Kafi is a strange one. Once upon a time it was a "major" raag - but is currently presented in thumris/dhuns mostly. I do not recollect seeing a Kafi recording - except perhaps by the Dagar brothers (Dhrupad). There are lots of Mishra Kafi recordings, even though they may say Kafi. .but I would highly recommend KEEPING AWAY from them when trying to learn this raag. .unless you plan to exclusively perform it only in its "impure" form. Piloo and Bhairavi are two other raags that follow the same trend. Will keep an eye out, but I think it will be a difficult fine. Let us know if you could locate something.
Well, I just looked through about 100 CD's and only found one recording of it in "The Raga Guide". Hariprasad Chaurasia performs it on bansuri but it's just a short piece. . . .
Ravi Shankar has performed a version of it called Kafi holi on his C.D titled ravi shankar India's master musician' also another version of the song a album called recorded in London.I have those on vinyl. I just started buying C.D's when my 3yr old, then 2 tore out the needle of my record player. . . . .Peace
My cat jumped on my record player and broke the needle out nearly 15 years ago. But I got lucky and used superglue to glue it back in there. Wow, still works!
Only time I ever heard Kafi was live, by sarodiya Rajeev Taranath in Santa Fe NM back in 1993. And I've never seen a recording of that one either. Amitava, I have Piloo by Nikhil Banerjee on a rare CD, and that's all. I think the trend is to combine raags, so the "pure" ones are becoming hard to find.
Hi everyone,
I discovered on the Raga.com site an MP3 from Nayan Gosh playing Raga Kafi. Don't teally know if it's released on CD, the page isn't quite clear on that. Nice recording BTW
Hello, I have a cd by "the talented trio"(Reena Shrivastava sitar, Rajeeb Chakraburty sarod) on
Neelam label which is straight Kafi. Also has
Rags Bihag and Madhyam Se Pilu. Not a bad
cd. I believe they are a brother/sister team. Hope
that helps, Mark
Listenting to the recommedation of Nayan's performance by Remco, it seems to be a "pure" version. I am a little rusty on Kafi, but sounded OK. I have not yet heard the Rajiv/Reena track. Have the CD somewhere.
Straight Kafi. No cream, no sugar, no latte!
Thanks for the review of the talented trio CD. I was wondering if that one was any good. Not many sitar-sarode jugalbandis out there. .
Hi again. I just wanted to add one other source I know of for Rag Kafi. The Nimbus Records "The Raga Guide" (book and 4 cd set)
has a version of Kafi done by Hariprasad
Chaurasia on flute, with most of the music
written out. Being a sitar student I have found this book/cd set quite useful even though there's no sitar on it. Hoping once again to have been of some help, Mark
Yeah, the Raga Guide is a very nice book: the cool thing is the CD's accompanying the book with examples of the raga's! The book was done here in my hometown Rotterdam at the conservatorium; the have a very good world department, with Hariprasad as one of the teachers. My teacher is his tampuraplayer when he performs in the Netherlands and she also studies with him.
