Songs you should hear: A kajri and a carnatic fusion piece

Two more song videos for you, like last week. Thinking of making this a weekend-ly thing.  First of the two videos today comes from that wonderful show from Kerala called Music Mojo. Ghazal/playback singer Gayathri Ashokan‘s new band Gayatri & The Seventh Note does a serene cover of the kajri Saawan Ki Ritu originally composed by Ustad Ghamman Khan (in raag mishra tilak kamod), known to most for tutoring classical exponent Shobha Gurtu. Apart from Gayathri’s singing, the main highlight of this cover to me is Rajesh‘s work on the flute. Rest of the band is Ben Sam Jones on bass, William on keys, Sandeep on guitar and Sunil Kumar on percussion. Good band; do check out their other songs from the episode too.

Second video is slightly older, that of a carnatic fusion piece. People from Chennai-based Krimson Avenue Studios do a reimagination of violinist Embar Kannan‘s composition Dheem Dheem written by Krithika Arvind who has in the past written guest articles for our Carnatic Corner section. The raga is a Hindustani one incidentally, bhatiyar (remember Purab Se Surya Uga?) but the treatment is very carnatic. Being Embar’s composition it features some splendid violin solos by the man, but V Deepika is quite fab with her thillana rendition too. On keys is Prithvi Chandrasekhar who also produced the track, and Yash Pathak does percussion.