S/D: Indian / Hindustani / Karnatik fusion music

Search: Debashish Bhattacharya's sumptuous & delightful Hawaiian & gypsy influenced slide guitar esp on Calcutta Chronicles

Destroy: Ali Akbar Khan's unbelievably bad Journey & Garden of Dreams. Was tempted to make a defend the indefensible thread abt these albums but thought it might be a bit niche. I can't think of a comparable case of such an otherwise immaculate discography being sullied by such spectacular stinkers, they're so bad it makes me wonder if I'm missing something

no ideas but i'm interested ITT

What don't you like about Garden of Dreams?

the harmony, the key & chord changes. has he retuned his sarod to do this? the instrumentation also helps makes it sound frothy and saccharine and thin to me. there is such incredible weight to his playing normally but it's all gone

It sounds fine to me tbh, tho the new age-y sheen is there I don't think it's overwhelming. I'm generally pretty comfortable with - I dunno what the word would be - new aginess I guess?

Have to admit despite having a bunch of records from the subcontinent I probably couldn't draw critical distinctions much but I don't tend to listen that way.

yeah I recognise I am more or less alone on ilm at this point in raging against the insidious new age influence on otherwise noble instrumental music

I don't hate all new age music, it's just this uncanny valley/no man's land/middle ground stuff that I can't abide

Anyway I don't know enough so recs are all good. Most stuff I know isn't fusiony.

debashish otoh, how can you resist?

https://d15v4l58k2n80w.cloudfront.net/file/1396975600/35834580275/width=1280/height=720/format=JPG/fit=crop/crop=0x375+4095x2304/rev=0/t=406424/e=never/k=21e4cdb0/Debashish+Press+Shot+3.jpg

Just listening now 👍

Good thread idea. Some of my favorites:

Dagar Brothers
Hariprasad Chaurasia
U Srinivas (Carnatic music on mandolin!)
Brij Bhushan Kabra's Indian Slide Guitar
lots of stuff on the Nimbus label

I also find that I get into particular instruments more than particular artists, and will go on deep dives just listening to sarod or surbahar players, for instance. There's a wide, deep world of amazing music out there.

Hariprasad Chaurasia & Zia Mohiuddin Dagar w/ his biiiig veena are as good as it gets ime. None of the other rudra veena players I've heard have been as good. Not heard fusion records by either of them tho, any particular recommendations? What are they like? Will check the rest which I've not heard of.

Don't think it's v controversial to deem Terry Riley's more Indian-influenced stuff like Shri Camel, the perhaps superior live recording Last Camel in Paris and A Rainbow in Curved Air as classics. Saw him live a few years ago playing with fusion stalwarts George Brooks (sax) and Talvin Singh (tabla), and it was really magnificent - spacious, slow, intense, great acoustics, esp Brooks - but the records I've heard from both are nothing like that and not at all to my tastes.

Do you mean fusions of these musics with any kind of Western genre? Lots of good Indo-jazz music: Rajna Swaminathan, Rez Abbasi, Avataar. Agam did some good Carnatic/prog-rock fusion.

A case could be made but I never really think of people who play straight Carnatic music with mandolins, guitars, synths, saxes, etc. as the lead melodic instrument as doing fusions, as the pieces are never composed for specific instruments in the first place. The violin is e.g. as much of a canonical Carnatic instrument as any other.

I intended this to be as broad as possible; anything fused with Indian classical music. Talk abt Mahavishnu Orchestra or Jack Rose if you like! Debashish Bhattacharya is the only example I can think of where I think I prefer his more idiomatic fusion stuff to his straight Hindustani recordings

Charanjit Singh another relevant classic known to most on ilx

erm.. Joe Harriott's Indo-Jazz Suite? i don't if it meets the criteria of this thread but it is aces!

Haven't listened to it in a long while, but Quareeb by Najma was one of my most played records of 1987.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHEUkkUjNmk

I guess there probably isn't enough interest to sustain a dedicated Indian classical thread, but (to state the obvious) some of this fusion-type stuff we're talking about has little in common with the intricate systems of Hindustani or Carnatic music.

That said, this VM Bhatt / Ry Cooder album is the business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKE3gDpgd2c

Hell yes to Debashish Bhattacharya - particularly Calcutta Slide Guitar. Also yes to Joe Harriot! In a similar vein, Amancio D'Silva's Integration is magnificent.

Also really like Simon Shaheen & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's Saltanah but that's pretty straight up classical.

Would Ry Cooder's record with VM Bhatt A Meeting by the River be too much of a stretch? Either way, it's great. XP!

see above! I think it's great. The going rates on the secondhand market for some of those Water Lily Acoustics CDs may surprise certain "CD is dead" types

We have a dedicated Indian classical thread, I'm pretty sure!

There are a couple but here is one: RFD: Indian music

the first CD by Colonial Cousins is like the perfect pop album to me

that Najma albums sounds amazing!

A Meeting by the River absolutely rules

If you dig that Najma album, I love this one even more. The arrangements are more Westernized, but also more colorful and cinematic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpI6qnFkxu0

I just picked this up and only listened once so can't quite fully recommend yet, but Sarathy Korwar's "My East Is Your West" gathers a group of Indian musicians to play Indo-jazz fusion classics by Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, etc.

City of Words off that Sarathy Korwar record is fire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z_3t5un6sI

wow, it is indeed

xp thx, will def check out more Najma

S: saicobab - peculiar psych/indian/japanese mix: sitar, double bass, riq (tambourine) & yoshimi p-we on vox. lots of dazzling riffage, quite high energy and choppy

It's crazy to me how the western world really knows and understands none of this music. I don't think there's even a mention of Vilayat Khan or Nikhil Banerjee in the history of this board, despite the fact that they're probably the two most popular names in Hindustani classical following Ravi Shankar.

Not making a judgment either way necessarily, but it just seems like music obsessives are relatively well-versed in music from around the entire world, but Indian music is mostly a giant void.

Pretty easy to disprove your "no mention" supposition about the board via the search function -- maybe you're not aware that this is not the only thread on this topic? At any rate I'd wager it's less about a lack of interest and more about intimidation around the level of knowledge required to understand / enjoy / interpret this music, i.e. become "well-versed" in it. What books do you read? What websites? etc. The learning curve is, or at least appears to be, much steeper than in other cases imo.

And speaking personally, I feel like my knowledge of non-pop East Asian music is far far poorer -- not only can I not name the equivalent of Vilayat, I don't even really know how to categorize what I don't know.

Some other threads if you're actually curious:

Indian Classical
RFD: Indian music
Ravi Shankar
Carnatic Music Recommendations?

Plus various mentions on "world" music threads, long song threads, etc.

This thread is more about fusions but FWIW zacata, from Dec 15 to Jan 15, I watched/listened to at least one Carnatic concert a day via the virtual Kalakendra festival. I'm happy to talk about it (but prob on a Carnatic thread).

well this is bengali / bangla but really am fascinated with all aspects of this live session

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp6_RawHAD0

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/world/asia/pankaj-udhas-dead.html

Pankaj Udhas, Bollywood Singer and Maestro of the Ghazal, Dies at 72
His soulful renditions of ghazals, or traditional love poems, were featured on the soundtracks of hit Bollywood movies and moved generations of Indians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdmKEX8fIWg

Sawani Mudgal and Khushal Sharma singing magnificently with tabla, mardal, & flute accompaniment live at Kennedy Center ( archived too)