Music And Movies

(Ustad Abdul Karim Khan) We saw earlier in this series how Gurudev Tagore was inspired by Muthuswamy Dikshtar and composed a song based on Dikshitar's "meenakshi me mudham dehi". One more great personality from North, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan was also so enamoured by Carnatic music that he learnt and recorded a few krithis!! You will understand why this is something unique if you know about Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. He was a great musician and was, what the Hindustani people call, the 'khalifa' of Kirana Garana. You can understand the impact his style had on Hindustani music by looking at the 'shisya parampara' of his gharana. Sawai Gandharva, Hirabai Barodekar, Bhimsen Joshi, Gangubhai Hangal, Sureshbabu Mane, Basavaraj Rajguru. All of whom were top class and influential musicians. Abdul Karim Khan was a revered musician of those times and it is indeed surprising to know that such a man took pains to learn and render krithis in a musical form which was qui...

I am interested in listening to various forms of music and I believe this attitude has given me a lot of melody and happiness. In this regard, Hindustani music, with its closeness to Carnatic music, has provided me some great moments. I wanted to share some of them here. Most of my appreciation of Hindustani music was generated by listening to tapes. (I have very rarely been to Hindustani concerts.) As can be expected, being a Carnatic music fan, I get easily attracted to those ragas which are present in both the systems. You can see that in my recommendations as well. I am sure I am missing a great number of Hindustani stalwarts and some of the canonical renditions which would be now considered legendary. If you find something missing please pardon me. My listening as well as knowledge of Hindustani music is limited. All the recommendations are for vocal music. All the tapes I mention below are available commercially. Let me start with one of the first Hindustani tapes which made a ...