By Paul Sanders (Caribbean Daylight, New York)

The wind puff sounds of a harmonium, the clattering rhythms of a dholak, the metallic clings a dhantal, the frenetic male vocals cascading over a layer of chutney music: when Terry Gajraj’s new album Berbice River released a few weeks ago, it brought along its own context.

Listen carefully; Terry’s latest project is a cornucopia of music, a sort of a “once-upon-a-time” old fashioned romance with art and culture, and more music, ranging from the spirit of the 60’s to the sounds of the contemporary hip-hop and pop.

The obvious centerpiece, against popular sentiments, is Terry Gajraj’s rendition of Akelah a parody of a Bollywood “long-ago” hit song. There is another version of Akelah running around; in the tradition of Rum till I die, wreaking havoc with its own unambitous, dead-end, drunken mental creations.

Terry’s Akelah has the right goods: confident phrasing, rhythmic precision, a flexible and sometimes appealing earthy tone, all the speed you could want and the maturity in the lyrics, its use and expression. Akelah is the anti-thesis of the Rum-Shop series; it is even the brotherly “good guy” response to the groggy version that extols the glorified drunk. The mood of Terry’s Akelah is more sober, more of a series of contemplative exhortations and problem-solving.

This rendition has rich, extroverted moments combining pieces of family history, observation, interpretation and social commentary. The line “It gon kill you up dey, it gon kill you down dey” is an astonishingly lyrical figure of speech that speaks politely of the biological, and the male sexual dysfunction as a payoff when rum (the killer) takes over your life.

Much more can be said about Terry Gajraj’s Akelah. He wraps his voice around a rousing story-song, chronicling the devastation that alcohol brings. Akelah is an artist’s stubborn declaration, a voice of protest, and the eventual indictment of an entire community where rum is a vacation in a bottle.

The underside of this song, however, is in the traumatic line “but you don’t really care what people say.” Daring and truthful, the message in Akelah is still a shot in the dark. Why? Because the irony is that the people who love this song enjoys it most in stupor, in the company of friends at the bar.

Akelah, however, brings out another side of Terry Gajraj which is not quite familiar to many of his fans. That is, he is an Indo artist with a distinct, elevated social consciousness, makes profound observations, thinks hard enough to care and weaves his resistance into his lyrical style of performance and showmanship.

Frankly, Akelah is Terry Gajraj’s anti-alcohol campaign statement which should be taken seriously, not only among fellow artists, but into the homes of troubled families already haunted by the desolation of alcoholism. Nasty Nasty is an attempt to reach a different demographic. It has rich nite-club moods; a sort of hip-hop fused with Indian pop and melodic harmonies propelled by raging musical accompaniments that are bound to give you a strenuous dance work out.

Nasty Nasty crystallizes the cultural currents of the young crowd with its tuneful wildness and exuberance, its playful charm and its sexual energy for a gyrating Saturday night swing.

Guyana Guyana is a collaboration among Terry, Apachie Waria, Janet and Fyah. A dancehall piece with Jamaican influences by any standard, Guyana Guyana is more of an exercise in old time vocabulary. With a somewhat “street” feel and a rapper’s disorienting speed-up vocals to it, Guyana Guyana, like Bigan Farmer and Hot Hot Choka is a journey into semantics.

Dance the Maticore and Ayi Yo Ayi Yo have both wedding themes with brilliant thematic improvisations, as well as slangy humor and quotations; delirious and ecstatic, they urge you to reorient your imagination to a time of the “Drupattie” period.

Except for the bonus tracks which are marginally similar to the originals, Terry Gajraj’s Berbice River has a different feel and sound to it. The CD contains a kind of loose framework for improvising, the musical structure intentionally centers on traditional instrumentation, avoiding much electronic and machine music, thereby presenting a “local” beat to it.

The very distant, yet familiar Sheila Gal and Dularie Beti are testimony that Terry Gajraj is on to something worthy of examination.

The title song of the CD, Berbice River, is not a whole lot to boast about, yet very little to worry on. For one thing, it is new lyrics to an already used up melody. The lyrics notwithstanding, Berbice River sounds a bit tired, old and shop worn. But it doesn’t take away much from the CD.

This CD contains just more than music; it embodies the cumulative body of work of an artist whose endurance in the music field has its own pretty anthology. You sense Terry’s patience, his experimentation with new materials, new influences, and incorporating them with old, nostalgic stuff. Berbice River, for whatever it is, let’s have some more.