The best of Indian music weekly - 14th Nov 2021

This is the week's best music from across the nation. Music from every state written in every language, composed as a part of Movies and by Indie artists is listened to and after analyzing more than 300 tracks released in the week ending 14th November 2021, I have rated and reviewed the 15 absolute best tracks in the country. This is truly India's ONLY multilingual music review and music curation page. Week after week, without any breaks you will get the review and links to the best work from musicians all over the country. 

Find the full playlist of 15 tracks on SPOTIFY

1. Samayave

The quality of music especially that gets scored in movies in the south is light years ahead of rest of the country. For many decades since the 1970s it was Tamil that was dominating thanks to geniuses like Ilaiyaraja and AR Rahman, but since their departure and as they faded away, music from Kannada and Telugu music industries have been nothing short of splendid. I can’t remember how many times it has either been a Kannada or Telugu track that has topped my weekly charts. Anil CJ is the proud composer and arranger of this magnificent number from the album “Kadalatheerada Bhargavaâ€?, sung by another stalwart Viay Prakash who is having the time of his life singing chartbusters. Manonmani’s Sarangi starts things off and we can feel the pathos already. The slow and mild strumming of the acoustic guitars by Bruce Lee Mani creates the expectations for the song and these are not the only two mastermind instrumentalists in this song. Behold the moment when Vijay Prakash starts singing, and within the first minute we have a crazy amount of live instruments like the Mandolin and Santoor played Seenu, and best part is the most stylish basslines played by Carl. The way the track pauses after Vijay finishes singing Samayave is magical. Kiran’s flute solo dominates the interlude, and after a beautiful verse, the bass guitars provide a perfect end and landing. Manjunath NS on the drums and percussions is the perfect support cast along with some well-arranged backing vocals by Varun Pradeep and Harsha Uppara. The second interlude has another genius in Rajhesh Vaidya tease you with his Veena solo and some scintillating mix of Tabla, by Venkat Rao, and Hi-Hat drums. It sounds like a world-class fusion piece by itself. Varun Pradeep plays the keys, and also mixes the track, with Nick Burchall mastering. The outro is worth all your time, with the Veena, bass and hi-hat drums. The lyricist is Dr. V Nagendra Prasad and the recording engineers are Giridhar Divan, Bob T Phukan, Akash Sivakumar and Shakthi Vel

2. Ghar Aao Na

Salim-Sulaiman are like demi-gods now, the Bollywood’s music scene is just not good enough for them, thankfully the indie music space deserves their presence. This is the second track in Bhoomi 2021, after a phenomenal one called “Ja Ja Re� a couple of weeks ago. This one is right down the brothers’ alley with some good-old fusion and we have one of the most precious voices of the 2000s in Sundhi Chauhan. Salim- Sulamian produce and compose this mind-bending track and if their score invokes inspiration, Sunidhi’s singing matches that ash she is technical spot-on in the classical bits and, creatively buzzing in the free-flowing Jazzy bits. The track has got all the usual masterminds at work here with Raj Pandit and Jarvis Menezes on keyboards with the former also co-producing the track. Salim Merchant is on the keys, killing it and Sulaiman is on the Zen drum and percussions. We hear the Piano and bass guitars by Rushad Mistry providing the background tones as Sunidhi just convinces us with her vocals that we better go back home (Ghar Aao na). We have Shraddha Pandit to thank for these words that mean and matter so much, as we just hear a faint introduction of the Sitar by Megha Rawoot. It enters into a phase where the track sounds like a pop/dance number and we have some stalwarts in Aftab Khan on mixing and mastering, with assistance from Vatsal Chevli. Raj and Aftab also do the recordings for this track. The guitar bits are solid thanks to Nyzel Dlima, Ankur Mukherjee and Muheet Bharti. Muheet recently has been going solo with his compositions and singing and here he plays a vital role with the guitars and mandolin as well. More magic happens after the 150 seconds mark when the tempo drops a few notches, Sunidhi changes her style, and we get introduced to the Tabla and Sitar in full flow. Swarupa Ananth is on the traditional percussion while up until now it was the energetic Darshan Doshi on drums. The keyboards and flute also take a supporting cast role and we are back to where we started. There can be nothing better than instrumentalists and singers having fun while performing and that is what we get with Sunidhi showing her wide range of skills, doing some peppy improvisations and aalap intermittently. After all these words I still feel, I can never do even 5% justice to the quality of the song itself, so go listen.