Additional Information
Sunken Cages is the solo-project of Indian-born drummer/electronic music producer Ravish Momin, this project is presented on Friday 19 at the Suoni Per Il Popolo.
« Inspired by Mumbai’s Street drumming ensembles and global rhythms, he creates danceable tracks using live-looped percussion arrangements and pre-composed melodies. In the past, he has worked as a sideman with a wide array of musicians including US Jazz legend Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre (AACM/Chicago) and pop-star Shakira. He led Trio Tarana, a shapeshifting global-Jazz group, on international and domestic stages for the past 14 years. »
PAN M 360 could chat with Ravish Momin, a couple of hours before his gig.
PAN M 360 : Has Sunken Cages been in Montreal before?
Ravish Momin : No, this is my debut, first time in Montreal with my solar project.
PAN M 360 : So, are you based in New York? Because the one I called is a New York number.
Ravish Momin :Yes, good eye! 100%. I am based in New York, but my partner lives in Philadelphia. So, it’s only two hours, so I go back and forth. Sometimes I’m in New York, sometimes I’m by city life. I’ve been in New York City for like 25 years, a long time.
PAN M 360 : Oh yeah, well, we know about Sunken Cages for a while. You have a strong discography. Thank you. It’s a great blend of IDM, global groove, afrobeat, jazz and so on… many things are involved.
Ravish Momin :Yeah. Sure. So, yeah, Sunken Cages is really, for me, a combination of improvisation and global rhythms and also wanting to make dance music.
And for me, it was putting it all together. And so what I do now is I do a lot of live looping and I’m making up my rhythmic arrangements on the spot. But I’m also a composer, so I’ve also composed electronic melodies that I also have inside my software. And I’m using Ableton to use on stage. And I’m basically doing it all in real time.
And so there’s melodies, there’s rhythms. But for me, the main thing was to make music that has all the global rhythms, but also has an improvised dance music feel, you know? So that’s what I’m presenting in Montreal. And yeah, it’s very much about wanting people to not just sit there in their chair, but to get up and dance.
PAN M 360 :And what is the setup? Are you coming with what kind of gear?
Ravish Momin : It’s just me, it’s just me. And what is your gear? Yeah, my gear is basically, I have a brand new MIDI drum that was made by a company in Berlin in Germany. And then a drum pad and some MIDI controllers with Ableton. And that’s it. And so it’s very light. It’s very small. So it’s very easy to travel with this setup, you know?
PAN M 360 : And this kind of live set, is it changing a lot from one gig to the other, even in the same tour? Do you vary the proposal?
Ravish Momin : No but…To answer your question, yes, it has changed in the past. So, for example, I started out actually putting drum triggers on a real drum set. Because I also played real drums, you know? Then it slowly evolved. And now I have this standing setup that I just described to you. So basically I already brought it with me on the plane. So I can’t really change it on the tour, you know? So usually when I’m already on the tour, it stays the same for Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto.
PAN M 360 : So it’s a sort of a Canadian tour you’re doing?
Ravish Momin : Five dates, yeah.
PAN M 360 : Okay, cool! Can you now just describe the last three years of your journey? Just to have an idea of the way it has evolved.
Ravish Momin : That’s a great question. Of course, I’ll keep it short. If you can imagine, for example, you’ve heard the discography. It’s not really global music. I don’t play instruments.
I’m not fully improvised music. And I’m also not really a jazz musician anymore – I have been a free jazz drummer, that was a very big shift. A very big shift from playing free jazz to making electronic music., . But it’s equal parts of everything, right?
So what happened for a long time, for the past three years, is really running against a lot of barriers. Like, oh, you go to a global music place, like world music. And they say, no, no, no, no, no, this isn’t really world music. Okay, then I go to an electronic place that does DJ culture. And then, no, no, no, no, you’re not really DJ. And then you go, you see the problem, right?
PAN M 360 : Yeah, well, it’s a good problem for me.
Ravish Momin : It’s a good problem, yeah. But you can also see how difficult it was last year. You find, you know, a place, like a way to, like, you know, like make my career to make Sunken Cages music because then each place is saying, no, no, no. Then you feel really like, what am I doing? In New York it should be very easy to do Southern Cages but actually, it’s been not easy at all. Because you go to electronic music places and they say no. The jazz places say no. The improvised places say no. The world music places say no. So I’ve mostly been on tour. For the past three years, my journey, since you asked to make it a simple answer, has been really trying to find my communities in other countries and other places. I go to Europe a lot. I go to Mexico a lot. Just wherever they’re welcoming of what I do.
PAN M 360 : I understand that the change is permanent in your music. You could do very different stuff next year!
Ravish Momin : Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I like to keep it open, you know, because I feel like, for me, it’s about the challenge of trying new things. Always, like, you know what happens, like most, like, if you become famous, okay, and become afraid to change, you know? And so for me, I’m like, hey who cares? It’s not about fame. I just want to make weird and interesting music. I don’t care the way it’s done.
