Rajna Swaminathan - Of Agency and Abstraction (2019)

The title of the album was conceived by Ganavya, who uttered these two words together in a moment of epiphany while we were in conversation with another fellow artist during the summer of 2017: the amount of agency we believe we have determines our relationship with abstraction. These words have remained with me over time, swirling together in different ways in my musical and intellectual life.

Agency is often defined in contrast to structure, manifesting in its residual effects: chaos, deviation, uncertainty, improvisation. If agency is one kind of flight from the tangible realm, then abstraction is another. Abstraction involves a sublimation of the material, the embodied. It could also involve what philosopher Édouard Glissant has called a “right to opacity,” or the liberty to remain unknowable within the gaze of power (Poetics of Relation). In this way, agency and abstraction are united in their associations with one of the most troubled concepts of music and of the human condition: freedom.

In working on this music, I have grappled with abstracting my inner life into the beauty of musical symmetries and counterpoints, finding joy in the sensations they spark. I have found an urgency to avoid the escapist fantasies that abstraction can spin, choosing instead to speak my truth directly and to listen with vulnerability. As an ensemble, we have explored how these abstracted forms can speak — and even dance — and what kinds of individual and collective agency are hidden within, as seeds for us to nurture. And finally, each one of us have surrendered to our mutual and inner opacities, seeking gentle alignments and blurred boundaries through the shared time and movement occasioned by the music. Ultimately, we are not concerned with trafficking in sensations of freedom; instead, we revel in our multiplicity, in the hopes that our playful and prayerful meditations inspire further play and prayer.



Track List:
01. Offering .(06:43)
02. Peregrination .(04:10)
03. Vigil .(10:04)
04. Departures .(04:36)
05. Ripple Effect .(05:36)
06. Communitas .(03:23)
07. Retrograde .(06:59)
08. Chasing the Gradient .(03:47)
09. Rush .(07:10)
10. Vagabonds .(06:25)
11. Tangled Hierarchy .(05:37)
12. Yathi .(07:13)

Recorded at The Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in Astoria, NY or New York, NY on December 18-20, 2017. Engineered by David Stoller. Mixed and mastered by Liberty Ellman on May 3 and July 25, 2018.

Vijay Iyer, co-producer

RAJAS Ensemble:
Rajna Swaminathan (mrudangam)
Ganavya Doraiswamy (vocal)
María Grand (tenor saxophone)
Amir ElSaffar (trumpet)
Anjna Swaminathan (violin)
Miles Okazaki (guitar)
Stephan Crump (bass)

Anjna Swaminathan, co-composer of “Offering” (track 1)
Ganavya Doraiswamy, co-arrangement credit on “Departures” (track 4) and lyrics on “Vagabonds” (track 1)

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