Last week saw the release of Iona Lane & Ranjana Ghatak‘s collaborative EP Cove (order here), recorded and mixed by Andy Bell at Heriot Toun in the Borders back in April and mixed by Sam Proctor. In his EP review, David Pratt described it as a beguiling and transfixing, a memorable listening experience and a thing of great beauty.
As previously mentioned, the EP shows another side to Iona, one that branches out into music from the British folk tradition and beyond. She is reunited with Ranjana Ghatak, an Indian Classical and Devotional singer (she also plays the Tanpura & Harmonium) whom she first met on Making Tracks, a remarkable residency that we’ve previously covered on Folk Radio. Ranjana studied under Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, who is considered to be one of the proverbial figures of Indian classical music. Last year, following visa issues, she stepped in to replace Suhail Yusuf Khan of Yorkston Thorne Khan, who toured as Yorkston Thorne Ghatak during May/June 2022.
We have the pleasure of sharing the accompanying video to Vaishnava Jana To/Quiet Joys of Brotherhood, on which they shared the following:
“Quiet Joys of Brotherhood is a poem by Richard Fariña and is set to the Irish air My Lagan Love. I remember listening to Lady Maisery’s album Cycle a lot just before moving to uni, and I fell in love with this song then. We decided we wanted strong connections to the natural world as part of this EP, and this song feels like it’s trying to tie humans back to the land. The lyrics in these verses are some of my favourites, and the sentiment of love and care is at the heart of them, which felt like a strong tie to Ranjana’s piece Vaishnava Jana To. I remember when we were putting this piece together, it was the last of the three pieces for the EP, and we’d tried a few things prior that hadn’t felt right. As soon as we started working on these two songs, it felt very right, and I love how our voices work in this piece!” – Iona.
“Vaishnava Jana To is a 15th Century devotional piece that is regularly heard and sung in India. It was written by a Gujarati poet called Narsinh Mehta – I had learnt that Mahatma Gandhi was very fond of this piece, leading it to becoming very popular across the country. I learnt the piece whilst growing up in London and studying Hindustani Vocal music. It’s loosely based on a Raga called Khamaj, and I like that the lyrics talk about the Vaishnava way of thinking – which is to focus on peace, compassion, empathy, and seeing people equally. When singing with Iona, this piece naturally seemed to emerge and compliment Quiet Joys of Brotherhood in both melody and meaning.” – Ranjana.