Vijay Raghav Rao
Mumbai (Bombay), India, 1977
Forget about the eponymous noisome Seattle longhairs and put away the Fender Jaguar, we're talking ragas not grunge. Pandit Vijay Raghav Rao (1925-2011) was a revered Indian composer and master of the bamboo flute, and like his friend and collaborator Ravi Shankar he spent much of his career touring and in America.
Rao also wrote fiction and recently I was lucky enough to pick up one of his poetry books in my local charity shop. The cover design and illustrations are by the artist Badri Narayan, who also illustrated editions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
There is a sense of space and time in this music, words and images that gently shifts one onto a different plane of thought.
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