Shankar Jaikishan

Shankar Jaikishan
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 201

 

Back yard
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011

Exactly at those moments that you think you've heard it all something comes around that totally blows that thought. And it happens in such a fashion that you realize you should never ever think such thoughts again. How often does it happen that you hear a piece of music so original, passionate, and exciting, that you hear a sound that you've never heard before? A few times a year, to answer my own question, just enough to continue the top 100 project with ever more zeal, even after almost thirty years of doing it. It happened again last week listening to a piece of jazz music, a hybrid of Hindi popular, Indian classical music and American Jazz. The two Indian gentlemen in front of my back yard are  Shankar Jaikishan [शंकर-जयकिशन], Shankar Jaikishan are a composer duo consisting of Shankar and Jaikishan, Shankar Singh Raghuvanshi and Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal to be more precise. They are best known for their work in the Hindi film industry but the track entering the Top 100 2011 is from an autonomous album called Raga Jazz Style from 1968. The album is noted as the earliest Indo Jazz recording in India. The moment that the opening track Raga Todi propels itself into a higher stratosphere is at the moment the sitar, played by Rais Khan is introduced. From there on the record is  ecstatic until the very end. I heard it on a new site I've been following called Holy Warbles [सølγ שаябlɛş]. The site is quite prolific, it'll take me a while, if I ever get to it, to uncover all this fantastic music hidden in their archives.