Tales from the Punjab

Shez Raja is the kind of bass player who eschews the back row in favour of centre stage. In the tradition of bass virtuosos like Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius, Raja’s resonant playing fills the harmonic space ordinarily occupied by guitar or piano, while also supplying a healthy dose of low-end propulsion. Tales from the Punjab was born of a journey to the region to reconnect Raja with his South Asian roots. In the city of Lahore he collaborated with a group of subcontinental maestros to record the three improvisations and three compositions that make up the record.

The improvised and the composed blur pleasingly together. Ahsan Papu’s bansuri (flute) swoops and flutters from the melodies of ‘Angel’s Tears’ and ‘Mantra’ to absorbing improvisations on ‘Adventures in the City of Wonders’ and ‘Maye Ni Main Kinu Akhan’. The latter opens with vocalist Fiza Haider singing verse from 16th-century Punjab poet Shah Hussain. Raja might be capable of fusion fireworks but he deftly calibrates his playing to his collaborators, yielding a suite of captivating musical dispatches.