Vasant Rai – "Spring Flowers'" {India} [1976] @192 (excellent oriental fusion)

sa-was-dee-krab! :) Today we put an end to our musical journey in India. A few days ago i find a better rip to share this album..here is a copy/paste from a review in amazon.com: Listening to this album you get the rare opportunity to hear the greatest Indian musician Pandit Vasant Rai. Vasant Rai along with Allaudin Khan (Vasant was the last diciple of Allaudin) was definately the greatest sarode player to live.
Vasant Rai passed away in his early forties hence we dont have many recordings whereas Ali Akbar is in his eighties and is still recording, has many more recordings. Vasant rai spent most of his life in the Greenwich Village area of New York City in the late sixties throughout the seventies to the early eighties. He passed on on March 8 1985.
Yehudi Menunin,Collin Walcot,George Harrison,Herbie Mann,and Ravi Shankar are avid listners of Vasant Rai.
(you know how rare i use "excellent" word in the title..yes its excellent for me..maybe for you too) Keep Listening!!

Link in comments..

Spring Wind..
Smile of Goddess. ..

8 comments:

  1. With your music gems, i'm changing again and again my list of best records ever!!For example: DELIRED CAMELEON FAMILY-Man, what a great record!!It gave me an idea: Go post your best "space" record!Thank you again mr. prog!NATURE BOY

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  2. Most excellent! This sits well with my Ravi Shankar, V.M Bhatt and other Indian recordings.

    The quality and musicianship are very high, and it is a great pleasure to listen to.

    Thank you for sharing.

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  3. For your information, the band on this album is:

    Vasant Rai sarod, acoustic guitar, flute, tamboura
    Collin Walcott tabla, congas, percussion, sitar, electric bass
    Glen Moore piano, bass
    Paul McCandless oboe, english horn
    Dilip Naik electric guitar
    Jerry Goodman violin

    Jerry Goodman is, of course, of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Flock fame. There are posts of Jerry Goodman with Jan Hammer and Flock's brilliant Dinosaur Swamps on this blog around May, I think.

    Walcott, Moore and McCandless are all members of Oregon, of whom there is also a post on this site. Only Ralph Towner was missing on this album. This has always been sought after by Oregon fans as the mood and style fit in well wuth the Oregon canon of work.

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  4. please can you give us links to more vasant rai stuff

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  5. Heya, is there any way to re-post this one? I would love to check it out...

    Cheers,
    Cpt. Beyond

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  6. There is no doubt Vasant Rai was India's best sarodist!!
    Not only that, I once read Don Cherry had said Vasant was allways ready to come out of his tradition and indulge in other generes of music.
    I cant remember where i read this but he also learned to read western classical notation.
    I dont know of any other indian musician who's done this. His guru Allauddin Khan was also an omnibus musician.
    ite very unfortunate he passed so early

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