# Sarathy Korwar subverts stereotypes and speaks out against injustice: Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/03/06/sarathy-korwar-subverts-stereotypes-and-speaks-out-against-injustice-videos/
- Published: 2020-03-06T13:09:30+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Nobody likes being typecast — and the UK-based percussionist Sarathy Korwar is
no exception.**

But because he grew up in India and has a predilection for jazz, he often finds 
himself lumped into one group or another. On his 2019 album _More Arriving_, Korwar
combats those narratives and reclaims his own.

“There are questions about how the music gets categorized,” he told me during this
year’s Winter Jazzfest, in our pop-up studio in The Moxy Hotel’s Bowers & Wilkins
Sound Lounge. “Is it Indian music? Is it Indian classical music? Is it jazz enough
because I’m a brown dude playing jazz? Especially when we are doing gigs, often 
you would see tour posters of me under a banyan tree or on a carpet or something,
and I was never subscribing to that worldview of what I am.”

With _More Arriving_, Korwar creates his own sound, something he describes as “Modern
Brown Music” — an enticing mix of hip-hop, jazz, and Indian music.  While doing 
so, he also tackles issues important to him: xenophobia, immigration, and the rise
of fascism around the world. These topics stingingly come to life by rapper Zia 
Ahmed. Here is the band’s performance of “Bol,” featuring Ahmed, saxophonist Pawan
Benjamin and keyboardist Al MacSween.

In addition to bristling against ethnic stereotype, Korwar reflected on a label 
he’s often branded with, even by those with the best intentions. “I’ve never talked
about my own music as being spiritual,” he said, “but that’s the first tag you get
when you start playing jazz as an Indian, is spiritual jazz. I’m not saying that
I don’t subscribe to ideas of spirituality. I almost stay away from them because
I know the first time I start saying the word ‘spiritual,’ it’s going to go completely
out of control.”

![Sarathy Korwar Performing at the BBC Showcase at Winter Jazzfest](https://i0.wp.
com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/202003/SarathyKorwar-BBCIntroNYC-
Vidishacred-4.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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