Sunday 4 March 2018

Kartick Kumar Rare 1970 'Sitar'

I was fortunate enough to find two copies of this rare Polydor release of Kartick Kumar - but not fortunate enough that they play particularly well. They both have a lot of surface noise... anyway because it's a rare LP, I thought to share it anyway until someone else (ever) shares a better copy...

Kartick was one of Ravi Shankar's senior students. He didn't produce a lot of LPs but his first two with Deutsche Grammophon and Heliodor are fairly accessible and worth a listen. Later works are also very good. For anyone who hasn't listened to his son Niladri Kumar, definitely worth some research. I really love Niladri's style - a really gifted musician who can express a lot of emotion through sitar. There a quite a few good videos on YouTube as well.

Label:  ‎Polydor ‎– 2392 811

Tracks:
A1 - Raga Hemant (Roopak Taal)
B1 - Raga Des (Teen Taal - Vilambit & Drut)
B2 - Thumri - Raga Mihra Pilu

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.
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7 comments:

  1. Richard4 March 2018 at 23:17

    Thanks. Kartick Kumar was definitely one of several of the last century's most underrated sitarists. These philips LPs are much harder to find that the two DG LPs I posted on my blog and i thank you for doing the work in both acquiring the LPs and transferring them.
    His son Niladri is truly an exciting player, but i would rather listen to his cousin (and gurubhai) Indrajit Banerjee than Niladri, because of Indrajit-ji's exquisite alap sections and complex left handed technique -- the first time I heard him perform I was thinking of a different Banerjee. I admit to being a little bit prejudiced because of personal reasons.
    Anyway, I believe that Universal Music now owns both the Philips and DG catalogs and could release a small box of KK recordings. That would be amazing.
    KK is still alive and there was some talk a few years ago of a short US tour. This seems to have never developed, sadly.
    Thanks again, mate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kirrin5 March 2018 at 09:38

      I haven't really listened to Indrajit Banerjee before, but now I will definitely go have a listen. It would be great if they did re-release KK's work, but I'm not holding my breath. By the way, I think it was you who recommended on your blog to order Kartick's 'Raag 'n Moods' CD on that website (from Canada?). Anyway I ended up taking the advice and was very happy! I did have this record, but the CD was superior and featured the full content of the recordings. Thanks!

      Delete
  2. sgirish15 March 2018 at 03:59

    Lovely and enjoyable music. Thank u

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5 March 2018 at 15:32

    Many thanks Kirrin !

    Cheers,
    PS.

    ReplyDelete
  4. apf25 September 2019 at 12:02

    Thank you !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jonno2 April 2020 at 15:59

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Erie Sewing Machine Repair23 December 2022 at 05:16

    Grateful for you writing this blog.

    ReplyDelete

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