Charu Suri - Turning the key

A woman from Chennai is unexpectedly topping jazz charts, with music that isn't purely jazz. It has ragas woven in. She never expected this, says Suri, 45. Perhaps she should have. At 15, she won a global contest that helped her earn a place at Princeton. Tune into the tale of Rags & Ragas

- Bhanuj Kappal

For a long time, musicians have tried to blend jazz's syncopated polyrhythms and modal harmonies with the intricate melodies and complex rhythms of Indian classical music, attempting to bring these two improvisational traditions together, in closer conF versation.

It's a baton that has been passed down through generations, from the raga-meets-waltz compositions of Shankar-Jaikishan in the 1950s to the 1960s spiritual-jazz tradition of Yusef Lateef and Alice Coltrane and the more recent raga-jazz-rock of Delhi brothers Aditya and Tarun Balani.

Charu Suri's latest album, Rags & Ragas-which hit #3 on the iTunes US jazz charts last week-fits neatly into this storied lineage, incorporating Carnatic ragas into a rich, virtuosic framework of swing, bebop and New Orleans ragtime. But she isn't just spinning the jazz-fusion wheel. Suri's organic, intricate and innovative arrangements create a distinctive sound that is entirely her own.

"Rags & Ragas is an ode to the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, a city that also got me started on my jazz journey," says Suri, 45. "I wanted to showcase the breadth of the raga tradition, and how ragas could transform into jazz."

She is speaking via video call, seated before a piano in her New Jersey home, and occasionally plays a chord progression to illustrate a point.

Suri grew up surrounded by music. Her grandmother, Savithri Surianarain, was a Carnatic vocalist who also played the veena, and taught Suri to.

Her father Rajah Iyer Surianarain loved waltzes, jazz and Western classical music too.

When she was five, the family moved to Nigeria, where her father had accepted a job as CEO with a record label. The house they moved into came with a piano and, one day, as Suri's mother Sarasa Surianarain tells it, the little girl just sat down and started playing.

"My mother says I was like a freak," Suri laughs.