Ustad Ghulam Sadiq Khan — Raga Lalit

from Versatile Ragas

I was in India earlier this year, and one day I dragged a friend around Delhi looking for records, CDs and mp3 DVDs at street stalls and shops. I saw this disc in a modern, HMV-style CD shop in New Delhi, and picked it up for just a few dollars.

It was a remarkable find, for this man’s voice is truly like no other. In fact, at times it sounds unlike a human voice at all. Here the vocal chords are reinvented as an entirely new instrument. The style is a modern Indian classical genre called khayal, thought to have developed from the qawwali style of singing.

‘Raga Lalit’ is an early morning raga.

Khan in 2009

Kent Gomez and His Orchestra — My Ghetto

from My Ghetto (1968)

The Down Sound From East Harlem Where The NOW Sound Is… or so proclaims the jacket to this LP. Recorded at Mira Sound Studios in New York City, on Mio Records (El Sonido De Ahora!) this track has keys prodigy Kent Gomez doing triple steps around the band, practicing his Hanon scales in the middle of a raging salsa explosion. Like your standard street-jam descarga, until he starts winging it with the classical turns and then you just think “wait.. whaaa?” If that’s your ghetto Kent, that’s your ghetto.

(ps also, there is a track on this LP called ‘Your Thigh.’ I might have to dig that up.)

Savion Glover

A clip (with lamentable sound quality) from Glover’s performance at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California, Sept 2006. From the Classical Savion tour.

The tapping trills about halfway through are incredible.