Search - Ustad Vilayat Khan, Ustad Bismillah Khan :: Eb'Adat

Disappointing Meeting of the Masters

S. Sayani | 02/18/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Vilayat Khan and Bismillah Khan are two of the heaviest names among instrumentalists in north Indian classical music. They play live and record a double CD. They perform "ragini" Yamani which is basically a major scale plus the tritone. Vilayat plays much more than Bismillah. At times, when you haven't heard him for a long time, and then he puts the reed to his mouth and just blows a long note supporting Vilayat's chikari jingling, you almost feel sorry for him. One of Vilayat's strong points has been the variation in his playing, on a technical level - playing with overtones, different kinds of meends, bridge playing, finger tapping and all manner of string manipulation, as on his fantastic Bhairavi disc on India Archive Music. This is absent here, and combined with one of his weak points (in my opinion), his enthusiasm for major-scale type melodies, it makes for a week CD indeed. Spirits appear to have been high at the Barbican, with an assortment of thugs laying down the drone on many tampura and shenai, and playing an assortment of rattling drums. But at least in my living room, the music falls flat. These melodies leave a bland taste in my mouth. The rattling of the dholak drums is actually pretty un-precise for classical music. Oh, and Vilayat does sing."

Fantastic music from 2 amazing masters!

S. Sayani | 07/05/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although this CD had been previously given a low rating, I decided to go ahead and check it out simply based on the fact that it featured two great Ustads (masters) of music. What I found was an amazing exchange between two great minds that can only be described as heavenly music.



This disc comes with two CDs, the first of which includes a spoken introduction by Ustad Vilayat Khan, and an alap section in which both musicians feature quite prominently.



The second disc features a vocal bandish sung by Ustad Vilayat Khan, which then goes into a jugalbandhi that has become one of my favorite pieces of all Indian Classical Music.



The entire disc features about 80 minutes worth of music, but is a great demonstration of powerful musical content by two masters of an old tradition.



I would like to also contest the previous reviewer in that the difficulty or exoticism of the raga scale is not important, but rather the musical depth.



A definite recommended buy."