Kinsmen by Rudresh Mahanthappa ft. Kadri Gopalnath & The Dakshina Ensemble

Village Voice Jazz Critics’ Poll Best Records of 2008 - #2

Jazz Times Critics’ Poll Best Records of 2008 - #15

Number 4 on Ben Ratliff’s Top 2008 Recordings List, New York Times, Number 2 on Slate’s Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2008 and Number 2 on NPR’s Take Five Top 5 Jazz CDs of 2008

“Make no mistake, Kinsmen is a stylish and evocative blend of indigenous art forms, an extraordinarily successful East-meets-West experiment, and the most stimulating world/jazz soundclash since Ornette Coleman jammed in Jajouka.”
— Mitch Myers, Jazz Times

“Jazz musicians have been experimenting with more ancient musical languages since the late 1950s…”Kinsmen” is special, though…There’s a rough spark of intuition lighting up this album.”
— Ben Ratliff, New York Times

“A sense of integrated cultures pervades the altoist’s approach to jazz. Where many such experiments merely graft traditional jazz over top of Indian rhythms, Mahanthappa employs Indian musical concepts organically. The result is a fresh direction for jazz…”
— Shaun Brady, Philadelphia City Paper

“Mahanthappa and Gopalnath set out to create a music that “ventures well beyond the label of ‘Indo-Jazz fusion’” while being “an opening of a new door for Indo-Jazz collaboration,” and they have succeeded magnificently.”
— Bud Kopman, All About Jazz

Praised by critics as one of the most original composers in contemporary jazz, altoist Mahanthappa’s rare ability to synthesize South Indian music concepts with a range of unexpected influences characterizes him as one of the most important artists in the music today — as Jazz Journalists Association recently echoed by naming him Alto Saxophonist of the Year from 2009-2011.