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have looked at me twice and her mind would have ‘pho- tographed’ my face. I knew that she knew my father and I knew my father knew lots of these people. But I don’t like getting pref- erential treatment because of my father. I like getting preferen- tial treatment because of who I am.” He laughs. “Same thing with my son, Azaan [the band’s guitarist]. He’s on tour now with us. He flies with everyone else. He shares a room if he has to and he does whatever he has to, because he is a musician, not my son.” He returns to the theme. “We met quite a few times but she…” lowering his voice to a whisper…“doesn’t remember. And I’m unhappy because that means I was not in her face ’til just a couple of years ago.”
In March 2004, Vilayat Khan died aged 75. Five years on, there was to be “a festival in remembrance of [his] father” and Asha’s name was in the frame, having known him personally and profes- sionally since she had sung in Kadambari (1976), a film with music by Vilayat Khan to Geetanjali Singh’s lyrics. “Some people wanted her to come over,” recalls Shujaat, “so they asked me to call her. I said, ‘My name’s Shujaat and…’ She said, ‘Of course!’”
He continues, “She flew to Delhi and I went to meet her at the hotel. She came and opened the concert. I think she heard me that day. I was playing and singing and something must have clicked somewhere inside. More than just the music. She met my family – my wife and children – and she realised that she was dealing with a normal family who were not awe-struck by her. The next morn- ing when I went to see her off, she just said, ‘We should do some- thing together.’”
H
The idea planted, that set things in train. “As soon as she asked me, I was really happy and yet I was still tentative. Other people got involved and I told Atul [Churamani, Vice President of Sarega- ma in Mumbai] that he absolutely had to do it. He knows me and he knows her. It started in a very natural way and blossomed.”
e set to work selecting material for approval and the list boiled down to seven compositions. So what’s it like teaching Ashaji a song? “She, whether on pur- pose or without knowing, doesn’t give herself enough credit for her sharpness of mind. All I have to do is sing something to her once or twice at the very most and she’s got it. It was so easy. I was choosing songs that were more in the way of melody and not ‘very drama’. It’s not changing scales. Just very simple tunes that everyone could get up in the morning and hum one of them in the shower. That was the idea.”
Clearly a bit of a one for timing, he demonstrates this with a skip-beat break before… “That wasn’t the problem. What she had to wrap her head around was that we were going to do something live. Like we were doing on stage yesterday [at the premiere at Lon- don’s Royal Festival Hall in March 2011], I’d sing one line and throw it at her and she throw it back, just using that line in different ways. I want her to do what her adrenalin is telling her at that time.”
The sessions took place in Mumbai at Stage Sound. “It was just tabla and synthesiser,” she explains. “He was singing. I was singing. We improvised. One song lasted ten minutes and we cut. Actually most of them were longer. They were edited down, made shorter for the album. They were live.”
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