Shivkumar Sharma, Brijbushan Kabra and Hariprasad Chaurasia’s The Call of the Valley III – a coda
5. 6. 2009 | Rubriky: Articles,CD reviews
[by Ken Hunt, London] Whilst writing the essay about the history of Call of the Valley back in those days when the internet was in its infancy and before mobile phones, it took months to obtain the right phone number for G.N. Joshi – or one that worked. The way things sometimes go, I finally made direct contact only to learn that he had died days before.
G.N. Joshi (6 April 1909-22 September 1994) wrote three books in total, beginning in the late 1970s with his Marathi-language account of his life Swar Gangechya Teeri – he translated it as ‘On The Banks of Swara-Ganga’ – and explained that in the title the Ganga (Ganges) stands as “the sacred River of Melody”.
He used the material contained in his Marathi autobiography to create a new work. Namely, his fascinating English-language autobiography Down Melody Lane. Read it if you have any interest in the Indian subcontinent’s music.
Down Melody Lane Orient Longman, Hyderabad, ISBN 0 86131 482 4 (1984)
See also http://downmelodylane.in from which the image of G.N. Joshi is taken.