That is Trilok Gurtu in full flow…he appears on the cover of a real gem of a book … MIXED TAPE – the First City Interviews 3: Music … you can call it luck or chance or more profound names as karma or serendipity … or whatever … if I hadn’t visited the bookstall at Hyderabad airport, I wouldn’t have known about this book at all … and I am sure, I wouldn’t have been able to find this book at any book stall in Hyderabad … it is not an old book published years back, but one which came out sometime this year… I was actually putting together a pile of books that I wanted to read, planning to buy at least a couple, and I was looking behind the books kept in the foreground on all the stacks in the shelves…and I saw this book…the word ‘music’ held me…I pulled it out and as it happened many times before with books on music, I forgot all about the other books that I was piling up…
This is a book of interviews with musicians…all these musicians were interviewed for FIRST CITY, a Delhi-based magazine, and these interviews appeared in the magazine between August 1990 and July 2009… the moment I saw Trilok Gurtu on the cover, my pulse quickened…TG has been one of my favourites ever since I heard the first album of his that was released in India, The Trilok Gurtu Collection, and after having bought listened to all his albums and his various collaborations, I still go back to the first TG piece that I listened to…Once I Wished a Tree Upside Down…(first in Living Magic and in then in The Trilok Gurtu Collection)…it begins with the ringing of cowbells and moves slowly into a mesmerizing saxophone part played by Jan Garbarek and all the while TG is busy creating magic with his drums and other percussion instruments…I digress, sorry…so, the prospect of reading TG’s interview was a pleasant one and I open this book and want to see who else is there…and wow!!…who else is not there? ... some of my most favourite musicians – vocalists, instrumentalists, and composers straddling the Indian Classical, Film, ‘Fusion’ (so called…!), and every conceivable kind of music that one can imagine that has some connection with India… Ustad Vilayat Khan, Kishori Amonkar, Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, Pt Ravi Shankar…Indian Ocean, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Midival Punditz, Karsh Kale…Girija Devi, Ustad Bismillah Khan…Talvin Singh, Anoushka Shankar, Madhup Mudgal…and many many more…
And the interviews are not in the question-answer format, which tends to get boring after some time…the format is informal here and the interview also comes across as a friendly banter more than anything else…and it is very clear that the musicians are enjoying themselves…the interviewers describe the actions of the musicians and have masterfully captured the myriad way in which the musicians speak…the ‘na’ at the end of every sentence by Trilok Gurtu, the ‘you know-s’ of Talvin Singh, the guffaws, the cackles, pride, modesty…you feel that you are part of the group interviewing your favourite musicians…delightful…there are no clever (or so called ‘intelligent’) interventions by the interviewers…and the questions are not posed as such, but you can ‘hear’ the answers, which helpfully are in quotes…
The reader gets a ringside view of the changing scene of music…you can see the ‘Asian Underground,’ lounge, trance, etc., fuelled by electronica coming into their own through Talvin Singh, Karsh Kale, Midival Punditz…the Indian rock/pop scene gaining recognition…the second generation, Anoushka Shankar and Ayaan and Amaan Ali Bangash, getting comfortable in the limelight… and the tragic passing away of Ustad Vilayat Khan and Ustad Bismillah Khan…in short, a delightful journey into music in India from 1990 to 2009…
I am trying to inform all my music loving friends about this book…I think this book can become a good companion on many a journey…and many a lonely evening (mornings and afternoons also…)
Thanks FIRST CITY…for this lovely book and moreover, for this wonderful idea… I wish many more magazines emulate this idea and come out with 5-year or 10-year compilations of Music/Film/Art based articles…
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