LOS ANGELES TIMES
Aug. 19, 1997

Unique Vas Sound Unites Voice, Drum
POP MUSIC REVIEWS

By DON HECKMAN
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The two most essential instruments of music are the voice
and the drum. Vas, a new world-music ensemble, focuses on
both the polarities and the attachments between those elements
with the singing of Azam Ali and the drumming of Greg Ellis.

The duo's performance at Luna Park on Saturday night added
colorful supplemental support from cello, harmonium and tamboura,
but the heart of the performance rested in the dynamic interaction
between Ali and Ellis. Most of the music came from the
pair's new Narada album, "Sunyata," a collection of original works,
composed by Azam, that have the feel of traditional Middle Eastern
music.

Azam, born in Iran and educated in India, has a pure, penetratingly
high voice reminiscent at times of Madredeus' Teresa Salgueiro.

Backing her vocals with the chime-like sounds of the santour,
similar to the hammered dulcimer, she was at the center of Vas' music.
A slender figure in a long dark gown, her face framed by long
ringlets of jet-black hair, she filtered her exotic-sounding melodies
into compelling, almost trance-like projections that soon had some
listeners dancing in highly personal approximations of Middle
Eastern movements.

Counterbalancing Azam's ethereal presence, Ellis played a 
colorful assortment of percussion, moving easily from 
tablas to shakers, from frame drum to temple bells.
Both underscoring and countering Azam's vocals, he 
worked with her in almost symbiotic synchronization.

Compared by some to the group Dead Can Dance, Vas is far more
than that: a uniquely individual-sounding ensemble with a 
promising future in world music.