Mahanthappa had hoped “Samdhi” would be the album with which he moved from widely acclaimed indie-label releases to one on a jazz-industry leader such as Blue Note. The timing was right: In the weeks before recording, he had released “Kinsmen,” a CD that would make a slew of year-end “best of” lists and earn him a high-profile interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” “I had a lot of media momentum,” he recalls. Then, the economy tanked.
Suddenly, “everybody was just terrified of putting anything out,” Mahanthappa says. “The whole industry was too freaked out to take on anyone new.
“I really thought a major would want it,” he continues. While the record was a departure, with occasional computer manipulation of his instrument and a more rocklike sound coming from electric guitar and bass, Blue Note had lately released boundary-stretching projects by Greg Osby, Jason Moran and others. But though Blue Note chief executive Bruce Lundvall wrote Mahanthappa to say he loved “Samdhi,” the music languished until European label ACT embraced it.
Mahanthappa didn’t twiddle his thumbs waiting for the record’s release. He has led or co-led roughly 10 bands in the past decade, and most of these groups are active to varying degrees. In 2010, he released “Apex,” an acclaimed outing with veteran alto player Bunky Green. Last year, DownBeat’s international critics’ poll named Mahanthappa best alto saxophonist.
“Samdhi” may be a breakthrough with some audiences — Mahanthappa says that the response has been overwhelming and that people who’d never heard him before are “going nuts” at his shows. But for many listeners, 2008’s “Kinsmen” was the real arrival of an artist unlike any other. That album was the result of a long trip to India, where Mahanthappa worked with Kadri Gopalnath, a master instrumentalist who had developed techniques for playing Indian classical music on sax.
Growing up as an Indian American in Boulder, Colo., Mahanthappa was inspired by Indian music but had always been cautious about making it his own. He recalls feeling “an unfair pressure” — partly self-inflicted, but also from schoolmates who didn’t share his background — “that somehow I was supposed to be an expert in Indian music.”
“It was really difficult for me to find a space where I could learn about it on my own terms, at my own pace,” he says. But hearing Gopalnath’s recordings opened a door “to engage with Indian music. I was hearing it on the instrument I was playing — instead of trying to imitate what violinists and vocalists were doing, I could connect in the same way I connect with Trane or Bird,” he says, referring to jazz greats John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.
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