Album Review: ‘Secret’ by Sanjay Divecha and Secret

[easyreview cat1title = “Secret” cat1rating = “4” cat1detail = “Self-released”]

Sanjay Divecha & Secret performing at the ‘Secret’ album launch at Blue Frog, Mumbai. Photo: Viral Bhayani

Given his background of Hindustani classical music – he learnt the sitar as a youngster, and jazz, ”˜Secret’ is the sum of many parts of Sanjay Divecha. Having traveled into jazz as a music student in the US, where he played jazz and blues guitar for a number of years at the highest level, Divecha is now reunited with his Hindustani and Carnatic music base, combining the sensitivity of either stream in this ambitious album.

This confluence of several streams of music has been brought out in his new album. It must have been an onerous task to assemble musicians to sing in languages as diverse as Kannada, Sanskrit, Axamiya, Malayalam, Hindi and Oriya. But that is not all. His guest artists on the album are the who’s who of musicians — jazz musicians Louiz Banks on piano, Gino Banks and Kurt Peters on drums, Ryan Sadri , Rhys Sebastian and Shirish Malhotra on saxes, Kishore Sodha and Agnelo Picardo on trumpet, Anand Bhagat on percussion as also Ravi Knypstra on acoustic bass and others assist Sanjay on his album.

The standout sound on the album is Divecha himself playing masterfully on his guitar. One would have liked to have enjoyed longer passages from Divecha. We get to hear that only in the finale and title track. He generously shares the rest of the space on the album with his talented musical colleagues. However, one keeps going back to the mesmerizing number, “Saanwara”.

On the whole it is a diverse album, where different parts will appeal to different listeners but in time, the entire offering will grab you.

Click here to buy ‘Secret.’