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ENTERTAINMENT,
MUSIC
Evergreen
Vintage
As
Bhimsen Joshi completes 80 years of an extraordinary life, Sony Nad brings
this compilation to mark the occasion. The four-cassette set claims to
have all rare ragas sung by him between 1965 and 1991. But one should
not be misled by the caption. Many ragas featured here like Megh, Gorakh
Kalyan and Vibhas are not only commonly heard but have also been recorded
by other masters like Amir Khan, Salamat-Nazakat and Mallikarjun Mansur.
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Arrivals
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Yeh
Naina
Music Today; Rs 65
An
emotional and romantic album by Indraneel, fusing a host of genres
from classical to jazz.
Companions
Ninad; Rs 75
A
dialogue between Rakesh Chaurasia's flute and Marco Salaun's guitar.
Tera
Jadoo Chal Gaya
Tips; Rs 75
Sonu
Nigam weaves magic with director Ismail Darbar.
MTV
Party Zone
Universal; Rs 125
Nineteen
dance tracks from the likes of Aqua, Simply Red and Mary J. Blige.
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"Music,"
says Joshi, not very originally, "is a prayer where one reaches out
to the parmatma." It was his quest that prompted him to leave home
in his teens. Many places and masters filled his travels through Gwalior,
Lucknow, Rampur and Calcutta till he found his chosen guru in Sawai Gandharva.
Gandharva was a pupil of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, the Kirana gharana founder
whose 78 rpm records immensely inspired Joshi. The compositions here,
however, are signifiers of Joshi's zeal for collecting musical nuggets
from many gharanas and masters though rendered in his own style.
Joshi's
amazing voice with its volume, depth, range, the speed and clarity of
his taans are all there in glorious splendour. The unique recital is in
Volume 1 -- raga Yamani Bilawal. And in Volume IV, Joshi presents two
varieties of Kanhara -- Nayaki and Suha-Sughrai. In his impassioned singing
Joshi reveals an uncanny amalgam of styles as diverse as those of Gwalior,
Atrauli-Jaipur, Indore and Patiala. For die hard Bhimsen Joshi fans these
albums are an important acquisition. For the lay person too, they would
make for great listening.
-S. Sahaya Ranjit
Screen
Surf
Radio in the age of dotcom? or yet Another Indian music
site, now a part of the portal www.Indianinfo.com? From online sales to
online guruji and from concert reviews to gossip -- they claim to have
it all. While the content and level of contributors is still rather basic,
interesting web design, lots of visual content and audio downloads sustain
surfers' curiosity. The USP includes Musicurry web radio and a recording
label. It's run by Mandar Agashe and Adinath Mangeshkar (Oh yeah, Lata's
nephew).
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Hot
track: Maiden Venture
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Brave
New World Iron Maidens
Milestone: Rs 125
Iron
Maiden fans must have been waiting for this one. Brave New World
is the latest after a gap of six years from this six-man, no-maiden
group: Bruce Dickinson, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Janick Gers,
Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain. It's vintage Maiden, stirring heavy-metal
tracks with the trademark don't-care attitude. "You've got
to kill to stay alive ... Show them no fear, show them no pain",
go the words of The Mercenary. There's also a stormy number The
Fallen Angel that goes, "Demons are inside you and they're
making their play/Watching and they're hiding as they wait for the
time/For a devil to get ready to take over your mind"; and
the wonderfully introspective Dream of Mirrors. But the catchiest
of the lot are The Wicker Man and Ghost of the Navigator. This is
the first that Iron Maiden has recorded since Dickinson and Smith
rejoined the band in February last year.
-Anna M.M. Vetticad
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Off
Beat
Digital
proliferation combined with the Internet boom has led to all kinds of
copyright infringements of music the world over. Despite the much-publicised
Metallica vs Napster case in the US, musicians and recording companies
are losing huge revenues each year (one estimate puts the losses around
$200 million) due to shared MP3 downloads and other kinds of piracy. But
what do you say to musicians who pirate their own music? Or infringe on
the rights of publishers and accompanying artists? Recently Off-Beat has
come across three separate cases of leading Indian classical musicians
trying to either sell off DAT masters to more than one music company simultaneously
and/or doing so without the consent of their accompanying artists. What
can one say apart from, physician heal thyself.
Top
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Can
Bangaru Laxman do for the BJP what Lieberman has done for Al Gore, questions
S. Prasannarajan in
India
should learn the kung-fu of business or get hammered by China after it
joins the WTO, says Sudeep Chakravarti in
"It
is a frustration that India and Pakistan have not grown up enough to pull
their heads out of the sand." Read an exclusive interview with 
