This genre-crossing Tiny Desk follows an illustrious line of Hindustani and Western music collisions. Within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, many Individuals had their first style of music from India when Beatle George Harrison performed the sitar on “Norwegian Wooden.” On the identical time, within the classical world, violinist Yehudi Menuhin joined sitar star Ravi Shankar to launch West Meets East, a Billboard chart-topping album that received a Grammy.
Nowadays, as genres routinely tangle and even dissolve into themselves, the broad-minded classical guitarist Sharon Isbin continues the custom. She’s been enjoying and recording with Strings for Peace, a distinguished household of Indian musicians who play the sarod, a darker-toned cousin of the sitar. Amjad Ali Khan — joined by his sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash — represents the sixth era of sarod gamers in his household, which helped develop the instrument itself over a number of hundred years. Their lovely, singing sarods are made in Kolkata with classic teak wooden and goat pores and skin.
Two traditional-sounding works composed by Khan open and shut the set. Isbin’s delicate, rounded tones swap name and response riffs with the shimmering, slippery and stentorian sarods in music that each mesmerizes and reaches ecstatic heights, punctuated by Amit Kavthekar’s percolating tabla.
In between, Isbin alone affords considered one of her calling playing cards: the flamenco-inflected Spanish Dance No. 5, “Andaluza” by Enrique Granados. Composed round 1890, the music, she explains, has multicultural roots — starting with the Romani individuals who migrated hundreds of miles from India to Spain.
In our present musical genre-verse, every part, in all places appears, indirectly, related.
SET LIST
- Amjad Ali Khan: Romancing Earth – Raga Pilu Â
- Enrique Granados: Spanish Dance No. 5, “Andaluza” (excerpt)
- Amjad Ali Khan: Sacred Night – Raga Yaman (excerpt)
MUSICIANS
- Sharon Isbin: guitar
- Amjad Ali Khan: sarod
- Ayaan Ali Bangash: sarod
- Amaan Ali Bangash: sarod
- Amit Kavthekar: tabla
TINY DESK TEAM
- Producer: Tom Huizenga
- Director/Editor: Joshua Bryant
- Audio Technical Director: Josephine Nyounai
- Host/Sequence Producer: Bobby Carter
- Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Kara Body, Grace Raver
- Audio Engineer: Josh Newell
- Manufacturing Assistant: Dora Levite
- Photographer: Zayrha Rodriguez
- Tiny Desk Staff: Maia Stern, Lars Gotrich, Ashley Pointer
- Govt Producer: Suraya Mohamed
- Sequence Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
- VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
