Raghu Dixit

Robin Denselow on Raghu Dixit.

Raghu Dixit is a bestselling curiosity, an Indian musician who has created a new style that has little to do with either India's great classical tradition (even though he is a master of classical dance) or with the exuberance of Bollywood. Instead, he has pioneered a folk-rock fusion, in which his fine, soulful vocals are matched against programmed drums and guitars, with influences that range from traditional Indian folk songs to rock, reggae and funk.

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Trilok Gurtu

Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu's year in review.

Trilok Gurtu and his Talking Tabla have been associated for 20 years with great musicians of India like his mother Shobha Gurtu, Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan and Shankar Mahadevan, African divas like Omu Sangare from mali ,Angelique Kidjo from Benin and Salif Keita from Mali. He has performed a drum solo with John Maclaughlin and a song with pop great Nene Cherry. He also presented 2 live tracks at the opening of the Indian Festival in Copenhagen.

Trilok also presented a concert at Amsterdam’s prestigious Concertgebouw, where the video of his career was shown and he also played with one of top pop groups of Holland called Blof. The queen of Holland was also present.

Trilok also performed at the Hindu Festival in Chennai with Selva Ganesh and his father Vikku in a sold-out concert and did recordings with Omara Portundo in Cuba and Turkish pop star and Eurovision winner Sertab this year. In 2008, Trilok will perform at the prestigous Celtic Festival, the Brughausen & Bremen Festival in Germany and in Spain with Flamenco, Brazilian and African musicians and with Jan Garbarek and others.

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Interview with Asha Bhosle

Bollywood cinema might be a celebration of passion and unrequited love - albeit without any physical demonstrations of the same and always with a happy ending - but in this multibillion-dollar industry it is often the singers, not the actors, that garnish the greatest acclaim.

Sure, the actors can deliver their lines, dance up a storm and lip-sync to the music, but it is the performances by so-called "playback singers" that can make or break a film. Of all the playback singers, there can only be one queen, and the crown belongs to Asha Bhosle.

Bhosle has no idea how many songs she has sung, but the 73-year-old grandmother has more than 12,500 titles to her name, including collaborations with players as diverse as Code Red, Michael Stipe and, well, Brett Lee. Her music has been sampled by both the Black Eyed Peas and Nelly Furtado.

It's a colourful career trajectory for an artist who began singing, aged four, with the musicians who gathered in her father's Mumbai lounge room each weekend to practise. Years of classical singing lessons followed, and then, lured by the glamour of Bollywood, Bhosle took to the screen.

"There are so many different styles of singing that are used in Hindi films,'' she says. ''Ghazaal singing and classical, it isn't just about pop, and the actresses were so beautiful that I wanted to work with them and give them my voice. I was fascinated by the film industry."

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Seed Newsvine

After more than 14,000 recordings and a career spanning six decades, legendary Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle still considers herself a student of music.

Born in 1933 in Goa, she has sung thousands of hits in several Indian languages, which have garnered her innumerable awards.

Bhosle gained global renown through world tours, concerts and performances with international artists such as Boy George, the Grammy-award winning Kronos Quartet and British band Cornershop, who paid tribute to her with their 1999 song "Brimful of Asha".

Recently she zoomed to the top of the Indian music charts with her album "Asha and Friends" featuring blonde Australian cricketer Brett Lee and macho Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt.

After losing her father at the age of 9, Bhosle started acting and singing in films with her more illustrious sister Lata Mangeshkar to support her family.

A failed first marriage did not deter her -- she brought up her three children as well as pursuing her singing career. She remarried famous Bollywood composer Rahul Dev Burman in 1980.

Bhosle's big break in Bollywood came in 1957 when she sung tracks for the film "Naya Daur" (New Age). Now 73, Bhosle has no plans of quitting the industry.

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