Saturday 24 March 2018

Drums of North & South India 1967

This is a live recording of some drum masters released in 1967. I found this LP in a local shop a few weeks ago, it was pretty beat up, so sorry for that, but it plays pretty good considering. I like these thick 60's pressings, they are so much more sturdy than the slim flimsy pressings that started being made in the 70's on-wards. I am learning tabla myself so I enjoy the opportunity to listen to Tabla and other drum solo performances. It's probably not every ones cup of tea to listen to solely percussion, but I think this is an important historical recording.

By the way - I was listening to an awesome Mridangam solo on the great Darbar Festival Channel on YouTube - worth having a listen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hQHRCNwzBc) - what a unique and groovy sound! There is great range of HD videos on this channel updated regularly - I strongly recommend it to any fellow Indian Classical lovers.

Label: World Pacific ‎– WP-1437 (Mono)

Tracks:
A1 - Allarakha - Tala Sawarib (11 Matras) with intro by Ravi Shankar
A2 - Chatur Lal - Ek Taal (12 Matras)
B1 - Ramabhadran & Sivaraman - Variations In Khanda Chapu Tala (5 Matras)
B2 - Kanai Dutta - Jhap Tal (10 Matras)
B3 - Kanai Dutta - Teen Tal


Digitised with: Project Essential II Turntable, Ortofon Red Stylus, recorded as WAV 16/48 in Audacity and saved unaltered (apart from track separation/info tags) as WAV 16/48, and then separately edited with: Clickrepair (low settings) then slight reduction on surface noise + normalised to -1.5db in Audacity and exported as WAV 16/48 and MP3 320kbps.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Kirrin, thanks for the post. Definitely my cup of tihai lol. I studied tabla back in the day (late 70's and 80's).
    Got to hang out with Alla Rakha for a few lessons, thou I must say I was way out of my depth! Jahlib Millar taught me Tabla first, he went onto form "Monsoon" with Sheila Chandra and co-wrote amongst many others "Ever so lonely without you", which was quite a hit in the 80's. Unfortunately he has since passed away, he was such a great guy. He has a you tube channel still under the name Bhilaj with many "Tabla Lessons" definitely worth a look ( https://www.youtube.com/user/bhilaj/videos?disable_polymer=1 )

    Thanks for the Mridangam link too.

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  2. Oh that's a good one! I'm going to use that joke when I have my next lesson! Thanks for the links. It's really cool you got to meet such a legend. I haven't heard of this Monsoon - but there is another more contemporary group called Monsoon (http://www.monsoon-music.com/Monsoon.html)... they do some really cool Indo-Jazz.

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  3. Monsoon "Ever So Lonely" On UK TV Show
    Indo Pop Fusion 1982

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVH8R6PLbk

    Jhalib Millar on Tabla R.I.P.

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