Jhampalaya II

Ivory Ganesh Meets Doctor Drums is a collaborative studio album by Canadian pianist Paul Plimley and Indian mridangam artist Trichy Sankaran. The album released on June 23, 1998 under the Songlines label in CD format. The recording explores improvisational fusion between Western avant-garde jazz and Carnatic rhythmic traditions.

The album features seven tracks with a total runtime of approximately 68 minutes. The seventh track, Jhampalaya II, spans 18 minutes and 33 seconds and serves as an extended improvisational dialogue between Plimley’s prepared piano techniques and Sankaran’s mridangam patterns. The composition integrates polyrhythmic structures with dissonant harmonic clusters, reflecting the artists’ cross-cultural experimentation.

Plimley employed extended piano preparations and percussive attacks to complement Sankaran’s traditional South Indian drumming vocabulary. Sankaran incorporated konnakol (vocalized rhythmic syllables) and complex tala cycles into the improvisations. The album’s production emphasized raw acoustic capture without electronic processing, preserving the dynamic interplay between the instruments.

Critical reception at the time noted the album’s role in documenting early 1990s transcontinental jazz-Indian classical collaborations. The liner notes include contributions from both artists detailing their approach to rhythmic counterpoint and spontaneous composition. No commercial singles or music videos accompanied the release. Additional session details or alternate takes remain undocumented in publicly available sources.