Making a Qawwali Record
My dear friend Nitin Haldankar and I made a Qawwali CD. We recorded, mixed and mastered it 100% here in my home studio. This is a band which I would love to tour the world with. I'm playing harmonium and singing background vocals while Nitin is the lead singer. Filling out the rest of our band are our friends Satish Mopur, Ravindra Kulkarni, my nephew Viraj Talpade, and our tabla maestro, Debasish Chaudhuri. Qawwali music has been some of my favorite music for the past 15 years or so - it is a MAGICAL artform; aggressive, vocal oriented Sufi devotional music which stretches back more than 700 years to Persia, (Iran and Afghanistan today) - and the translations of the lyrics are better than those of The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix COMBINED!!! Go here if you would like a copy or just to hear some of it: http://www.sahajaqawwali.com/