Fareed Haque: Fareed Haque Group -Garaj Mahal

Haque's band does more with less at the Green Mill
By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published May 14, 2007

Chicago guitarist Fareed Haque long ago proved that he's fluent in many jazz idioms. But his most visionary work, by far, has emerged when he links seemingly far-removed musical cultures.

Last year, Haque reached a new aesthetic high point at the Green Mill Jazz Club, where he offered a stunning merger of jazz improvisational techniques and incantatory Indian ragas. Leading a septet, the Fareed Haque Group, the guitarist dug into the roots of American and South Asian music.

Over the weekend, Haque returned to the Green Mill and established that last year's appearance was no fluke. Presiding over a somewhat smaller band, his Flat Earth Ensemble, Haque refined his musical arguments, blending the music of two continents to create a sound unique to him and his collaborators.

Granted, he's neither the first nor the last musician to find commonalities between the mesmerizing, repeated melodic patterns of traditional Indian music and the riff-inspired improvisations of American jazz. But Haque states this intersection more lyrically, delicately and persuasively than most.

Though the Flat Earth Ensemble is a quintet, it invents textures that suggest the work of many more musicians. With North Indian violinist Kala Ramnath singing and playing insinuating lines, and with tabla virtuoso Salar Nader proving as dexterous with his voice as with his fingertips, this band produced several intricate threads of melody at once.

Not that the music is particularly loud or rambunctious. On the contrary, on Friday night the Flat Earth Ensemble produced mostly soft, fantastically detailed work in which layers of rhythm, color and harmony billowed from one measure to the next. Music so complex, translucent and free-flowing as this never could be written down -- only musicians equally conversant with Indian musical structure and jazz improvisational methods could hope to forge such a sound.

In "Uneven Mantra," the combination of Ramnath's haunting vocals, Nader's pulsing tabla and Haque's fleet guitar technique gave listeners a great deal of musical information to savor. In "Fur Peace," the gently floated melody lines and even-keel dynamics conveyed a sense of transcendence one does not often encounter in jazz clubs. hreich@tribune.com

Haque's guitar a gateway for genre globetrotting
Andy Downing
Published January 12, 2007

Fareed Haque is a bit of an oddity in the local music scene. The guitarist, best known for his work in jazz-influenced projects such as Garaj Mahal and the Fareed Haque Group, is also an accomplished classical player who was commissioned to compose a guitar concerto for the Fulcrum Point Ensemble--a Chicago-based grouping that experiments with genres from Latin to rock and beyond.

"He reads like a classical musician and plays like a great jazz guitarist," says Howard Levy, who met Haque more than two decades ago while playing saxophone in a park outside of the guitarist's apartment in Evanston and has since recorded with him on numerous occasions. "I'd say those two traits are very rare in one person."

The dichotomy reflects Haque's well traveled childhood. Though most of his schooling took place in and around Chicago, the guitarist (who is of Pakistani and Chilean descent) frequently spent his summers abroad, passing time in Chile, Spain, Pakistan, France and Iran. Much of the globetrotting centered around his father's work; as a microbiologist with the University of Illinois, Haque's dad spent time in Iran as an adviser and crisscrossed the map working for a handful of educational foundations.

Each stop offered another opportunity for Haque to absorb the local culture. In Spain he would listen to lively gypsy waltzes, learning complex song structures that had been passed down through generations. In Iran he studied with a teacher who played Persian guitar, violin and classical guitar, mastering dozens of Iranian folk songs.

"Iran in 1975 was a very culturally diverse place," says Haque, reached in Seattle in the midst of a West Coast tour. "The idea of someone playing Persian folk music, Spanish guitar and Armenian opera was not a big deal. It's something we consider unusual in America, but it's not unusual around the world."

Listening to the Fareed Haque Group's music, one gets the sense that the planet isn't nearly as large as it seems. Composed of a tabla player, Indian violinist, keyboardist and an agile rhythm section, the ensemble marries American jazz with Indian raga. On songs such as "Ragas for Kala," Salar Nader's lively tabla playing dances against a shuffling New Orleans rhythm in an East-meets-West mashup as funky as it is natural.

"I was raised among these sounds. It wasn't that out of my experience," says Haque, who notes that his parents' record collection contained everything from classical to flamenco. "There was all this amazing music from the get-go, so it was difficult not to absorb it in my bones."

Haque, 44, who has been playing guitar since he was 11, studied jazz guitar at Texas State University before transferring to Northwestern University, where he completed his studies in classical guitar. He is currently a professor of jazz and classical guitar studies at Northern Illinois University.

But even in the academic setting, Haque is something of an outsider. "I've taken students' books and burned them. I've thrown them away," says Haque. "It's like, `Dude, you don't need these. If you can't hear you can't play.'

"If I play the notes to a song right I've only learned about 10 percent of it. If I have one mission it's to let people know that music is still something that has to do with the ears. When you get that pocket right you can keep people dancing all night long."

To that end, Haque is giddy as he recalls the previous night's show, a deep funk exploration that was more Parliament-Funkadelic than buttoned-up concerto, saying: "There are people out there who want jazz to be conservatory concert music. I'm not like that. Music needs to live amongst the people."

2005 Press

World Fusion, September 2005
Haque's jazzy solo shows of what mettle he's made, which is an impressive alloy of styles and influences. There's much to meet the ear here, so repeated listening/grooving is recommended. Haque is an exceedingly gifted musician and is, without question, deserving of much wider recognition. -Robert Kaye

All About Jazz, April 2005
Throughout, Haque-on assorted electric and acoustic guitars, as well as a sitar guitar-demonstrates a remarkable ability to blend a variety of influences. At the end of the day, Cosmic Hug is a jam band/fusion record, but it doesn't rely on longwinded excess. Loose in approach yet never overstaying its welcome, the Fareed Haque Group is certainly one of the more interesting and distinctive units to hit the jam band scene. -John Kelman

Amazon.com, April 2005
The Fareed Haque Group is opening new doors with a completely fresh approach to world music that grooves and percolates. The group makes its Magnatude Records debut with Cosmic Hug. Cosmic Hug is an unique combination of world, jazz, and jam. Earthy, vital, breezy, electric, and truly eclectic, Cosmic Hug defies easy categorization. The Fareed Haque Group have a sound that will appeal to many while compromising to no one.

Space Rock UK, March 2005
Moving fluidly between jazz and classical guitar with a healthy dose of world music sensibilities, Fareed's versatility has created a demand for him with prominent artists in both genres and beyond. He's a virtuoso guitarist, playing acoustic and electric guitar, sitar and even a hybrid guitar/sitar.

His band, the Fareed Haque Group, incorporating a DJ and a tabla player alongside traditional instruments, has been described as a "tantric meditation." With diverse cultural and musical influences, the Fareed Haque Group is opening new doors with a completely fresh approach to world music that grooves and percolates.

Fareed Haque Discography