A beautiful bansuri (bamboo flute) instrumental by Mr. Badri Prasad from the mid 1930s on the Odeon label from the collection of the late Dr. Suresh Chandvankar, who I was thinking about today.
I met Suresh in 2021 on Discogs – and started corresponding with him about Indian music and 78 rpm records. He pointed me to many fantastic resources to learn about Indian musicians and labels of the 78 rpm era such as the back issues of the magazine he edited for many years, “The Record News”, which are generously available for free online:
https://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/trn/
He also talked at length about his long relationship with discographer and author Michael Kinnear, who wrote many books and articles about Indian music – which can be found at:
https://bajakhana.com.au/
When I would describe artists or music that I liked, he would recommend records based on my interests. I ended up purchasing quite a few records from Suresh – which he shipped from India. If you think shipping records is a risky endeavor, know that Suresh would ship boxes of 25, 30 or even 35 records internationally. I never had one arrive broken or even cracked!
In one of his last emails he told me “I am really glad to learn that these discs are finding homes and users – rather than lying in archival vaults.” He was glad to know that I was digitizing them and sharing them on YouTube (though he often encouraged me to use archive.org instead). In that spirit, I share it with all of you – in hopes that it will bring you joy.
A (Mx S 619) – बांसरी (पहाडी) Bansuri (Pahadi)
B (Mx S 620) – बांसरी (भैरवी) Bansuri (Bhairvi)
Released as Odeon SB 2005 (Mx S 619 + S 620)
Credits
Mr. Badri Prasad = Flute
Unknown Artists – Harmonium (?), Tabla
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