Benares is the common name of the city now known as Varanasi.It's the holiest city to the Hindus, and also is holy to Buddhists (the Buddha preached his first sermon there) and to the Jains, a smaller religion in India.It's set on the banks of the holy river of Hinduism, the Ganges.Varanasi is almost certainly the oldest city in India, and is possibly the oldest city in the world.It contains many temples, which have steep staircases leading down to the Ganges.These are used as colorful backgrounds in many Bollywood movies.There are three ragas included on this CD. Raga Puriya Kalyan, Raga Pilu, and Raga Darbari.It seems misleading to link them all to Benares or Varanasi.It's quite likely they were all recorded in that city, but they are played in other parts of India as well.The first two are ragas associated with evening.This is not true of the third one.But, really, who cares if it sounds good?The raga is played by Debendra Krishna Chattopadhyay on sitar and Surendra Mohan Mishra on tabla.It sounds quite familiar to those of us whose first introduction to Indian music were the albums of Ravi Shankar, thanks to The Beatles, especially George Harrison.Reportedly, while filming their second movie Help! George met two Indian musicians who were used as extras in a restaurant scene.They told him he ought to check out a true musical master, Ravi Shankar.George did, and became Ravi's student.In a short while, weird sounding sitar music was used in some Beatles releases, such as Norwegian Wood.Ravi was no stranger to the rest of the world, no Indian sage hiding out in the mountains.He'd danced on stage at Carnegie Hall back in 1936.He'd been a musician and writer and performer for many years.He'd won awards for his movie scores.When his fellow Bengalis were being massacred in East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh after it succeeded in separating from West Pakistan, which is the country we now know just as Pakistan), he asked George Harrison for help raising funds.So George organized the first rock charity concert, The Concert for Bangladesh.All profits from the concert, the 3-record album and the movie go to Unicef to help out.Ragu Pilus is played by Amiya Bhattacharya on surbahar and Narayan Chakravorty on tambura.Raga Darbari is played by Narayan Chakravorty on vicitra vina.His association with George Harrison opened many more doors for Ravi Shankar to continue giving concerts around the world, many in collaboration with artists of various cultures and musical traditions.It's obvious he believed in enriching the world's music through combining the best of all worlds.However, this album reminds us that India holds many other talented musicians, and is well worth having by anyone interested in this form of music.Admittedly, in the west, still a minority taste.
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