The Sounds of India

love the educational bit

I understand the idea of conceiving some album that encapsulates the idea of Indian music and market it to a wider audience. However, out of the albums that I have heard from Ravi, this seems to not be his most grandiose and lush oeuvre, precisely tied to how accessible it sounds.

7/10 [KEEP]

took me back to my college indian music class

The guy who kickstarted the Beatles' (and the Western world's) interest in classical Indian music. It's quite similar to jazz in that both use improvisation. The record as a whole feels more like a tutorial than a cohesive album, but I appreciate Ravi's efforts to share music from India to the world.

As I stated previously, when I covered his nephew Ananda, Ravi Shankar was a classically trained sitar player who introduced Indian instrumentation to George Harrison. The Western fascination with raga elements in rock music during the 1960s began with this cultural exchange. So that was in my mind when I sat down to listen to The Sounds of India, and... it's fine?

Simply put, this album serves as an introduction to Hindustani classical music for a Western audience. In fact, Ravi outright explains the construction and performance of the music in between his interpretations of classical ragas. There's no denying that Ravi was skillful on the sitar, able to bend and stress the strings to his whims in such intriguing ascensions and descensions, alongside Chatur Lal's equally enjoyable tabla playing and N.C. Mullick's supportive tambura playing. Yet, I don't feel like I connect well with the framing of this record as merely an introduction to this style of music. If this were my first exposure to Indian music, I probably would have gotten some mileage out of it. But at this point in my journey, I've listened to a lot of Indian music from the likes of Shivkumar Sharma, R.D. Burman, Talvin Singh, and Ravi's own nephew Ananda. Getting an introduction to this music after so much exposure to it already feels a bit rudimentary to me.

At the end of the day, I accept the fact that Ravi Shankar left behind a legacy of sharing his home country's musical culture with the rest of the world, and The Sounds of India serves as an example of that exchange. If this is your introduction to Indian music, then that's cool. But again, I'm well past the point of introduction.

Did y'all not listen to the intro asking you to be open minded 😭😭😭

Nou zeg. Krijg ik les. En wel van een stereotype muziekdocent. Als je er niet van kan genieten, dan ligt dat vooral aan je eigen houding. Ben door zo'n snob al klaar met het album, voordat de echte muziek begint.

Maar ach...eventjes is het allemaal wel leuk om te horen. Het duurt me alleen te lang. Het gaat me op de zenuwen werken. En als de docent nog een paar keer terug komt, vraag ik mij steeds meer af waarom dit nu een plekje in de lijst moet hebben. Youtube heeft dit inmiddels volledig overbodig gemaakt toch?

A pretty good look into Indian music. I thought the teaching tracks were basically just filler, but the other songs were quite technical and impressive. Good more or less. 3.4/5 -> 3/5

This is a must listen for sure. Such an interesting, unreal experience. Soothing voice, sitar magic. Thank you Ravi Shankar.

The Good: Yes
The Bad: Uhmmm… no garlic nan bread…
The Ugly: The pain in my ear from too much sitar…

I know, there’s an H somewhere in sitar… sue me.

Ravi Shankar is the goat of his style of music, I will not deny that. Also undeniable is that he influenced one too many western artist in the ‘60s who were all going through identity crisissessss Crisi… whatever.

Thanks for the lesson on classical Indian music.
Thanks for introducing the sitar to the world.
Thanks for nothing.

World music is all lovely and such, however, there is a limit to my patience… also, why aren’t there any Japanese “opera” kind of albums on here?

2*

Not much to say that I haven't said about the other Indian/Pakistani albums, along with the samba and bossa nova albums.

It's good music for if I want the vibe, but I will only really want that vibe in films and whatnot to set the scene. Unfortunately I have no cultural connection to this music, so it's scene music to me.

Haunted by Ravi Shankar. Every time I think of him I am compelled to tell everyone: "Did you know he's Norah Jones's dad????" And little Anoushka Shankar (less surprising daughter of Ravi Shankar) is everywhere (BBC Proms, SNL, etc) so I think of him often. Musical nepo-babies don't bother me as much as the other kinds, though. Also, the concept of this album is funny. I wonder if there are other "The sounds of _____" albums out there. Would be a fun series. Probably a lot more valuable in the pre-Internet era though.

As for the tracks themselves... not that educational, it turns out. I do usually like sitar when it's in other songs, but 10+minute instrumentals never win me over, unless they're like, full symphonies. Still better than Norah Jones.

I started out thinking this was pretty ok. Not my cup of tea, but kind of cool to hear another cultures music. But then he just kept counting. Not singing, just counting over the music.

Then each song is like 20 minutes long or something and it just got so repetitive. Then I had to turn it off for a bit and when I turned it back on it was just so grating that I was mad I had to finish it and just said, “nope” out loud and turned it off.

I appreciate Shankar explaining Indian music to Western audiences, but those intros also make this feel like musical homework.

Interesting and important piece of work to include without a doubt. Is it the most enjoyable listen? It’s ok, sort of like 50 minutes of solo work from one of your favorite guitarists. Required listening that I may not go back to specifically for a replay, but that I can enjoy and appreciate when it shows up in other works.

Después de Scum de Napalm Death con 28 temas en 33 minutos esto está en el otro extremo. Con 4 temas y más de 50 minutos y una música en las antípodas en todos los sentidos imaginables. Conociendo otras cosas del autor, este en concreto no me ha gustado, supongo que en su momento sería interesante por cómo explica la música que está haciendo, pero poco más.

The only people that MIGHT think this is essential listening in the western hemisphere are people that thought it was cool to go down the Beatles influence path. Even those people aren't listening to this on a daily basis.

What are we doing here?

More of a lesson than n album, but an interesting one.

It was fine, not a huge fan of pure acoustic.

Was expecting an album, not an instruction manual

1 ⭐️