Oriental Traditional Music from LPs & Cassettes: Munawar Ali Khan

Showing posts with label Munawar Ali Khan. Show all posts

Thursday, 10 August 2017

Munawar Ali Khan (1930-1989) - Vol. 1 - Cassette published in Pakistan in 1983

Here the cassette I promised already a while ago. On side one there is in addition to Raga Aimen (Yaman) a Dadra Pahari. Apparently the artist performed reguarly in Pakistan. This is our fifth post of Ustad Munawar Ali Khan.

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Thursday, 27 October 2016

Munawar Ali Khan (1930-1989) - Classical Vocal - LP published in 1980 in India

In 2011 we posted three LPs by Munawar Ali Khan. This fourth (or rather third) LP I only was recently able to obtain, funnily enough from a LP dealer on Discogs in Kazakhstan. Soon we will post also a cassette from EMI Pakistan, recorded live in Pakistan.

Many music lovers lack justice toward him by comparing him to his incomparable father, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Munawar Ali Khan created his own style and one has to appreciate him in himself. I have to say, that I always, from the first LP till today, was very fond of his very relaxed and beautiful way of singing. Even his so-called light classical performances. See his wonderful LP of Punjabi songs: Pahadi & Kafi.

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Note the mistake the label made by naming the Raga on Side 2 also as Raga Bairagi, though giving the names of the compositions correctly (I guess).

Friday, 12 August 2016

Ragni Recordings - An amazing CD collection from Pakistan, published by Zaheer Alam Kidvai. Now available also outside of Pakistan

Last year I discovered Zaheer Alam Kidvai's amazing blog Ragni Recordings, where he presents the 60 CDs he made up to now. The recordings cover basicly three domains: old style Qawwali of the Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana (Delhi Gharana), classical Raga music and recitations of Urdu poetry. Just about a week ago three new releases were published, amongst them two sets of CDs by the great Agra Gharana singer Asad Ali Khan, of whom only very few recordings were available up to now (see below). Zaheer made his releases now available to music lovers outside of Pakistan on Dropbox as downloads in wave format for a very reasonable price. For more details refer to his blog: Ragni Recordings.
As the CDs were only for sale in Pakistan and quite a number of them I found extremely interesting, I tried to figure out a way to get them. I knew already that shipping things from Pakistan is almost impossible.

So I asked Musab who runs the wonderful blog Tangled Up In Blue, mainly on older Qawwali, if he could help me in any way getting these CDs. I was very touched that he responded immediatly very warmly and told me that a Pakistani living in Vienna was about to visit Pakistan and that he would ask him if he would be so kind to bring the CDs back to Austria and then ship them to me from there. That man also responded very warmly to this request and so after a couple of weeks I had these fantastic CDs (and DVDs) in my hands. This man from Vienna - I found out a little later - was no other than Asifmanu, the one behind the fantastic blog Qaul devoted also to older Qawwali and older Raga music from Pakistan.

Since then I was reguarly in contact with Zaheer Alam Kidvai, reminding him to inform me about future releases. As he is a very busy man it took about a year that the next three relaeses came out: two CD sets by the great Agra singer Asad Ali Khan and a double CD by Munawar Ali Khan.
Ustad Asad Ali Khan was one of the foremost and most outstanding students of Ustad Faiyaz Khan. After partition he went to Pakistan. As far as I know there exists only one commercial recording by him, which we posted a while ago here. The recordings published now by Zaheer Alam Kidvai are from two Mehfils. Very very beautiful old style music.
Ustad Munawar Ali Khan is the well-known son of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. We posted on our blog three LPs by him here. This new release is also a Mehfil recording.
All these new releases have an amazingly good sound quality though the recordings are Mehfil (private concert) recordings and were done over 40 years ago.

Among the older CDs especially interesting are the 7 volumes by "Manzoor Ahmed Niazi aur Hamnava", here called Badi Party (Badi means - I guess - greater, older, like in Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, the older or greater Ghulam Ali.) The troupe consisted of four major Qawwals: Manzoor Niazi, Munshi Raziuddin, Bahauddin and Iftikhar Ahmad. All these members formed later (in the 1970s) their own ensembles and were the torchbearers of the original Qawwali of the Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana (Delhi Gharana). The first three became very famous amongst connoisseurs. Today's most outstanding Qawwali ensemble of this old, extremely interesting tradition is the one by Farid Ayaz and his brother Abu Mohammad, the sons of the great Munshi Raziuddin. You find here CDs (and DVDs) by all these artists.