The Rough Guide to the Music of India

It must be a thankless task being asked to compile one CD that sums up the whole of a musical culture, especially one as large and diverse as that of India. Everyone has their own favourites and prejudices, and there can never be a consensus as to the perfect 12 tracks. So, given my own particular set of prejudices, how well does the set picked by Ken Hunt on this disc fare? In general, I’m afraid to say, not too well. An over-reliance on one particular source (L Subramaniam’s admittedly excellent Anthology of South Indian Classical Music) for the southern entries makes for a strange selection; an example of morsing (Jew’s harp), for instance, is perhaps not essential in the scale of things if you only have 12 tracks – a mridangam solo would have been a better choice. One might ask the same thing about the non-inclusions of, say, a tabla solo or the sarod? And do we really need both Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar (sisters) to represent Bollywood when we could also have had a male singer – arguably just as important – such as Mohammed Rafi?

It is hard to argue against the inclusion of Ravi Shankar as he has been such an ambassador for North Indian music in the West, and I was personally glad to see Aruna Sairam here, a splendid singer. The Wadali Brothers, as an example of Indian devotional Muslim singers, are also both a welcome and interesting choice. The most perverse entry, however, is that of Zoe and Idris Rahman. There’s no dhrupad, no Vilayat Khan, no veena or sarangi, and none of the well-recorded Keralan temple ensembles. The only concession to India’s myriad local vocal, instrumental and dramatic traditions is a crossover piece featuring Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, rather dull and syrupy, in which ‘Indian’ music is only tangentially present. There is a bonus disc of Debashish Bhattacharya, on which there is some great playing, but, again, slide guitar is perhaps not the most representative of Indian instruments – even if this disc does, at least, give us a full performance of a single raga.