For this post we have a wonderful LP by vocalist Malini Rajurkar, who was born in January 1941 in Rajasthan, India. She is an eminent member of the Gwalior Gharana and had at least two LPs released in the late 1970s to early 1980s by EMI. There are several excellent live (audio) recordings of her on YouTube at the moment and I recommend searching for them. There is a video concert embedded here near the bottom of this post.
Equipment used in transfer: Preparation:Ultrasonic cleaning for 20 minutes in water with a few drops of Triton X-100 added, then for 10 minutes in pure clean water. Turntable: Audio-technica AT-LP-1240 Cartridge: Audio-technica AT440MLb Pre-amplification: Vintage refurbished Pioneer SX-780. Recorder: Sony PCM-M10 recorder at 24bit/96kHz resolution Software:Audacity, ClickRepair, and xAct.
It's been a while since I last posted. I'm sure everyone reading this will have busy lives of their own so I won't belabor the point and detail a long list of less interesting topics which occupied my time over the past few months. Regardless, it's good to take a break once in a while and as usual after taking a break, I'm eager to get back in the game. This post is an unofficial live recording by an anonymous (even to me) enthusiast who apparently lives near Nuremberg, Germany. I'll post a slightly edited version of the information they provided with the music and then add some information of my own. I did take the opportunity to remaster the sound slightly, so that some irritating audience noises have been removed, and a very small amount of audio compression has been applied while the tabla is playing. This can sometimes be necessary because the very sharp spikes of sound which the tabla produces can overwhelm the more linear notes from the sitar. Compression, when used inappropriately or indiscriminately, can push the life and "air' out of a recording, so I only use it very sparingly when I do.
The original information is as follows: After a long, long while the local German-Indian friendship club Sangam has finally started to bring new concerts of Indian master musicians to town. For the last 25 years it has invited some of the most famous masters but now they have changed their scheme and will bring only young players, accomplished masters all of them, but of the younger generation. The first such concert took place last week [back in 2010] and it presented two excellent musicians: Hidayat Khan and Sanju Sahai. Both actually are renowned players of both the sitar and the tabla but for this concert Mr. Hidayat Khan, son of Ustad Vilayat Khan played the sitar, like his father did and Mr. Sanju Sahai did play tabla, an instrument he plays in the sixth generation in his family. The interplay between the two was interesting to observe, especially in the first part: Sahai kept encouraging Khan to explore the scale and the melodies of the raga further and further in the Alap and also the Jor for a full half hour until he finally did join him for the equally extensive Gat. Unfortunately Khan did not announce the second raga and I couldn't quite identify the name of the third rag either. It sounded like he said 'Purvi.' [I believe it might be Pilu -- let me know what you think] The graceful tanpura player, Mrs Jaymini Sahai is a bit low in the mix; she is a musical master, as well, by the way, and both practices and teaches Indian dance. Hidayat Khan: sitar Sanju Sahai: tabla Jaymini Sahai: tanpura total time = 123min 26 sec I used the program Audacity to apply a small amount of compression, as noted above, and also to remove some (but not all) extraneous noises. The audio file was obtained on the peer-to-peer sharing site "Dimeadozen." I did not record it, and I obtained it in16bit, 44KHz quality so I cannot offer a 24bit version this time.
This is a nice copy of a flute recital LP by a musician who recorded half a dozen or so LPs for EMI and Music India -- about half of them being duets. As can be seen, this copy has had its share of hard times, but the vinyl inside was in excellent shape.
Bansuri: Himangshu Biswas
Tabla: Shankha Chatterjee
Side one:
Raga Narayani with compositions in slow Ektaal and fast Teentaal
GS Sachdev, a flautist strongly associated with Ali Akbar Khan, has passed away. I own several of his LPs and hope to digitize them soon. Sachdev's playing showed a gravity and soulfulness which is often attempted but not always successfully by younger players... He had a very reserved, serious, and somber approach music and he will be missed.
