Ouch! Thanks to Airtel, I’m required to stand up every time they air one of the mod, ambient versions of our national anthem! And, Airtel’s ad spend is so fabulous that I’m already dead tired. Here was a song – enough of anthem-shanthem – which was relegated to the corner of a protocol. And it took Bharatbala, Kanika and Rahman to dig a now-nondescript song and bring back its forgotten, musical quality. The only thing that irks is that this is a 7 year old material first released by Sony in 2000 – I do understand the 60 years sentiment though!
Credits: Vocalists: D K Pattammal, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Lata Mangeshkar, Pandit Jasraj, Balamurali Krishna, Jagjit Singh, Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, Shobha Gurtu, Begum Parveena Sultana, Bhupen Hazarika, Ustad Rashid Khan, Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Shruti Sadolikar, S P Balasubramaniam, Sudha Raghunathan, Asha Bhosle, Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Unnikrishnan, Nityashree, Saddiq Khan Langa, Ghulam, Murtaza Khan, Ghulam Qadir Khan, Kaushiki Chakrabarty
Instrumentalists: Flute: Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia; Sarod: Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan Ali Bangash, Ayaan Ali Bangash; Santoor: Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Rahul Sharma; Ghatam: Vikku Vinayakram, Uma Shankar; Mohan Veena: Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt; Saxophone: Kadri Gopalnath; Chitraveena: Ravikiran; Veena: E Gayathri; Sarangi: Ustad Sultan Khan; Sitar: Pandit Kartick Kumar, Niladri Kumar; Violin: Kumaresh, Ganesh
