Global Hit: Miles from India The connection between Miles Davis and music from India is explored on a new CD release titled, "Miles from India."
by Lisa Mullins
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The whole idea of "Miles from India" may seem to some like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Hey, you got Miles Davis on my sitar. Hey, you got sitar on my Miles Davis. On first listen, it's the perfect concoction of east and west. But really, the recording was only mildly concocted. Yusuf Gandhi is the executive producer of this concept album.
Gandhi was visiting with renowned jazz producer Bob Belden; he was remixing the Miles Davis jazz-funk-fusion record "On the Corner" for CD release. And during the mixing session, Belden commented to Gandhi...
"I was surprised at the amount of Indian music influences on that album. And I said, "Yeah." So he says, "How would it feel to have Indian musicians doing music from Miles Davis?" That's when I said "Miles from India," and the whole project just took off."
"Before we went to India, we had sounded off a lot of the musicians, they all said 'Wow, that sounds like a great project, we'd like to be a part of it,' but they were still wary about what it would sound like. But once we had recorded the Indian musicians, and then we sent the tapes out, basically everybody who heard it, heard the Indian musicians, said 'We want to play on this project.'"
PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.
