Live in Nashville

This is a live recording of a 2013 concert on Lakha Khan's debut American tour, given in a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee. Lakha Khan is a superb Indian folk musician, who sings and plays the sindhi sarangi, a gorgeous bowed instrument from Rajasthan. To begin, he pulls his bow across a lower string and slides his finger up to the starting note. It's an arresting opening and immediately draws you into this sinewy but lyrical music from the desert. The many reverberating sympathetic strings give the melodies a rich sonic aura. The sindhi sarangi comes from the neighbouring Pakistani state of Sindh, but there are now few players and no makers left, so Rajasthani maestros such as Lakha Khan are crucial tradition bearers.

It's an instrumental that starts the concert, but he follows it with Sufi songs, Hindu bhajans and folk and classical ragas. Accompaniment is provided by his son Dane Khan on dholak (drum). What is gratifying about this CD is that it presents unadorned Indian folk music with total confidence – and quite rightly so, because Lakha Khan is just as good a musician as a classical cellist or violinist. The warm silken tone of the sarangi is like a halo around his voice; I hope we get a chance to see him in the UK before too long.