The veena, turned up to 11.

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:24:42 -0800

With a pickup mounted on the body of the instrument just below the strings, Revathy Krishna, KP Sarada and Sivanandam and Jayanthi Kumaresh get an unexpectedly fat sound out of their veena. Rocking! The instrument is more often amplified with a microphone, in which case it sounds more like this performance by D. Balakrishna, who, as you'll hear, ain't no slouch, neither. And here Pichumani gets his groove on, no doubt about it. So, hey, two more raags for the road, courtesy of Rajeswari Padmanabhan. The second tune on her clip, by the way, has got some deep blues in it, so I'm thinking maybe Rajeswari might've been down to the crossroads at midnight... [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions] One of the legendary veena masters is S. Balachander. Here's a short documentary on him, with some fabulous reverb on that narrator! Part 1 (4:35) and 2 (4:41). Here's a performance by S. Balachander. By the way, those clay pots that you see being played as veena accompaniment in these clips are called ghatam. Pretty cool, huh? Here's a player surrounded by a set of tuned ghatam.

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The veena, turned up to 11.