Ravi Shankar 1973 'Sitar - Ragas Alahiya Bilawal & Patdeep'

Hi friends. Ravi Shankar is one of my favourite sitar players. I read somewhere a long time ago that saying you admire or love something is worthless unless you can say why. Well I love Ravi's understanding of rhythm from his fascination with south Indian music and the way he uses it in his performances. I love his unique use of the lower register of the sitar in sections of Alap. This is particularly beautiful and always puts me in a meditative state. I believe Ravi was influenced by the Surbahar,  as well as the Dhrupad style, which explains this kind of nod towards it in his playing. You can hear some of this around between 4-7 minutes of Raga Patdeep (Track 2). My understanding is that the Vilayat Khan style of sitar in comparison had its range reduced in favour of more flexibility to produce meend and ornamentation - the aim of Vilayat's music being to imitate the singing style - gayaki ang.

Some of my favourite recordings where you can hear the use of the low register on Ravi's Sitar are "Raga Bairagi Todi" - track one from the 1988 album "Spirit of India" (in fact, this is the first Ravi Shankar recording I ever heard back in 2007). Another is the Alap of Raga Charukauns, track one of the 1986 album "Incredible Ravi Shankar". Both have very good digital versions available on CD.

The reason I'm sharing more background info than usual is because I have a couple more Ravi Shankar LPs that I want to post. I most of Ravi's LP discography - which is quite a lot! Most of these have been digitised fairly well on CD - but then again some haven't. I look forward to sharing a few more with you in the future. Thanks again for your support and loving ears.

P.s. If you haven't read Ravi Shankar's autobiography - I strongly encourage you - it's called "Raga Mala" by Element Books Ltd - the one with the gold cover!

Label: His Master's Voice ‎– EASD 1380

Tracks:
A - Raga Alahiya Bilawal (Vilambit Gat In Teental, Drut Gat In Ektal)
B - Raga Patdeep (Alap, Jor And Gat In Sitarkhani Tal)

FLAC unaltered

FLAC cleaned

MP3 320kbps cleaned

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 FLAC, and then separately edited with: Clickrepair (low settings) then slight reduction on surface noise + normalised to -2.0db in Audacity and exported as FLAC and MP3 320kbps.