Category: Books

  • Book: Voice of the Veena – S Balachander by Vikram Sampath

    “Voice of the Veena – S. Balachander, A biography”, by Vikram Sampath, Rain Tree (Rupa Publications), 2012 ——————————————————————– S. Balachander, best known to many of us as a veena maestro, was very different from the musicians one usually comes across. He was much more than just a great vainika. A…

  • Book: A.R. RAHMAN – The Spirit of Music

    Read “A.R.RAHMAN – The Spirit of Music” today. It is a compendium of conversations that the author Nasreen Munni Kabir had with Rahman over a period of four years, all of it presented in one go (not divided into chapters/ sections per se). Positives: Though a lot of the information…

  • Book: Hindustani Music – A Tradition in Transition

    “Hindustani Music – A Tradition in Transition” (D.K.Printworld, 2005) is a collection of Deepak Raja’s writings on Hindustani Music. The book is divided into 5 parts. Part 1 titled “Culture, Technology and Economics” discusses the changes that have happened in Hindustani Music and to its patronage over the years, the…

  • Book: The Lost World of Hindustani Music – by Kumar Prasad Mukherji

    Anybody who comes in contact with Indian Classical musicians and/or moves around for quite some time in the ‘music circle’ will hear a lot of stories and anecdotes, not just about the current crop of musicians, but also about past practitioners. Many of these usually cannot be verified but do…

  • Book: “Raga’n Josh – Stories from a Musical Life” by Sheila Dhar

    Sheila Dhar had the knack for penning down in an interesting manner, her experience interacting with different people she came across in her life. In her book “Raga’n Josh – Stories from a Musical Life” (Black Kite, 2005) that combines her two earlier books “Here’s Someone I’d Like You to…

  • Book: A Rasika’s Journey Through Hindustani Music by Rajeev Nair

    Though there are many books on Hindustani Music, Rajeev Nair’s “A Rasika’s Journey Through Hindustani Music” is one of the few I would highly recommend to all rasikas of Hindustani Music – from the uninitiated to the seasoned ones. Rajeev’s mastery over the English language is no surprise I guess,…

  • 2 states – the story of my marriage (Chetan Bhagat)

    Chetan Bhagat’s “2 states – the story of my marriage” (Fiction, Rupa & Co., Oct 2009), said to be inspired from happenings in his own life, is a story of how two IIM-A classmates – Krish Malhotra (a Punjabi boy) and Ananya Swaminathan  (a Tamil girl) fall in love with…

  • 50 Maestros, 50 Recordings

    “50 Maestros, 50 Recordings” (HarperCollins Publishers, Dec 2009) is a tribute to select masters of Indian Classical Music who influenced its authors Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan (sons of sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan) the most. It starts with a very brief introduction to Indian Music – Carnatic…