namashkar..... welcome...

along with the upcoming concert listings, we just added links to audio samples of the artists featured for the concerts when they’ve available. we’ll try to make that a regular feature so you can get a sense of what the artists sound like while you’re reading about the concerts. check out the upcoming events page for links to audio samples of nishat khan, nitin mitta, sanjeev abhyankar, ranu majumdar, and n. ravikiran.

gaurav just posted some video clips from the evening of bhajans and ghazals we organized in march. check them out on you tube, and be sure to at least snag a look at the following clips.

the bbc has awards they give each year for outstanding album recordings from various parts of the world. they give one awards per continent, in addition to awards for best newcomer, culture-crossing and alike that are a toss-up for the entire world. that’s a ton of music, so i’d imagine competition is pretty tight… nonetheless, this year, debashish bhattacharya won best album in asia/pacific.

“As a boy, Debashish learned western guitar as well as sitar, but his most rigorous training was a ten-year stint during his twenties studying with Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, the great pioneer of Indian raga slide guitar. It was during this time that he realised his vocation would be ‘to serve as a bridge between raga’s past and future’.”

“Now 43, and officially a Pandit (master musician) since turning 40, he is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest slide guitarists, and has invented his own ‘Trinity of Guitars’. His Chaturangi has 22 strings, which enable it to suggest the timbres of violin, sitar, sarod and veena. The Ghandarvi is a 14-stinged guitar that can sound like a veena, sarangi, saz or flamenco guitar, and the tiny 4-stringed Anandi is basically a slide ukulele. He also has his own three-fingered style of playing which gives him an edge over others when it comes to speed and dexterity, and in 2003, he established a music school in his hometown of Kolkata.” from bbc radio 3

on the morning of august 21st, one of our days greatest shehnai masters bismillah khan passed away. here are some excerpts from news media articles and obituaries in the few days following ustadji’s passing:

“It is given to very few musicians that their name should become utterly synonymous with their instrument. Bismillah Khan was that kind of rara avis. The whole world of Indian music knew him as the foremost virtuoso of the shehnai. He was responsible for raising what one bygone dictionary definition called “an Indian wind instrument of the oboe class” to a hitherto undreamed-of status.” the independant

“Bismillah was able to extract music of such classical purity that his compositions came to represent “the sound of India”. It has been All India Radio’s custom to broadcast a live performance by Bismillah at every Republic Day ceremony for more than half a century.

Bismillah had played the shehnai at India’s first Independence Day celebration on August 15 1948. However, his wish to perform 58 years later, at this year’s occasion, remained unfulfilled because of his poor health.

Although a devout Shia Muslim, throughout his long career Bismillah took issue with rigidly orthodox Islamic elders who felt that playing such music on his shehnai was haraam (contrary to the principles of his faith). Instead, Bismillah – or Khansaheb, as he was usually respectfully called – came to be seen as an example of the successful, progressive culture that evolved out of the Hindu-Muslim encounter in India.” telegraph