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elcome to the Digital Meltd0wn Music Blog. The aim of this blog is to introduce the readers to music that is out of print, commercially unavailable, released under a creative commons license, or with approval by the featured artist. The majority of the music posted here would be considered underground. Don't let that fool you into thinking that the music featured here might be any less enjoyable than that of the mainstream artists you hear on the radio, as this couldn't be further from the truth. Please keep in mind that the majority of the artists that appear on this blog, along with their respective record labels, are not wealthy and need your support. If you enjoy the material that you find here, please support the artists/labels by purchasing their material afterwards. If you are an artist/label that would prefer to have your material removed from this blog, simply leave me a comment, and I would be more than happy to promptly remove the offending post. In addition to running this blog, I also work on a few other projects during my spare time. You can find links to those, as well as a few other important links associated with Digital Meltd0wn in the menu bar above.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Ananda Shankar - Ananda Shankar and his Music



Ananda Shankar was the nephew of the great sitar player Ravi Shankar. While Ravi played more traditional Indian music, Ananda was known as one of the first musicians to fuse traditional Indian music with western pop and rock early in his career, giving birth to the modern age of Indian music. Towards the end of his career he would even apply this fusion of traditional Indian and Western styles to hip-hop and breakbeat.

In the late 1960s Shankar travelled to Los Angeles, where he played with many contemporary musicians including Jimi Hendrix. There he was signed to Reprise Records and released his first self-titled album in 1970, featuring original Indian classical material alongside sitar-based cover versions of popular hits such as The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash and The Doors' Light My Fire. This album has become an enduring cult classic.[citation needed]

Returning to India in the early 1970s Shankar continued to experiment musically and in 1975 released his most critically acclaimed album, Ananda Shankar And His Music, combines Eastern sitar, Western rock guitar, tabla and mridangam, drums and Moog synthesizers. The result is seemless fusion of jazz and psychedelic rock with funky Indian rhythms. This album is legendary in some circles due to it's inclusion of the tracks 'Streets of Calcutta' and 'Dancing Drums', which were featured on a Blue Note break-beat compilation, and are both considered dance-floor favorites. This album also contains it's share of mellow grooves, which compliment the hard driven Indian style funk well, making for one of Shankar's most well rounded musical efforts.

Year of Release: 1975
Label: EMI India
Genre: Psychedelic, World Fusion
Bitrate: 192kbps

Track List:
1. Streets of Calcutta
2. Cyrus
3. The Lonely Rider
4. The River
5. Vidai (Parting)
6. Back Home
7. Dawn
8. Renunciation
9. Dancing Drums

Download: Ananda Shankar - Ananda Shankar and his Music
Download Size: 38MB

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this!

Zer0_II said...

Masterpieces from the master musicians ! i finally got it all after so many years. Tons of thanks !!

Timmy said...

Completely stunning. Many thanx!