Ananda Shankar and His Music (1975)

Ananda Shankar
“Ananda Shankar and his Music”
Released 1975
CD- Fass Records, Spain

WIKI PEDIA ARTICLE

Ananda Shankar (11 December 1942 – 26 March 1999) was an Bengali musician best known for fusing Western and Eastern musical styles. He was married to Tanushree Shankar.
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Early life

Ananda Shankar

Born in Almora in Uttar Pradesh, India, Shankar was the son of Amala and Uday Shankar, popular dancers, and also the nephew of renowned sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar. Ananda did not learn sitar from his uncle but studied instead with Dr. Lalmani Misra in Varanasi.

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Professional career

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, a jazz-funk mix of Eastern sitar, Western rock guitar, tabla and mridangam, drums and Moog synthesizers. Out of print for many years, Ananda Shankar And His Music was re-released on CD in 2005.

After working in India during the late 1970s and 1980s, Shankar’s profile in the West began to rise again in the mid-1990s as his music found its way into club DJ sets, particularly in London. His music was brought to a wider audience with the release of Blue Note Records’ popular 1996 rare groove compilation album, Blue Juice Vol. 1., featuring the two standout tracks from Ananda Shankar And His Music, “Dancing Drums” and “Streets Of Calcutta”.

In the late 1990s Shankar worked and toured in the United Kingdom with London DJ State of Bengal and others, a collaboration that would result in the Walking On album, featuring Shankar’s trademark sitar soundscapes mixed with breakbeat and hip hop. Walking On was released in 2000 after Shankar’s sudden death from heart failure the year before.

In 2005, his song Raghupati was used on the Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories soundtrack, and in 2008 his song Dancing Drums was used on the LittleBigPlanet soundtrack.
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Discography

* Ananda Shankar, 1970 (LP, Reprise 6398)
* Ananda Shankar, 1970 (CD, Collectors’ Choice CCM-545)
* Ananda Shankar And His Music, 1975 (EMI India)
* Missing You, 1977 (EMI India)
* A Musical Discovery of India, 1978 (EMI India)
* Sa-Re-Ga Machan, 1981 (EMI India)
* 2001, 1984 (EMI India)
* Ananda, 1999 (EMI India)
* Arpan, 2000 (EMI India)
* Walking On, 2000 (Real World 48118-2, with State of Bengal)
* Ananda Shankar: A Life in Music – The Best of the EMI Years, 2005 (Times Square TSQ-CD-9052)
* Ananda Shankar: Shubh- The Auspicious, 1995
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Grand Theft Auto:Liberty City Stories

His singing voice is heard in the game Grand Theft Auto:Liberty City Stories in the radio station Radio del Mundo. The song he’s singing there is Raghupati

Holy smokes is this album a delight for the ears! Fans of trippy rock, funk, weird film scores, Bollywood grooves from the 70s, and anyone else with the least bit of musical eclecticism should flock to Ananda Shankar like geese in the springtime! Tunes range from blissed-out funk that makes you want to paint your skin and go-go, to the delicate and gorgeous (“Vidai (Parting)” and the epic-length “Dawn”). The CD is taken from a vinyl copy and there is some surface noise in places, but this quickly becomes unnoticeable to me as the sound is full and rich.

As described by a friend: “The opener The Street of Calcutta Rocks your butt a big time but the very next one i.e. Cyrus mends your heart. ” Nicely put.
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Dusty Groove description / review:

One of the greatest albums ever by one of the most compelling figures in Indian music! Ananda Shankar’s been chronicled elsewhere and often on these pages — so by this point, you probably already know that he’s a renegade pioneer who combined funky grooves with sitars and tablas, forging a whole new sound in Indian music that’s still having quite a bit of influence today. This 1975 album is a stunner — way more open-minded than his other album for Reprise (which we’ve also got on reissue!), with tracks that push the funky groove a lot farther than you’d expect, swirling percussion, organ, guitar, tablas, moog, and sitar all together into an unbelievable sound that will leave you breathless! Titles include “Dancing Drums”, “Streets Of Calcutta”, “Back Home”, “Renunciation”, “Dawn”, and “The Lonely Rider”.
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Includes artwork at 600 dpi, log, cue, m3u, and a free sandwich.

Ananda Shankar and His Music (1975) in 320kbs

Ananda Shankar and His Music (1975) in FLAC LOSSLESS

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