Saath Saath

It is barely nine months since Chatterjee earned a three-page feature in Songlines (December 2021, #173) for his splendid album Unbounded. That record was a lockdown project in East-West fusion recorded long-distance with Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Michael League and others. In contrast Saath Saath represents the opposite side of Chatterjee’s creativity – a Hindustani classical set of sitar and bansuri (wooden flute) duets with lifelong friend Rakesh Chaurasia, recorded live in Mumbai in March 2022 as a celebration of musicians finally being able to play again in the same space.

These two discs contain seven ragas; three soothing morning pieces followed by four more energetic night ragas, building to a thrilling climax. Yet it would be a stretch to call this music purely traditional. Yes, Chatterjee draws on his training at the hands of classical maestro Nikhil Banerjee, but listen to the 19-minute ‘Lalit’ or thrilling ‘Shuddh Sarang’ and his sitar playing full of surprisingly modern-sounding melodies, unexpected flourishes and unconventional tempo changes, while the innovative cadences of Chaurasia on tracks such as ‘Madhuvanti’ confirm him as the successor to his 84-year-old uncle Hariprasad Chaurasia as India’s foremost modern bansuri maestro.