When Karsh Kale and his band, Realize, began their Saturday-night show at Hot House, he squatted center stage and looked out at a mostly reverential audience, the sparse multi-culti crowd on their haunches in a ring around the dance floor. Kale tapped the tablas with his fingertips, their hollow hum swirling with whatever electronic brew was spilling from Sam Godin’s keyboard lab.
There was a kind of sigh, like the white stream from a single stick of incense.
But by evening’s end, Kale was riding high on Western-style traps, followed at a gallop by Jeremiah Hosea’s elegant bass lines and a clangy, banghra-esque scratch on J.D. Doherty’s guitar. The now-swelling crowd was on its feet, a gently undulating mass, with one kurta-garbed fellow in particular leaping and thrusting about, his over-the-top East-meets-West acrobatics charmingly and yet absurdly in sync.
Kale and his cohorts take the listener on a journey from that initial contemplative place to a sweatier, more languid and earthly delight. But it’s not a straight line — and the borders get crossed so often and in so many different ways that it’s hard to know sometimes whether we’re coming, going, hanging out, maybe throwing up a little prayer, or just getting teased into a sweet and vaguely arousing trance. This stuff isn’t sacred, but it ain’t profane either.
For the most part, Kale — a second-generation U.S.-raised Indo-Anglo — keeps Indian-infused melodies on top, but whenever he gets going, the power punches come low and Western-style. The fusion feels as natural as Kale’s casual strolls between traps and tablas, which produced the only moments when the formula got inverted: Indian rhythms on the bottom, Euro-electronica on top, just little swatches of it.
Kale shared the spotlight primarily with singer Vishal Vaid, who has a rich, resonant instrument.
Frequently improvising, the ghazal-rooted Vaid let go with long, elastic lines, but there seemed to be more drama in his hand gestures than his voice. No matter where Kale took the band, Vaid just never quite let go, as if he were on some sort of cruise control, ultimately making it somewhat difficult to trust him.
Not that the crowd seemed to notice much. Vaid got extended applause on various occasions. And Kale seemed pleased enough.
Still, it’s hard not to wonder the places we might have gone if Vaid had just decided to floor it.
