Budhaditya Mukherjee - Sitar & Surbahar Recital - Cassette released in India in 1988

Here a beautiful cassette by the well known Sitar master. In the past we posted already three LPs by him. See here. 

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Cassettes coming from India have often certain shortcomings. Sometimes it is in the recording itself (like here), but more often in the manufactoring.

Chandrashekhar Naringrekar - Sitar & Surbahar - Music beyond Words - Cassette released in India in 1980

We take now a little break from our Dhrupad Series - as this might get a little too heavy for a number of visitors of this blog - with some cassettes of instrumental music. We start here with a quite rare cassette by the great Surbahar and Sitar master Chandrashekhar Naringrekar, a student of the Rudra Veena master Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar. This cassettes is perfect as a transition from Dhrupad to instrumental music. We had posted another cassette by him in 2011. See here.

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Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Khan Dagar - Ragas Lalita Gauri, Adana, Bhatiyar & Komal Rishabh Asavari

Here we present some recordings from Saptak Festival in 1982 (apparently from a 90 min. cassette) and an All India Radio Program broadcast in March 2001. Many thanks to KF for the recordings and the covers.

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Nasir Aminuddin Khan Dagar (1923-2000) - Cassette published in India in 1985

Here a beautiful cassette by Aminuddin Dagar of the Senior Dagar Brothers. Judging from the sound of the recordings it was recorded at the same time as the LP published in 1983. Bolingo posted this LP in 2011 on his wonderful blog. See here.

On the artist see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminuddin_Dagar

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In my shop on Discogs are still nine volumes of the "The Lyrical Tradition of Dhrupad" series, published by Makar Records, available at a good price. 

See: https://www.discogs.com/seller/Tawfiq49/profile?q=Makar+Dhrupad

Rahimuddin Khan Dagar (1901-1976) - AIR programs & EPs

Here three AIR recordings by the great Dhrupadiya. The two EPs on the second CD were released in 1961.

See: http://discog.piezoelektric.org/hmvindia/index.php?prefix=7EPE. 

Many thanks to KF for the recordings and the covers.
Frontcover: background right: Behram Khan, background left: Allabande Khan, front: Rahimuddin Khan.

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Rahimuddin Khan Dagar (1901-1976) - Raga Asavari

Ustad Rahimuddin Khan Dagar was one of the very few from the 18th generation of the Dagars of whom quite a number of recordings exist. See the  wonderful LP which Bolingo on his excellent blog posted in 2011  It also exists as a cassette. Here we present a long Raga Asavari by this outstanding Dhrupad master. We received the recording on a CD in the early 2000s from our friend DM, who also made the covers. Many thanks to him. 

This Raga Asavari seems to be the same that was published, slightly edited, on the double CD "The Dhrupad of the Dagar Bani", Edizioni Musicali III Millennio, Roma, Italy, 2003. The source of our version here seems to be a cassette, as the timings suggest. Here from the CD the correct track information:

Raga Asavari:

Alap vilambit 

Alap nom tom madhya and drut 

Dhrupad chautal "Ayo jit hi" & Dhrupad sultal "Ana sunai bansuri Kanha" (same composition that the Senior Dagar Brothers sing on the Unesco LP)

with vocal support by R. Fahimuddin Dagar

Pakhawaj: Pandit Purushottam Das

Ustad Rahimuddin Khan Dagar is the father of Ustad Fahimuddin Dagar. See our post from 2011 here.

Next we will post some AIR broadcasts and two EPs by the great master.

On the artist see:

http://www.dhrupad.info/rahimuddin.htm

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Buddhadev Das Gupta (1 February 1933 - 15 January 2018) - In his memory an LP released in India in 1984

Here we offer in the memory of the great artist another release, his first and only LP.

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Buddhadev Das Gupta (1 February 1933 - 15 January 2018) just passed away - In his memory a cassette released in India in 1991

The great Sarod player Buddhadev Das Gupta passed away yesterday. May he rest in peace. He was a very prominent heir to the great tradition of his guru Radhika Mohan Maitra and a true representative of the Senia Shahjahanpur Gharana. He was also an excellent teacher and left behind many outstanding disciples on both the Sarod and the Sitar. I saw him in the 1990s and the early 2000s quite a couple of times in concert. Always very impressive.

There are many CDs available by him. Quite a number of them can be obtained from info@raga-maqam-dastgah.com.

About the artist see:

http://www.buddhadevdasgupta.com/

http://sarodia.com/generation/pandit-buddhadev-dasgupta/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhadev_Das_Gupta

http://www.raga.com/interviews/210int1.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/sarod-master-of-mental-riyaaz-pt-buddhadev-das-gupta-passes-away/articleshow/62515328.cms

http://www.itcsra.org/obituary.aspx

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Moinuddin & Aminuddin Khan Dagar - Dagarvani - Gunkali & Brindavani Sarang from AIR

Here two more recordings by the Senior Dagar Brothers from the archives of All India Rado (AIR). I received these recordings in the late 1990s from VN, a Dhrupad collector from UK. The recordings in our previous post might also come orginally from him. Many many thanks to him. Our friend KF made a CD out of them and created a cover. Also many thanks to him.

Like the Jayjayvanti in our previous post also the Gunkali here is different from the one on the commercial CD from Akashvani. See below.

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Here a commercial CD from the Archives of Akashvani (All India Radio). It can be obtained from: info@raga-maqam-dastgah.com

Dagar Brothers: Nasir Moinuddin Dagar (1919-1966) & Nasir Aminuddin Dagar (1923-2000) (Vocal) - Dhrupad Tradition of Dagarvani - Akashvani Sangeet: Raga Gunkali (29:51), Raga Jaijaiwanti (29:43), AKASHVANI ARCHIVES, H-28

Wonderful recordings by the Senior Dagar Brothers, their only studio recordings available on CD.

Moinuddin & Aminuddin Dagar - Yaman & Jayjayvanti - AIR boadcasts

Here two All India Radio (AIR) recordings by the Senior Dagar Brothers. 

Many thanks to KF for the recordings and the covers he created.

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Moinuddin & Aminuddin Dagar - Dhrupads - The Music of India III - LP published around 1966 or 1968 in Germany

We start this year with a series of Dhrupad recordings. We had already posted in the past quite a number of Dhrupad recordings, both vocal and instrumental. Here it will be only vocal recordings. 

We start with perhaps the most outstanding and beautiful recording of Dhrupad ever: a legendary LP by the Senior Dagar Brothers Moinuddin Dagar (1919-1966) and Aminuddin Dagar (1923-2000), published in the famous Unesco Collection "A Musical Anthology of the Orient" as volume 18. The recordings were done during their 1964 European tour (Berlin, Paris, Venice) in Berlin. For me it was the very first vocal Raga music I ever heard. I had listened to it many times in the end of the 1960s at the home of some friends and bought my own copy, the one we post here, in the early 1970s.

In the early 2000s there was a project to republish this whole Unesco series on CD, but unfortunately only very few volumes saw the day. I guess the label - Rounder in the US - gave up the project as the CDs didn't sell as expected. So these recordings were never republished, though there are still many copies around for sale, as one can see for example on Discogs. 

In 2011 we had posted another LP by the Senior Dagar Brothers, the one originally published in India by The Gramophone Company of India in 1965. See here.

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Happy New Year

Dear visitors of this blog, I wish you all a very happy new year with good health, lots of good music and, most important, lots of love and peace in a world which gets crazier every day. It is a pleasure to share so much music dear to my heart with you. I have the intention and hope to be able to continue for a while. There is still so much beautiful and rare music I wish to share with you.

The next projects will be, God willing, first a series of Dhrupad recordings, then an introduction to some almost forgotten masters of the Delhi Gharana. Afterwards some recordings by other singers like Rajab Ali Khan etc. Then there will be a bigger project about LPs obtained from India, with some remarks on their shortcomings due to the climate in India, mostly by less known instrumental masters.

I would also like to share some interesting and astonishing points about the statistics of this blog:

First the 10 most visited posts of my blog: 

1. Older Masters of Rudra Veena (Been) - Part III - Ustad Abid Hussain Khan (1907-1978), posted 16 Nov 2012, 5 comments - visits: 3515

2. Shashmaqam of Bukhara - Box of 16 LPs, published by Melodiya on the occasion of the 3rd International Symposium of Eastern Music, Samarkand 1987, posted 3 Apr 2012, 23 comments - visits: 3053

3. Mohamed Tahar Fergani - Ya Dalma - LP published in Algeria, posted 26 Sep 2013, 4 comments - visits: 2416

4. Nikhil Banerjee (1931-1986) at WDR, Cologne, Germany - Broadcasts recorded 1971, 1975 and 1984, posted 2 Nov 2014, 24 comments - visits: 2341

5. Music of Afghanistan - A gorgeous Box of 5 LPs published in Japan in 1975, posted 26 Dec 2017, 17 comments - visits: 1896

6. Vilayat Khan - Sitar - A Treasure from Solomon's Mines SME 1/2 - Very rare Indian LP from 1956, posted 8 Jul 2012, 23 comments- visits: 1861

7. Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996) - At WDR in Cologne on 8.12.1984, posted 16 Nov 2016, 12 comments  - visits: 1715

8. Annapurna Devi & Ravi Shankar - Some rare Surbahar recordings from the 1950s, posted 26 Aug 2014, 15 comments - visits: 1661

9. Dagar Brothers: Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar & Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar - Dhrupad - Double LP Loft 1006/7 (Germany 1983), posted 23 Dec 2011, 18 comments - visits: 1560

10. 2ème Festival Algérien de la Musique Andalouse 1969 - Vol. 7, posted 13 May 2012, 1 comment - visits: 1381

Some I understand, some I find extremely astonishing, especially the Shashmaqam on position 2 and the very recent post of a box of 5 LPs of Music of Afghanistan already on position 5 (in only 10 days). That there is an almost forgotten master of Dhrupad and Rudra Veena on position one is also quite unexpected. Positions 3 and 10 are probably due to the extreme popularity of these albums or musicians in their home country. 

The highest numbers of visitors come from these countries:

1. United States: 436954

2. India: 256288

3. Germany: 175788

4. France: 125747

5. Russia: 89438

6. United Kingdom: 66447

7. Canada: 19480

8. Italy: 18538

9. Spain: 12155

10. Japan: 11943

No big surprises here, though I hadn't expected such a big public from India and a bigger one from the United Kingdom.

The number of comments is quite low, if one takes into account the total number of visitors: just 2309.

Here I owe an excuse to the commentators. In most cases I don't respond to the comments, mostly because of lack of time, except when there are valuable contributions or questions or problems. But be sure: I appreciate them all and are often quite touched by their warmth and find them extremely encouraging. Thank you so much.