Hariprasad Chaurasia and Zakir Hussain: Raga Jog - in studio performance recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in England in 1987

The first of two recordings by Hari ji this weekend will be this Raga Jog, recorded in the BBC studios and broadcast for the program "Another World" on May 16, 1987.

This was about the time that Hari ji was suddenly getting wider exposure in England. He appeared on CDs on the ECM and Nimbus labels in 1987 and it was also about this time that I was discovering Indian Classical music.

Hariprasad Chaurasia: bansuri
Zakir Hussain: tabla
(unknown tanpura)

The music was split up as noted below and I have seamlessly joined the pieces together for easier listening. I have not included the extremely brief announcer (total of 21 seconds). No other processing was performed on the audio.

The (unedited by me) original info file for this recording is as follows:

--------------------------------------

Hariprasad Chaurasia & Zakir Hussain
"Another World"
BBC Radio 3 broadcast
1987-05-16

Hariprasad Chaurasia : Flute
Zakir Hussain : Tabla
+ additional musician on stringed instrument??

SB > (recorded, not live) > BBC Radio 3 FM broadcast >
unknown tuner > Aiwa F770 > TDK SA-C90 cassette master >
Cassette playback on Pioneer CT-S550S with azimuth correction >
Sony JE530 A/D (44.1k) > Nomad JB3 > .wav > Adobe Audition > .wav >
CDWAV > FLAC frontend > .flac files

Note: The Sony JE530 is a minidisc recorder, however
a pure digital output is available when using it as a
"passthrough" device. Therefore, despite the presence
of a minidisc device in this lineage there is no MD/
ATRAC compression.


  1. Radio Announcer Introduction       0:09
  2. Rag Jog (Part 1) (Flute solo)     10:44
  3. Rag Jog (Part 2) (Flute + Tabla)  33:08
  4. Rag Jog (Part 3) (Flute solo)      3:21
  5. Rag Jog (Part 4) (Flute + Tabla)  11:39
  6. Radio Announcer Outro              0:12
Total Time : [59:13]

Editing:
Left channel samples x 120% (approximately + 1.5db)
Right channel samples x 135% (approximately + 2.5db)

-----------------------------------------

16 bit, 44.1kHz FLAC file (317 MB)

(after conversion to .wav, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 file (134 MB)

(highest quality mp3 possible - suitable for listening on portable device)

Zakir Hussain and Sabir Khan: live audience recording in Tokyo in September, 2016

Here is a very high quality live audience recording of a full-length concert by Zakir Hussain accompanied by the talented Sabir Khan on sarangi during a concert tour of Japan about a year ago.

It was recorded by the prolific audience taper named "Arashi" from Japan. He specializes in using high quality recording gear (some of which he made himself) and usually is well placed in the auditorium to record -- which is quite important for live recordings.

I received the files split up into 10 sections, but I did not see a pattern of why they were split in that way, so I reattached them. This is a fairly lengthy concert, given modern standards, and Zakir ji sticks to serious classical material and generally avoids the goofy patter and gimmicks he sometimes apparently thinks audiences want to hear.

The original information file which accompanied the audio files is as follows:

ZAKIR HUSSAIN 

date: September 15, 2016 (Thu)

venue: WWW X

city: Shibuya, Tokyo

Zakir Hussain (tabla)

Sabir Khan (sarangi)

Recording & Lineage:

Audience recording by Arashi

COS-11(s)PT > handmade power supply > Roland R-05 > wav (24/48) > PC > Soundforge 7.0 (Tracking) > wav (24/48) > TLH > flac

Total Time is 1 hour, 53 minutes.

I will be keeping this at the original resolution (24 bit, 48kHz) as well as also allowing a download of a CD-standard 16 bit, 44.1kHz version (both FLAC). Many in the live music trading community believe that encoding these concerts to mp3 inevitably results in dilution of the quality of the "pool" of such shows (because sometimes people up-convert from a lossy mp3 back to "lossless" FLAC or WAV -- please try not to do that, by the way). Those preferring mp3 will have to make their own for personal use.

24bit, 48kHz FLAC file (1.1 GB) 

(the highest resolution available to me)

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC file (475 MB)

(after decoding to wav, can either be enjoyed on a computer or be split and burned to 2 CDs)

Girija Devi: live recording recorded and broadcast in 2005 on French radio

A little over a month ago, the great Girija Devi died. She lived a long life and was productive and with strong voice up into her 70s, as this live FM broadcast shows.

