May 01, 2015 01:37 PM
3601 Views
It came to me as a birthday present. It was a present chosen very carefully for me by a music aficionado friend who knew my taste. And this was back in the days before downloading music came into vogue, so my friend went out and got these CDs. The elegantly-wrapped gift came with a bottle of red wine and a card that said: Drink while listening to the Music.
Well, I was having a dinner party to celebrate my birthday and it wasn’t till the next weekend that I unwrapped the CDs and sat down to listen. The music was extremely varied: from Kenny G instrumentals and country music to Vedic Chants, good old Indipop and classic Bollywood.
One of the CDs was this album called Barson Huey by Sanjo and Chandrani. I had never heard these artistes before. My friend had marked three songs in the album jacket by drawing little wineglasses next to the titles. These, he told me, were three of his favourites and he would pour himself a drink, dim the lights and listen to them on rotation for hours at a stretch.
The songs were Palkon Pe Tha, Barson Huey and Anchal. The album has ten songs but these three masterpieces leave the remaining seven songs hopelessly overshadowed – initially. Later, these songs grow on you and one is able to listen to the entire album on a regular basis.
What sets this album apart from the other commercial, artistic and culturally relevant albums(that are all too often thrust upon us) is the naturalness of the sound. Sanjo’s voice has a raw-edged folksy grassroots quality about it. It is not a voice trying to be commercial, entertaining and overtly mainstream. Chandrani’s vocals are gently sonorous, sweetly lilting and seductively mellow. In songs like Palkon Pe Tha and Sapno Ka Ek Shahar, she takes the notes in utterly unexpected ways – and the result is dazzling!
These are tunes that will haunt you for a long time to come. They gradually sink into your consciousness and you find yourself humming them as you go about your household chores and your work. Back in those days, I used to be a journalist with a daily newspaper – and many of my colleagues at that time would come up to me and ask: “What is this song that you’ve been humming?” And I would realize that I had Barson Huey or Palkon Pe Tha playing in my head!
I wanted to gift this wonderful music to so many of my music-loving friends and colleagues – but the CD was never available. Music shops told me they had very limited quantities which sold very fast and were never replaced. That is sad.
But in today’s digital music era, the album has – thankfully – made a reappearance, although in a limited way. Three songs(why only three?) have been re-released on a popular digital music website called OK Listen. Anyway, I guess three is better than nothing!
It is customary to close a review with a bottom-line recommendation so here it is: buy it! If you are a music-lover who collects music that your ear guides you to instead of deciding on the impetuous basis of “What’s hot!” then this is truly a collector’s item. Keep it in your collection. You will have numerous opportunities for revisiting these songs as you walk along the pathways of Life.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Ms. Jessica Anand whose review of Barson Huey brought all these wonderful memories back to me, and Ms. Sharmila Vedantha who encouraged me to revisit this wonderful album and write this review.
