of various Indian languages. Surprisingly, he did not get anyone to speak in Hindi. The album has samples from seven Indian languages including Kannada, Gujarati, Konkani and others. Rudresh plans to work and expand the scope of the project sometime in the future.

Recently Rudresh and Vijay Iyer’s first album titled Raw Materials was released by Savoy Jazz. The two musicians have been working together for the past 10 years. Rudresh has worked as a sideman with jazz musicians such as David Murray, Steve Coleman, Jack DeJohnette, Samir Chatterjee, Von Freeman, Tim Hagans, Fareed Haque, Vijay Iyer, Howard Levy, David Liebman, Greg Osby, and Dr. Lonnie Smith.

As a composer, Rudresh has received commission grants from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, and the New York State Council on the Arts to develop new work.

Rudresh lives with his family in New York.

This interview originally ran on July 20, 2006. You might be interested in listening to Part-2 and Part-3 of the interview with Rudresh.

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