India

 I'm in the midst of negotiations with my travel agent right now. I didn't really like my itinerary for Asia so I wanted to change it. Too much jumping around, South, West, East, North without any real rhyme or reason. I like my journey to have more flow to it. I've changed the master list to match my new agenda but my agent says I booked this awhile ahead & she might have a hard time re-arranging it at this late date. But what am I paying her for, right? Anyhow, India is my first stop either way, so here we are. Then, no matter what, I heading to Nepal. I'm running out of hash, that block of Afghani black is dwindling fast. But back to the real issue here...the musick.

 

Ananda Shankar was born in Almora, Uttar Pradesh, India on December 11, 1942. He did not learn sitar from his uncle Ravi Shankar, but from Lalmani Misra at the much respected Benares Hindu University. Probably the most major career decision he took was to move to LA in 1960 where he rejoiced in a life away from the conservative mentality of India of that time. In America, he got to played sitar with Jimi Hendrix.

On his self-titled 1970s release, Shankar creates great covers of the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” & the Doors’ “Light My Fire” along with many originals of his own.

Ananda Shankar – Ananda Shankar, Reprise Records RS 6398, 1970. 

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Side One –

Jumpin Jack Flash

Snow Flower

Light My Fire

Mamata (Affection)

Metamorphosis

Side Two –

Sagar (The Ocean)

Dance Indra

Raghupati

Highly sought after for years now, Sa-Re-Ga Machan was released in 1981. It showcases Shankar's unmistakable sound which fuses Western & Eastern music so perfectly. Shankar had a desire to incorporate both the traditional instrumentation of Indian classical music with modern Western instruments such as the electric guitar & synthesizer.  On Sa-Re-Ga Machan the two distinct sounds are conjoined perfectly. The album opens with possibly the most stunning piece, the ten-minute title track which sums up the musician's intent perfectly. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how contemporary so much of this sounds being that it is from 1981.

Ananda Shankar – Sa-Re-Ga Machan, EMI ECSD 2636, 1981. 

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Side One –

Sa-Re-Ga Machan

Romantic Rhino

Charging Tiger

Night in the Forest

Side Two –

Jungle King

Birds in the Sky

Monkeys’ Tea Party

Playful Squirrels

Dancing Peacocks

Jungle Symphony

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The Sitar Beat series collected some of the wildest, heaviest, & most psychedelic Indian Funk ever recorded. These volumes are lessons in just how ahead of their time India’s Bollywood composers were in the 60s, 70s, & early 80s. These are Indian deep funk & psycho-psychedelic masterpieces recorded for the Bollywood film industry. There are Bollywood funk classics by acclaimed composers such as Kalanji Ananji & R.D. Burman, with extended breakbeats & re-edits that upped the funk to the boiling point.

How exactly did Bollywood corner the market on awesome. Strange cross-cultural greatness can transpire when musicians from the East hold up a mirror to Western traditions. Similar to what happened with the confounding, weird, & aggressive skewering of punk & hardcore that came out of Japan decades later, music directors from India in the 1970s offered wonderfully twisted compositions rife with Western film score elements exaggerated to extremes, perhaps even beyond Western tastes.

Following the success of the first Sitar Beat compilation CD, a collection of Indian & Indian-inspired European funky selections from the 60s & 70s, here’s Volume 2, with some of the rarest & funkiest tracks recorded between the years of 1970 & 1984. Ironically (Sitar Beat!) only two tracks here feature sitars prominently.

There are sixteen tracks of tasty Indian flavor, blending heavy beats with the sounds of the sitar & the lush vocal sounds of beloved Indian singers. The strange, psychedelic sounds possess their own cultural mish-mash of styles combining traditional Indian instrumentation & melodies with film music’s intensity.

Various – Sitar Beat! Indian Style Heavy Funk Vol. II, Guerrilla Reissues SBR 202, 2007. 

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Side A –

The Witness (Babla & his Orchestra)
Awara Sadiyon Se (Kalyanji Anandji)
Everybody Dance With Me (S.D. Narang)
Wada Karle Sajna (Kalyanji Anandji)

Side B -
Nigahon Ka Adaon Ka (Kalyanji Anandji)
Freak Out Music (R.D. Burman)
Dushmun Title Music (Laxmikant Pyarelal)
Pyar Zindagi Hai (Kalyanji Anandji)

Side C -
Tera Jasia Pyara Koi Nahin (Usha Khanna)
Phir Teri Yaad (Hemant Bhosle)
Main Akeli Raat Jawan (Ajit Singh)
Bekaraar Bekaraar Bekaraar Kiya (Laxmikant Pyarelal)

Side D -
Aaj Mera Dil (R.D. Burman)
Dard-E-Dil (Laxmikant Pyarelal)
Butterfly Version 2 (Keith Kanga)
Laila O Laila (Kalyanji Anandji)

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Charanjit Singh was one of a kind in the Hindi film industry of the 1960s & 70s, a field that already had its share of eccentric individuals. He was a seasoned veteran of countless Bollywood soundtrack orchestras, always turning up at session with the latest new synthesizer acquired at great expense from London or Singapore. He was not, however, widely regarded among his country folk as someone pushing the envelope. His band, the Charanjit Singh Orchestra usually found employment performing for weddings, playing the popular hits of the day. Although he played on many popular Bollywood recordings, Charanjit Singh was never a household name.

In 1982, though, Singh did something unusual. Inspired by the sound of disco imports from the West making waves among Bombay's hipster crowd, he went into the studio with a newly purchased state-of-the-art kit: a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard (The Jupiter-8 or JP-8 as it was known is an eight-voice polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizer introduced by Roland Corporation in early 1981, Roland's flagship synthesizer for the first half of the 1980s); a Roland TR-808 drum machine; & a Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. Singh had decided to make a record that combined western dance music with the droning ragas of Indian classical music. Recorded in two days, Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat attracted a small bit of interest (excerpts finding their way on to national radio) but it was basically a commercial flop. It was quickly forgotten.

In 2002, record collector Edo Bouman came across Ten Ragas in a shop in Delhi. "Back at my hotel I played it on my portable player, and I was blown away. It sounded like acid house, or like an ultra-minimal Kraftwerk." But it was the date on the record that shocked Bouman. Released in 1982, it predated the first acid house record, often regarded as Phuture's Acid Trax, by a good five years. Still today there is raging speculation that Ten Ragas is a hoax cooked up by some Aphex Twin-style techno joker as a prank. Much of the debate is fueled by the fact that Singh made at least 10 albums, all of cover tunes.

But in Singh’s own words, “Frankly, this was the best thing I did. Other albums are all film songs I just played. But this was my own composition. Do something all of your own, & you can make something truly different."

Charanjit Singh – Synthesizing-Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, 

The Gramophone Company of India Ltd. ECSD 2912, 1983. 

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Side One –

Raga Bhairavi

Raga Lalit

Raga Bhupali

Raga Todi

Raga Madhuvanti

Side Two –

Raga Meghmalhar

Raga Yaman

Raga Kalavati

Raga Malkauns

Raga Bairagi

Enjoy,

NØ