VA — India Good Morning
Artist: VA
Album: India Good Morning
Genre: New Age, Indian
Format: mp3
Quality: 320 Kbps
Year: 2009
File Size: 106.99 MB
Track list:
01 Sangit Om — Pan’s Return
02 Oliver Shanti — Sangha’s Love For Amithaba
03 Kiran Murti — Magical India
04 Craig Pruess — Whispers
05 Uma Mohan — Namaskaratha Mantra
06 Marcus Viana — Raga da Terra
07 Guy Sweens — Universal Parents (Feat. Sangit Om)
08 Guy Sweens — Temptation of Mara
09 Guy Sweens — Under the Great Bodhi Tree
10 Guy Sweens — Lord Shiva`s Heart
Ravi Shankar — The Spirit Of India
With the passing of Ustad Alla Rakha (born: Allarakha Kahn) on February 3, 2000, from a heart attack, India lost one of its most influential musicians. Called the «Einstein of rhythm» by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart, Rakha helped introduce Indian classical music to the western world with his tabla playing. A longtime accompanist of sitarist Ravi Shankar, Rakha is remembered for the highly melodic rhythms that he coaxed from his instrument. Shortly after his death, Indian president K.R. Narayanan announced that «an uncommon pulsation has been stilled. His wrists, palms, and fingers produced from the tabla percussion of magical quality which maintained the tenor and tempo of India’s uniquely assimilative musical culture.»
The son of a farmer, Rakha was born in the Phagwal village of Jammu, 80 km from Lahore. Leaving home, at the age of 12, he moved into an uncle’s home in Gurdaspur. Inspired by the playing of local musicians, he convinced tabla player Mian Qader Baksh of the Punjab Gharana (school) to take him on as a disciple. He also studied with Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan, who taught him the melodic vocal style Raag Vidya.
Rakha mastered his lessons quickly. By his 15th birthday, he had begun working with a theater company. After working as an accompanist in Lahore, Rakha accepted a position with All India Radio in Delhi in 1936. He remained with the station until 1940 when he became involved with the Hindi film industry as a session musician. He eventually rose to the position of music director for Rangmahal Studios.
Moving to classical music in 1948, Rakha resumed his career as an accompanist. In addition to working with Ravi Shankar throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, he collaborated with sitarist Vilayat Khan and American drummer Buddy Rich, with whom he recorded the East-meets-West album Rich A La Rakha.
Rakha’s legacy is continued by his sons Zakir Hussein and Fazal Quereshi. His beloved daughter, Razia, died of a sudden heart attack the night before his own death.
Artist: Ravi Shankar
Album: The Spirit Of India
Genre: Instrumental, Indian
Format: mp3
Quality: 320 Kbps
File Size: 127.76 MB
Track list:
Raga Jogeshwari (50:07)
1. Alap
2. Jor
3. Gat I (Tala: Jhap-tal)
4. Gat II (Tala: Ek-tal)
Raga Hameer (24:22)
5. Alap — Gat I (Tala: Tin-tal) — Gat II (Tala: Tin-tal)
Kala Ramnath — Nectar
Kala Ramnath is a tradition-bearer of one of the Indian subcontinent’s most respected and most unique musical dynasties. She can be described as ‘unique’ in its precise sense. Like her cousin Sangeeta Shankar, she is a fourth-generation violin player in a seven-generation dynasty of musicians the first three generations having been court-musicians specialising in vocal music in Tripunittura in Kerala on the southwestern flank of India.She was born in May 1967 in Madras in Tamil Nadu and began playing the violin, a full-sized instrument at that, in October 1969. Her first violin teacher was her grandfather A. Narayana Iyer, one of the instrument’s true visionaries. “What he used to teach me, I picked up very fast. I had good ‘grasping powers’, he told me once.” In an article in Screen, one of India’s most astute music critics and commentators, Mohan Nadkarni quoted her grandfather saying he was «born into the family of vidwan [maestro musician-scholar] Appadurai Bhagavatar,a noted court-musician under the patronage of the Maharaja of Cochin.» A. Narayana Iyer described his father, that is, Kala Ramnath’s great-grandfather, as having «a very good reputation as a vocalist and as being an expert on the violin»; he studied singing and violin playing with his father though tragically he died while his son was still a boy. A pragmatist, Narayana Iyer was forced «to look for other avenues of livelihood.» He moved to Bombay in the early 1920s where he worked as a stenographer. «I did not forget to take my violin with me,» he told Nadkarni. He succeeded in breaking into the Bombay music scene. This included playing violin for soundtrack sessions in films and accompanying musicians like Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, as well as moving in circles that introduced him to the renowned musicologist Vishnu N. Bhatkhande (1860-1936). He stayed in Bombay for a decade before moving back down South. He and his wife Ammini Ammal had four sons and a daughter. All five children, including Kala’s father, T.N.Mani, studied violin under their father.After all, his ambitions lay in teaching, not in basking in the limelight. Only T.N. Krishnan of his sons and his daughter N. Rajam, however, made violin their career and, as his granddaughter recalls, Narayana Iyer «charted the course of their careers.» He tackled the problem of putting them on the see-saw of competitiveness (and sibling rivalry) uniquely. He taught Krishnan violin according to the Karnatic or South Indian system and his daughter the Hindustani or Northern Indian system in order that they would complement, rather than compete with, each other. Initially Kala’s grandfather inducted her into both systems, a bilingual language course as it were, before she took the Hindustani fork and learned from her aunt, Dr. N. Rajam and her present guru, the magisterial vocalist Pandit Jasraj.Violin played in the Hindustani style has not yet gained the ubiquity it has in the Karnatic classical system. Its kismet may be never to attain a place comparable to the one it has in Karnatic music. Kala Ramnath is doing her utmost to change that imbalance with her fluidity of touch, her subtle developments in violinistic technique and, above all, her interpretative powers.
Artist: Kala Ramnath
Album: Nectar
Genre: Indian
Format: FLAC
Year: 2006
File Size: 95.78 MB + 95.78 MB + 95.78 MB + 61.66 MB
Track list:
1. Raag Bihagada Alap
2. Raag Bihagada Roopak Tal
3. Raag Bihagada Teental (16 beats)
4. Raag Rageshri Alap
5. Raag Rageshri Jhaptal (10 Beats)
6. Raag Rageshri Teental
7. Raag Bhairavi (Meera Bhajan Pt1)
8. Raag Bhairavi (Meera Bhajan Pt2