Dhani Harrison can’t help that he sounds just like his dad. It’s not only his singing voice, or his aesthetic voice as a songwriter. When he enthuses about spiritual healing, oneness with nature and collaborating with master musicians from ancient, non-western cultures, he is the very echo of his old man.
But one immediately senses with Harrison, whose father was George Harrison, that he comes by his inheritance honestly. All those years making music with his dad, growing up around meditation practice and Indian classical music and a record label that promoted “world music” to this side of the world culminated in an apple that hasn’t fallen far from the tree — a tree whose eclectic roots grew deep and whose branches reached far from home. Harrison’s latest project is “Dreamers in the Field,” a collaboration with the Tuvan throat singing ensemble Huun-Huur-Tu.
The album was just released on Dark Horse Records, the label George Harrison created in 1974 and which Dhani revived in 2020. In a poetic echo, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the label, of the album “Shankar Family & Friends” and of the accompanying Dark Horse Tour that the elder Harrison took with Ravi Shankar and an Indian orchestra. “My father obviously did a lot with world music,” says Dhani Harrison, 45, via Zoom from his home in England.
The younger Harrison has released several albums as a solo artist and with various bands, but this was his first time on Dark Horse — and “it.
