Recommend classical Indian vocal music

Cafe Society
1

Hey Dopers!

I’m looking for a recommendation in music. I’ve got the soundtrack to Lagaan and really enjoy the first few songs on the CD. Those tracks seem to this Anglo to be classical/folk traditional Indian songs sung in Hindu.

Anyone know of a CD or artist I can search out that might give me more songs similar to those? I’m aware that Lagaan is a musical and hence, I might not have heard anything close to the authentic tradition. But I’d still love a recommendation, as I really enjoy the music and so do my kids.

Mrs. Furthur

2

I have the Golden Voices from the Silver Screen CD series (Vol. 1, 2, and 3). All are quite good (though are from Indian musicals a bit older–from the 60s and 70s, not as contemporary as Lagaan).

Also, Indian (non-vocal) classical music is well represented in this CD, a survey of the film music (by Ravi Shankar and others) of the films of the legendary Satyajit Ray.

All worth having, IMHO.

3

Oh man, I came in to say Ravi Shankar.

Try some Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar. They sang a lot of Hindi movies but classical also.

9 out of 10 Hindi movies are musicals. We don’t call them musicals. We call the *other * films non-musicals.

I’ll also reccomend an American or Brit, who knows, his name is Jesse Cook. He has a great feel for that Eastern flair, I love it.

4

If you really mean Indian classical music, I would recommend this site as a starting point.

5

I like Pandit Jasraj. He is awesome (Hindustani vocal classical). Also Bhimsen Joshi.

There are a number of classical traditions in India. Namely, there are northern classical non-devotional (generally termed Hindustani) and the southern non-devotional (Karnatic). There is significant overlap with both into Hindu devotional music. I know little about Karnatic and devotional music artists. They both follow a general Raga (or Raag) structure and rules. Vocal music is considered the epitome of all classical music, because of the variety of sounds employed. If you listen to some of the best sitarists, their goal is often to mimic the sound of the voice (the gayaki school of playing).

There is also Sufi Muslim devotional music, Qawwali, which can of course be considered classical as well. It is very prevalent in India. For most Westerners, this begins and ends with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, although there are quite a few other good artists (the Sabri brothers and the son of Nusrat come to mind).

Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, and the like mainly sang film music, but I believe most of them did some classical. For instance, there is a duet (jugalbandi) between Ali Akhbar Khan (master of the sarod) and Asha Bhosle which is quite nice.

A good place to quickly sample a lot of different artists is www.emusic.com, which has a relatively nice selection of Indian classical albums available for download at $0.25 a track (the first 50 are free, though). They have a few by Pandit Jasraj and Bhimsen Joshi.