SUBHA

Sitar player Roopa Panesar is certainly one of the most important musicians to have emerged in the British Asian diaspora over the past few years. She possesses an intensely lyrical style on an instrument that still has relatively fewer female exponents than one might expect. Having chalked up an impressive international career, in 2020 she dazzled everyone with her dexterity when playing sitar for AR Rahman’s Slumdog Millionaire Suite for the City of Birmingham’s Symphony Orchestra. Panesar’s playing style is the one associated with the late maestro Vilayat Khan, of whom she is an ardent devotee and, on the notes for this album, she acknowledges being inspired by him.

Appropriately called SUBHA (morning), the album features ‘Rag Ahir Bhairav’ and ‘Rag Gujri Todi’ – two well-known early morning ragas as well as the any-time raga ‘Rag Bhairavi’. Superbly accompanied by tabla maestro Ramdas Palsule and Kaviraj Singh on tanpura (drone), Panesar is as confident and lucid as one has come to expect with all her music and, in this instance, she expresses a profound sense of calmness laced with an inexplicable exhilaration. ‘Rag Gujri Todi’, which is presented in a medium as well as a fast tempo (and also a shorter radio edit version), succeeds in completely enveloping the listener in what becomes quite the perfect soundtrack for an early morning meditation.