Zitar

Personnel: Niladri Kumar (sitar); June Banerjee (vocals, background vocals); Dominique Cerejo, Sanjeev Abhyankar (vocals).
Audio Mixer: Aslam Khan.
Recording information: Stage Sound, Mumbai, India.
Straddling the line between jazz fusion and new age, sitar master Niladri Kumar creates stunning sound pieces that swell and splash like a slow-moving river over colorful rocks. On the sweet and meditative "Priority," Kumar's tangy sitar lines can sound at times like a nylon-stringed guitar, and on "Yearning," the distortion, reverb, and glitchy percussion add a hypermodern surge of electricity, thus further blurring the boundaries between traditional Indian music and a whole new hybrid genre.