Rudresh Mahanthappa Profiled

Source: KQED Arts.

While growing up in Boulder, Colo., Rudresh Mahanthappa received two or three records from his music teacher every week. They were intended for the student to ponder between lessons, and it was thanks to those records that he first internalized prog rock, metal and the many iterations of jazz.

But unlike a teenager shopping in the different sections at Tower Records, for example, Mahanthappa didn’t come to the music with labels already affixed to the sounds — all he knew was whether or not the music spoke to him.