"Whether or not you’re familiar with the music, your mind
is likely to be delightfully blown by what Batish
creates." SF Weekly, California
"This fusion is out of this world and ready to be heard
everywhere. .... They were like waves of music crashing,
one Indian, one Western and then both together. It was
breathtaking." Brad Kava - Patch April, 2012
“You could call it sambas, or Afro-Cuban, but it's beat
music—with exotic, more cultural melodies on top,” says
Batish, who describes the blend as “World Beat.” “You
gotta get up and dance,” he says. “I think we don't, as a
society, make it convenient enough for people to relax.
With music we find an opportunity to escape … I can take
my music and relax somebody, or put a smile on their
face; they actually break out of their shell and share.
They take a journey with me.” TREVOR STONEHOUSE - Good
Times Santa Cruz
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"Whether or not you’re familiar with the music, your mind
is likely to be delightfully blown by what Batish
creates." SF Weekly, California
"This fusion is out of this world and ready to be heard
everywhere. .... They were like waves of music crashing,
one Indian, one Western and then both together. It was
breathtaking." Brad Kava - Patch April, 2012
“You could call it sambas, or Afro-Cuban, but it's beat
music—with exotic, more cultural melodies on top,” says
Batish, who describes the blend as “World Beat.” “You
gotta get up and dance,” he says. “I think we don't, as a
society, make it convenient enough for people to relax.
With music we find an opportunity to escape … I can take
my music and relax somebody, or put a smile on their
face; they actually break out of their shell and share.
They take a journey with me.” TREVOR STONEHOUSE - Good
Times Santa Cruz
"Ashwin Batish has broken out of the classical Indian
music mold into an electronic and electrifying style that
is modern in every sense, but does not lose the melodic
and often mysterious sound of India. In his way, he is
making Indian music more accessible to the Western
listener, bringing this music to the ears of people who
otherwise would not make the effort to listen to more
traditional players, such as Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar
Khan. He is bringing great music to all of us." Mary
McCaslin - Santa Cruz Sentinel
"His trademark “sitar power”–which appears on the cap
that he usually sports–was coined during this period.
There is a strongly spiritual and even a metaphysical
quality to the way he describes music. “You are by your
very nature tuned like an instrument,” said Ashwin, “That
is why music is so beautiful . . . With my sitar, if I
play the top notes the bottom notes vibrate–it is called
sympathetic vibration. In the same way, your body has
sympathetic nerves that are already in you so that when
you hear music they sympathize and this is how you can
react . . . There is no theory behind why we do it; it is
just in us. It is one of the laws of nature I would say .
. . Literally we are all vibrations, so that is why a
bunch of notes that are attractive to you are actually a
part of you . . . You are a part of it and it is a part
of you." Sarah Lin Bhatia, California Diaspora
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