For some details about Girija, please see this blog entry:

http://oriental-traditional-music.blogspot.com/2017/10/girija-devi-8-may-1929-24-october-2017.html

and also this news article:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/thumri-queen-girija-devi-passes-away-at-88/articleshow/61212221.cms?&utm_source=Articleshow&utm_medium=Organic&utm_campaign=Related_Stories

Girija Devi: voice 

Sunanda Sharma: voice support

Subhen Chatterjee: tabla

Ramesh Mishra: sarangi

Sudha Dutta: tampura

There are three tracks here, two substantial pieces and a brief announcement by the artist.

I am not sure of the pieces, and if anyone can help me with their identification, I would be very much appreciative of their efforts.

In that line, I must thank the user whose name is "zootype" from the torrent tracker Dimeadozen, which is where I obtained this recording. "Dime," as it is affectionately known, is a tracker where live recordings of music can be shared among music fans via what is called "bit torrent" software. Any artist or venue not wishing to be included can request that Dime not offer recordings which feature them. Because the links for these torrents often go quiet after a few weeks, I wanted to post this on my blog and hopefully help preserve this little bit of cultural treasure for a while longer.

------------------------------

Girija Devi and ensemble 

live at Theatre de la Ville, Paris.

2005-09-18

broadcast on 2005-12-06 by France Musique FM

01 27:29 

02 stage intro 3:06 

03 21:32 

Total time: 52:30 

------------------------------

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC (256 MB)

(after decoding to WAV, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 (120 MB)

(highest possible quality mp3 file; 

suitable for listening on a portable player)

Lalith Rao [Swarashree LR 001] a cassette recorded and released in India in 1988

Here is another Lalith Rao cassette. This one comes from Swarashree via their licensing agreement with CBS India. The quality control for many in this series of cassettes is a bit shy of the very highest mark possible, but this one seems to sound alright, especially after manual azimuth adjustment.

It appears to be the last of my collection of releases by Lalith Rao, but given the current disorganized state of my music study room, there might possibly be more.

With kind thanks to my very good blogger friend "Tawfiq" and his magnificent blog http://oriental-traditional-music.blogspot.com which introduced me to this vocalist and many many other musical treasures. So many people owe him a great deal of gratitude, more than will ever be able to tell him. 

In illustration of this point, allow me to tell you an anecdote. After seeing a local concert by a guitarist from New Haven, Connecticut, I decided to talk to him a bit afterward. We happened to be mentioning music we like to listen to and after I mentioned Indian Classical, his eyes lit up with interest and he immediately told me in a very serious voice that I simply must check out his favorite blog, "Oriental Traditional Music." He was surprised that I knew the blogger and that I even had a humble blog of my own!  

Very interesting to me was that this extremely talented "fingerstyle" acoustic guitarist (think of someone a bit like John Fahey) went on to tell me that a recording by Shamshuddin Faridi Desai had completely changed his outlook on music. We are living in a pretty terrible era, on many fronts, but one bright aspect is the ability for musicians to listen to music that decades ago would have been locked up in people's houses and in ethnic grocery stores and record shops.

And on that note, let's take a look at this cassette.

Side one:
Raga Bilaskhani Todi

Side two:
Raga Paraj

(see the notes for details about the compositions)


Lalit(h) Rao: vocal
Gurudas Borkar (tabla)
Baban Manjrekar (harmonium)

Equipment used in this transfer:
Cassette Deck: Teac W890R (azimuth was carefully adjusted for each side)
Preamp: Parasound PHP 850
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10

Software: Audacity and xAct

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC (351 MB)

(after decoding to WAV, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 (133 MB)

(highest possible quality mp3 file; 

suitable for listening on a portable player)

Lalith Rao: Captivating Swars [Rhythm House 240 339] a cassette recorded and released in India in 1984

A cassette from vocalist Lalith Rao recorded in 1984. An hour of very spirited singing especially suited for listening during an evening in the rainy season.

As always I very carefully adjusted the azimuth for the recording of each side. This makes an enormous difference to the higher frequencies. It only requires a small screwdriver (the kind you use to tighten screws in eyeglass frames) and at least one ear. If you don't know how to do this there are several excellent tutorials on the web.

An LP by Lalith Rao recorded at about the same time as this tape (1984-85) was transferred by the always reliable Tawfiq on his blog:

http://oriental-traditional-music.blogspot.com/2015/01/lalith-rao-raga-bihag-raga-kedar-thumri.html

Equipment used in this transfer:
Cassette Deck: Teac W890R (azimuth was carefully adjusted for each side)
Preamp: Parasound PHP 850
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10

Software: Audacity and xAct

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC (362 MB)

(after decoding to WAV, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 (134 MB)

(highest possible quality mp3 file; 

suitable for listening on a portable player)