from fRoots: the Essential Worldwide Folk & Roots Music Guide
by Ken Hunts
February 1, 2014

In October 2012 the Colorado-raised singer and instrumentalist Sheela Bringi launched a crowdfunding video on YouTube. It’s a niftyly edited three-and-a-half minute burst of self-promotion and an ear-pleasing plea for funding for a ‘tavel harp’ and the finances to finish her debut album. Well, this is it.

The background information cites such influences as the Tamil singer-songwriter MIA and US voice artist Meredith Monk, and studies with the bansuri (bamboo flute) player GS Sachdev and sarodist Aashish Khan. It also refers to American blues and jazz and her mother teaching at Naropa University at Boulder, Colorado – once home of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. It’s an intriguing backcloth.

Jazz influences creep in on Peacock (based on an Assamese folksong) and Saraswati with wafts of cool jazz trumpet (played by Clinton Patterson, the album’s producer)…read more