I was at my favorite local record shop yesterday, glancing through the bins of used and new LPs when I spotted something quite unexpected:
It probably isn't obvious when looking at a picture, but it was certainly obvious when picking these up and holding them -- they are two quite hefty double-LP's released this month by a French record company. These performances have never been released in any form before.
The first LP is from a house concert in Seattle, Washington and the second recording comes from a performance at a university in Seattle about a week earlier. The sources for both of these records came from the archive of Dagar's family and students.
Here are the promotional notes -- I hope the label (whose website is here) won't mind me borrowing them:
Around ten years ago, deep into a cozy and hazy night following a concert with my sound brothers Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg in London (as Æthenor), they graciously introduced me to a recording of rudra veena (a kind of noble deeper bass relative to the sitar, in a way) as performed by dhrupad master Zia Mohiuddin Dagar.
Dhrupad, for those who do not know, is a branch of Hindustani classical music said to "show the raga in its clearest and purest form". It's pacing concentrates heavily on the slow, contemplative alap section and works with specific microtonal gestures and deep characteristics of resonance ... in short I was hooked on this new (to me) and ancient form of music from the first listen, and feel that a more or less continual listening & reviewing of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's recordings in the years that followed have influenced my own approach to music quite heavily (if, albeit, indirectly).
In early 2015 I was able to make contact with Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's son Bahauddin and some of his American students/disciples, primarily Jeff Lewis. Over time we developed a friendly and educational exchange, including access to a massive archive of recordings and developed these two paired titles for my label. It's been a long path to arrive at actually releasing them but also probably in many ways one of the most significant releases I've worked on. And I'm proud to be able to reveal these to date unreleased archival recordings of one of the masters of dhrupad, Z. M. Dagar, to the public for the first time.
Zia Mohiuddin Dagar was the nineteenth generation in a family tradition known as Dagar gharana, a rich lineage which continued and performed the musical form of dhrupad (Bahauddin Dagar continues the lineage as a master rudra veena dhrupad player of note today). Initially, dhrupad was a rigorous, austere, devotional genre that was sung in Hindu temples. But between the 16th and the 18th centuries, it became the preeminent genre in royal courts in North and Central India, and the Dagar gharana developed and continued publicly following the eventual loss of court patronage for dhrupad in the 19th century. The French ethnomusicologist Renaud Brizard covers the story of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar's life and teaching (a long story also in Seattle, my hometown!), the Dagar family and gharana, the rudra veena and more topics in an extensive set of liner notes in this release.
Raga Yaman was recorded at a public concert in Seattle at the HUB Ballroom at the University of Washington in March 1986 (the week after the accompanying release SOMA028 Ragas Abhogi & Vardhani was recorded) at the end of his last tour of the United States. Yaman was a special raga for Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, one of his signature raags. For centuries, Yaman has been considered as one of the most fundamental ragas in Hindustani music and is one of the first ragas which is taught to students. A deep knowledge of Yaman gives a key for understanding many other ragas. It's filled with tranquility, contemplation, pathos and spiritual yearning. .
-Stephen O'Malley, March 2018, Paris, France
And who is Steven O'Malley, you might be wondering. He is a guitarist best known for his "drone rock" group called Sunn O))) - pronounced "sun." He is originally from Seattle but currently lives in Paris.
I find it interesting how many musicians I meet who are performing in so-called Western traditions such as jazz or rock music, but who have a deep interest in Indian Classical Music. I personally know at least half a dozen musicians, including a film composer, several full-time jazz musicians and one violinist for a local symphony orchestra who are taking lessons in Indian rhythm. Those are just the people I happen to know by name in my city. There are other musicians whom I happen to talk to, who share with me their interest in Indian Classical. It always surprises me, each time.
Just a note about download links - none, this time. Go buy the LP or CD (easily available online from the usual suspects such as Amazon) or listen for free (with ads every few "songs") on Spotify, or enjoy the entire albums on the label's YouTube feed. The public concert is available as a multi-part video:
