Showing posts with label shenai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shenai. Show all posts

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Bismillah Khan - Shenai Nawaz




Bismillah Khan - Shenai Nawaz
EMI India - EALP-1289 - P.1964




Side 1

A1 Malkauns, teental

Side B

B1 Des, teental
B2 Thumri, Tilak Kamod




Hope this one finds an equally interested audience as the last one. This album is one of the earlier recordings by Bismillah Khan, you just have to love the cover! As far as the presented ragas are concerned, they belong to the part of the day that also allows me to listen, namely the night! The three hours of night before midnight, I'm am usually still listening by the break of dawn, but the best part for listening is really the six hours around midnight.


Not in the South though, where everything mostly finishes up at the latest a little after ten in the evening. Though late nights work in Bombay, it is not so in Madras, where they get up real early. Actually they get up just around the time when I find it necessary to go to bed. Therefore I often miss the morning prayers and chanting by the tank and I always regretted that but, someone has to make sure the passage of night is made safe as well!

I love the intimacy of the Thumri at the end of side 2, and the Des preceding it has a magical ambience and although the surface noise in the beginning of the track is a bit annoying it does get better as the tune progresses and the quality of the music will certainly capture you anyhow. Again there is no visible wear on the copy and it is played but a few times, but alas vinyl is delicate...

I'll post some more instrumental records before I get on to all the vocalists I mentioned before and that I want so much to share with you.

So much music! So little time!

Here anyhow, you can listen to one more great Bismillah Khan!





Bismillah Khan - The Soul of Shahnai





Bismillah Khan - The Soul of Shahnai
EMI India - ECSD-2833 - P.1979




Tracks

Side A

A1 Vignettes of Poorab Tradition - Kajri
A2 Vignettes of Poorab Tradition - Poorbi
A3 Vignettes of Poorab Tradition - Chaiti

Side B

B2 Melodies of Love - Raga Tilak Kamod - Jhaptaal
B1 Melodies of Love - Raga Jogiya - Tritaal




I promised before to post more Bismillah Khan! He is one of the musicians who more than many, over the years, since I first heard his mellifluous but never frivolous shenai in the sixties, that constantly have helped me in my life! The compassion and warmth that I feel emanating from his person and his breath through the reeds, have helped to clean both my ears and mind from the travails of this dusty world. To many listeners to the musics of this blog he needs no description, and the long artistic career beginning all the way back in the third decade of last century and spanning into the first of this one. Fortunately his recordings proliferated during the late sixties and early seventies as those recordings, to my ears are his prime ones. There certainly were many good recordings over the years to follow, although I think many of those had the Ustads shenai drowning by the sound of the "Party" and by poor mixing, where percussion was given too much prominence.

I will continue to post some more LP's of mostly indian pressings, and although almost all of them are still in mint condition, there is the occasional surface noise, some pops and other artifacts due to pressing technology of the times. I am not trying to filter or edit anything except pops and clicks between tracks. I may update some of the more valuable posts later if I get enough time to do any filtering and editing, but as it stands all my rips will be left as intact as possible! On occasion there is slightly more noise in the beginning of an LP-side but that often just goes away after a few seconds into the record.

The music is anyhow magnificent regardless and I hope you will enjoy this as much as I and his Excellency with whom I share my great admiration both for the person and the musician Ustad Bismillah Khan! And some more good news is that his Excellency has already committed some other items from his collection for me to share with you later on.




Ustad Bismillah Khan Sahib (Urdu: استاد بسم اللہ خان صاحب; March 21, 1916 ? August 21, 2006) was an Indian shehnai maestro. He was the third classical musician to be awarded the Bharat Ratna (in 2001), the highest civilian honour in India and gained worldwide acclaim for playing the shehnai for more than eight decades.

Bismillah Khan was perhaps single handedly responsible for making the shehnai a famous classical instrument. He brought the shehnai to the center stage of Indian music with his concert in the Calcutta All India Music Conference in 1937. He was credited with having almost monopoly over the instrument as he and the shehnai are almost synonyms.

Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India and had played shenai to audience across the world.He was known to be devoted to his art form that he referred to shehnai as his begum, wife in Urdu, after his wife died. On his death, as an honour, his shehnai was also buried along with him.He was known for his vision of spreading peace and love through music.

