Search - Deben Bhattacharya :: Folksongs Music Nepal

Voices, drums, flutes, cymbals and fiddles sing the sacred h

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 08/29/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In case you're looking at this from a scholarly angle, it was recorded by Deben Bhattacharya in Katmandu, Kirtipur and Panga in 1973 and in Sikkim in 1975.



This is a wonderfully recorded album of field recordings of great variety. The general mood of the music is always calm and oftentimes quite touching. It's gently rhythmic yet really lovely and lyrical. There's one track with no vocals, played on the Nepalese sarangi (a vertical fiddle but I'm assuming chunkier like the more well known sarangi of India rather than the slender spike fiddles found throughout Asia) that could probably be used to trick people into thinking they're hearing a fiddle tune from the USA's upland South. Not an expert, but just someone who has a general notion of what fiddle music is. I love things like this. Separated by thousands of miles, scattered peoples still managed to stumble across common threads that they (we) found pleasing.



If you like the flutes in KODO you'll enjoy the flute playing here. They're the basuri and bai (transverse and end-blown, respectively). From the vocals to the fiddle playing, I think you'll find much to travel on, here. There are parts, particularly vocally from a couple of the women, that sound more Indian in origin, and then there is flute work that seems to touch back towards something much farther to the East. All with some resonant, quite emotional and textural drumming, I might add.



I've had this disc on my CDs To Buy list for like 5 years but finally got around to buying it about 6 weeks ago. Had I known it was going to be this good I could have never waited so long. One track features several female singers and I've decided that this song can play at my funeral. Their voices create an ethereal knife edge that sinks right into the soul.



This is right up there as one of the best Deben Bhattacharya-recorded cds I own.

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