My first encounters with Indian music came from...

My first encounters with Indian music came from George Harrison when I was on a strong Beatles kick in 6th grade. At the time, I wanted to move on to explore more from Ravi Shankar, but when I went to the Sam Goody record store to ask for it, they didn’t have any in stock, and didn’t know what I was talking about enough to even special order it.

My how times have changed! CR invited me out to dinner tonight to Branded Saloon in our neighborhood after reading that they had good burgers, and we ended up in the back room where two great acts were about to perform. The first was Adnan Sabir, who was excellent and dreamy, the second was a group with bansuri, tabla, and sitar. I love that we can just go out looking for beef, and end up with an impromptu evening of great music.

It was also topical, since this week I’ve been getting into Vijay Iyer’s latest record, which includes Indian-flavored guitar and tabla.