Khan had the rare honor of performing at Delhi's Red Fort on the eve of India's Independence in 1947. He also performed Raga Kafi from the Red Fort on the eve of India?s first Republic Day ceremony, on January 26, 1950. His recital had become a cultural part of India's Independence Day Celebrations, telecast on Doordarshan every year on August 15. After the Prime Minister's speech from Lal Qila (the Red Fort,) in Old Delhi, Doordarshan would broadcast a live performance by the shehnai maestro. This tradition dated from the days of Pandit Nehru.
[edited from the Wikipedia]

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ustad Bismillah Khan & Prof. V.G. Jog - Duets



EMI Music of India Series - ③
Ustad Bismillah Khan & Prof. V.G. Jog - Duets
EMI Great Britain - ASD 2312 - P.1965



A1 Raga Jai Jaiwanti

B1 Raga Bahar; Dhun in Mishra Khamaj



Here is the second LP that managed to buy and that I talked about in my previous post.
It was also a jugalbandi of the same wonderful Bismillah Khan with the delicate violin of V.G. Jog. I continued to stay in a blissful state and although there had been some strong opposition from some family members about this record being played all hours of the day I was very happy when my mother some time after I had moved away from home asked me if I could make her a cassette copy of these two records she missed them badly and over the years I shared with her many of the later trouves of classical Indian music. She really had very good taste and open ears when given the chance to listen.





Vilayat Khan & Bismillah Khan - Duets



EMI Music of India Series - ①
Vilayat Khan and Bismillah Khan - Duets
EMI Great Britain - ALP 2295 - P.1967



A1 Duetto - Jugalbandi - Raga Gujaree - Todi

B1 Chaiti - Dhun
B2 Bhairavee - Thumree



In the late fifties and early sixties there were very few possibilities for an adventurous kid like myself to hear any non "western" music. (please excuse the expression it is really as daft as the expression "World"-music, but I hope you interpret it as according to my intention) I remember trying hard on the shortwave to find any such music and remember at least now and then finding some arabic music probably from French stations catering to the north African diaspora.

Mostly, if there were any hints at all at such music it was just to add some exotic flavour in movies and almost never autenthic at that. This was especially true in the northern countries of Europe and even more so if you like me were born and grew up in a small rural community with no dedicated record dealers but where the whole stock of records were sold in the basement of the bookshop where they would not let you in unless it was clear that you really appreciated Western Classical music and would behave. Even Bill Haleys "Rock around the clock" was frowned upon and when my father ordered a copy of that on 78 rpm from them i was already stigmatized. The only other source for records were by the same shop that made a better living selling Milk, Bread and Butter. But there, to my utter disbelief, one day when scrutinizing their sale of left behind LP's with music that none of the locals would wrap their ears around, there in the daily supplies shop, right next to the shelf's of children toys, I was pulling up two Indian classical LP's in the EMI Music of India Series vol. 1 and 3. They were at half prize, a ridicilous sum today but still astronomic for a teenager like myself back then. I could not afford them but I insisted that the shop assistant, even thou he said that no one would buy them anyhow, put them aside in my name, and I made a promize to come up with the sum whitin two days. Those were sleepless nights and my mother who always supported me especially in quest for music still reluctantly and not really seeing what an opportunity this was, finally caved in and gave me the money to buy one of them. Terrible dilemma to choose and I had not heard a single note from either albums. I went with the most "autenthic" looking picture, I think it was the instruments and the concert mat that got me. And I bought vol. 1 but still insisting that they keep the other volume a few more days.


The clerk agreed, but could not believe that I wanted both, as they had been delivered to the store by mistake and that they had actually ordered other records but gotten these as the catalogue numbers had been similar or something like that. He even agreed to knock of a little more on the prize and I went home to listen to the first LP. The feeling was none other than total bliss. Finally I had heard real music that was not just trying to entertain you but regarded the listener as also having a soul and maybe in need of healing. The music was like a flight, a long journey at times floating down the river, a wonderful vehicle for the extreme longing I was specializing in, but at the same time a reliever of pain. I was completely overwhelmed and after repeated listenings also entering a satiated stage like I had finally gotten nourishment for my mind and not only heart and they they were one, and a feeling of coming home at last.

Nowhere was this occidental feeling of a rift between the body and soul, between the heart and mind. And finally, after listening over and over again I was in a constant state of total bliss.
A few days went by and I don't really remember how, but I think I found and sold scrap metal to a scrap dealer and came up with most of the money myself, probably my mother helped out a little again and I got the second record! This time at half the half prize!


So here is the first LP of Indian music that I heard and I am ever so thankful for that wrong delivery, as my life since then, has never been without a serious amount of Indian Music. These were not the orthodox classical repertoire as it had become a fad with "Duets" i.e Jugalbandi, actually still a very vital genre, but not always with as good results as these two samples. The quality is preserved here in spite of the at the time nouveauté, mainly because of the stature of the performing musicians. I remember the first listen to shenai to be overworldly and I have a special soft spot for Bismillah Khan ever since. I had only heard something similar litstening to the soprano of John Coltrane. Something that also happened around the same time as this.