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Turning Jewels Into Water
Morning Birds and Distant Drums
Trule - Cat No: TRULE034
- updated:2026-10-06
The new release from Al Wootton’s Trule features “Turning Jewels Into Water,” a duo consisting of Val Jeanty—a Haitian-born artist based in the U.S.—and Ravish Momin—an Indian-born artist based in New York—who blend voodoo, hoodoo, African n'gomba, and drum circles—all drawing from their own roots—with state-of-the-art electronic equipment, creating and exploring a new world of world dance music that is mysterious, sacred, and spiritual, much like the music of a fictional ritual.
Track List
Early into their collaboration as Turning Jewels Into Water, Val Jeanty and Ravish Momin adopted the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’ longtime credo “Ancient to the Future” as a lodestar. Perhaps it seems like a riddle, but the AACM motto offers instruction to take what is sacred from the past and pull it into the present, using new means to make music that resonates with your lineage. Jeanty emigrated to the United States from Haiti in the mid-’80s, while Momin was born in India but now calls New York home. Since improvising together at Pioneer Works in 2017, Momin and Jeanty have integrated a world of beliefs and sounds—voodoo and hoodoo, mbalax and drum circles—into kinetic music made with cutting-edge electronics, from Sensory Percussions drums to Smart Fabric MIDI controllers. They pull the past into the present, then use it to imagine a better future.
Featuring six tracks that explore and create a new sonic world connecting the ancient past to the future, as a diverse array of tribal percussion rhythms—swaying gently and at times sounding both awkward and comforting—overlap and resonate with elements of techno, hip-hop, and scratch-style sounds. Having evolved through techno-experimental and post-punk avant-bass, the stimulating soundscapes are exquisitely designed, beautiful, and utterly captivating. (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA)