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Purely Indian sounds
Lehar(Times Music)

When we talk of a band of musicians, the image that automatically comes to mind is that of a group of people on western instruments, with may be an artiste on the tabla or the sitar thrown in for effect. But Purbayan Chatterjee’s Shastriya Syndicate is the first Indian classical band, which gives a global perspective to purely Indian sounds.

`A0This is the first album of these seven globe-trotting ambassadors of Indian music: Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar), Rakesh Chaurasia (flute), Veenai Jayanthi (veena), Murad Ali (sarangi), Subhankar Banerjee (tabla), Pramath Kiran (percussions) and Satish Kumar Patri (mridangam). It is a unique combination of traditional and contemporary.

The album opens with the title song, which has a wonderful sawal-jawab session between the sitar and the flute. This fast-paced composition is in raga Des.

Rigours of war are signified through a 10-beat composition in The Warrior at Dusk with the sitar leading the charge.

In Flowering of Love, the veena climbs the mountain of ecstasy with the help of the sarangi and flute. In Avartan it is the amalgamation of the tabla and the djembe which generates magic.

Watch out for the masterly strains of the sitar in A Meditative Midnight, while A Journey Within transports you to the desert on the wings of the sarangi.

This film produced by Kumar Mangat boasts of three composers—Vishal Bhardwaj, who was with Kumar Mangat in Omkara, Anand Raj Anand and Raghav Sachar. Then there is Pritam, too, with one song.

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice is ideally suited for the Sufiana lyrics (Munna Dhiman) of Haal-e-Dil. Shreya Ghoshal proves the ideal foil. But Rekha Bhardwaj’s remix version does not fall in the same league.

Pritam’s single contribution, Agg lage aaj kal de fashion nu has Hard Kaur and Labh Janjua singing in their hiphop-cum-bhangra style.

Raghav Sachar has devoted himself to love ballads. Khwahish is a soft and sentimental interplay of the voices of Shaan, Sunidhi Chauhan and Raghav Sachar with a cool sound of saxophone, violin and percussions. Rang (Sonu Nigam) is even better. However, the remix in which Raghav himself comes to the mike is rather too loud.

Lyrics are by Sameer, Munna Dhiman, Shabbir Ahmed and Aditya Dhar. — ASC