Audio Postcard: Naveen Mishra, sitar (New Year's Eve concert, Jolly Music House, Varanasi, 31 December 08)

Located in the old city, Jolly Music House sells instruments, offers music and dance lessons, and three nights a week stages concerts by the school's teachers and other local musicians. For New Year's Eve, the house put on a 5-hour program, the highlight of which was the sitar performance by Naveen Mishra, a musician in a class above all the others that performed that evening. I've tried googling him but aside from a few small press items there doesn't appear to be much available in English.

In the meantime, please enjoy this short excerpt, a 5-minute encore concluding 50-minutes of beautiful improvisation. Anyone interested in a copy of the complete performance, please contact me directly. Due to restricted bandwidth in Nepal, I will not be able to upload until I return to Japan sometime in March.

Click here to download the MP3 to your computer.

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Music: Kutumba (Nepali folk)

There are across Nepal hundreds of unsung folk musicians living and playing in towns and villages. Perhaps the most high-profile group is a 7-member outfit known as Kutumba, who describe themselves thus:

Kutumba is a folk instrumental ensemble, group of seven professionals from Kathmandu. Having come together for the preservation of their culture and art, Kutumba wishes to spread love and joy of Nepali folk music throughout the world. Self motivated and self driven, Kutumba is a group with their own unique sound and vision.The seven members have different roots and backgrounds in music. Kutumba is the harmony of traditional roots, culture and new sounds.

Their music may not be so easy to find outside Nepal, though there are a couple of online sources. For those of you interested in sampling their sound, here's one track you can download from their latest release, which is already a couple of years old. The group is still active and will be playing a free concert next Saturday as part of the celebrations of the anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.



Enjoy.

Kutumba official website.

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