Ustad Bismillah Khan is widely recognized as the finest shehnai player of his generation. The shehnai is a short quadruple-reed instrument which I can personally attest is very hard to play, so his mastery of breath technique and fingering is all the more impressive to me. I've uploaded these files from a CD version of his first LP.
The two raags on this disc have a very jazzy quality - something that brings to mind a blending of Yusef Lateef, Pharaoh Sanders & Tony Conrad. Nonetheless, it is completely ensconced within the classical hindustani raga tradition, so it avoids any Westernized "world music" kitsch. Khan achieves almost unfathomably fluent meends ( portamenti) through an even rolling of his fingers over the stops; this allows his shehnai to sound like a smoothly overdriven electric violin, a soulful trombone, a Coltraney soprano sax, or even a virtuosic kazoo.
He once said,
“ Even if the world ends, the music will still survive ”
Clearly, this is deep head space material.
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