The Mix
W
hile
Mumbai-
bred
drummer/
composer Aman Jagwani
may not have come from
a musical background, his
mother however did gift him
a keyboard as a seven-year-
old which went on to change
his life. He says, “After some
lessons, I began exploring on
my own with the keyboard,
the guitar and some
percussion instruments.” By
the time he was 12, Jagwani
began learning drums from
Mumbai-based Benjamin
Sequeira after which he
joined city-based True School
of Music for a year and since
2016 has been studying
Drum-Set Performance as
well as Electronic Production
and Design at Boston’s
Berklee College of Music.
It was at Berklee
where Jagwani began
developing ideas for his
reflective seven-track
debut album, Essentially
Entangled, released recently.
He says, “After meeting,
watching, learning from
and collaborating with
some extremely talented
and virtuosic artists, I was
heavily inspired to manifest
my musicality beyond the
drums.” As soon as Jagwani
had all the songs ready,
he put a band together at
Berklee to “rehearse, refine
and record the album.”
The jazz-
leaning Essentially
Entangled opens with a
syncopated drum and bass
funk/jazz number titled
“Mark One” an ode to
American drummer Mark
Guiliana. The push and pull
effect on “Hyphen” according
to Jagwani “conveys how
sometimes we enjoy an
experience and want to get
deeper into it but external
circumstances prevent it.”
The song features vocals
by Berklee voice professor
Steven Santoro and a
sublime sax solo by Nick
Bredal.
The record then slows
down with a calming 90
seconds of “Second Word
(Interlude)” before the
rhythmic “Bridges.” “It
[“Bridges”] is about flowing
smoothly and discovering
[or] building bridges
through one’s obstacles
through introspection,
self-awareness and self-discovery,” says Jagwani.
The emotional “Deepak”
was written by the musician
as a tribute to his late
grandfather. “There are two
contrasting sections in this
piece, one is like a straight
eighth smooth-flowingballad and the other is a
vintage-sounding staggered,
delay-beat, bluesy hip-hop
section reflecting [late
American rapper/producer]
J-Dilla’s grooves. This was
to represent the range of
my grandfather’s multi-faceted personality,” Jagwani
explains.
According to the
drummer, the penultimate
melodic track “Window” “is
about perspective and the
way we choose to see the
world resulting in differentfeelings, experiences and
outcomes.” The record closer,
the jumpy piano and drum
track “Redux,” features
pianist Ron Cha and Jagwani
improvising for majority of
the song. “We did not plan
anything about this exceptthe metric modulation at
the end. This was actually
recorded during the same
take as ‘Window.’ Ron just
started improvising and I
joined him. It is like an outro
for the album and also a
representation of Ron and
my friendship,” says Jagwani.
Essentially Entangled was
recorded at The Edge Studios
in Quincy, Massachusetts
in the U.S. by Keith Assack
and mixed by Aleksi Godard
and Isaiah Weatherspoon.
The LP was mastered by
Adam Loeffler and self-
produced by Jagwani with
help from Cha and New
Delhi-bred guitarist Pritesh
Walia.
Having already played
an album launch show in
Boston at Berklee’s recital
hall, the musician is now
lining up more shows in
Boston and New York as
well as an Europe tour in
October. The musician
has also begun working on
new material that he says
will “combine elements of
jazz with electronics along
with engaging grooves and
vocals inspired by break
beat, hip-hop, neo-soul etc.”Aman Jagwani
Releases Introspective Debut
LP ‘Essentially Entangled’
The Mumbai drummer/composer shines on the seven-track record
10 | Rolling Stone | July 2019
DAVID BRITTO