What is this album about?
Traveller traces the route of ancient Indian gypsies from Punjab and Rajasthan in India to Andalusia in Spain. It attempts to find synergies between Spanish Flamenco and Indian Folk and Classical music traditions, while also highlighting the distinctiveness of these genres..
Who is it by?
Anoushka Shankar is a composer and Sitar-player, who has followed in the footsteps of her father, the internationally acclaimed composer and musician, Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Why should listen to it?
The compositions place the Sitar instrument in the midst of the Flamenco structure, accompanied by the sounds of palmas, cajon, ghatam, tabla and vocals from both traditions. The title track is a celebration of the two percussive traditions, with the Sitar and the Shehnai providing a melodic thread through the composition. In the feisty Buleria con Ricardo, the Sitar and the piano represent the sounds of the East and West, accompanied by the palmas (a hand-clapping typical to Flamenco). Boy meets Girl is a delightful melding of the Flamenco Granaina and the Hindustani Raaga Maanj Khamaj.

One only needs to skim through Indian mythology to understand the reverential place that the ancient sport of archery holds in India. Whether it is Arjuna’s shooting the fish-eye in the Mahbharata or Rama’s breaking the unbreakable bow in the Ramayana, the bow and arrow are more than just tests of strength for a prospective warrior groom of yore. Tribal communities, that have been traditionally skilled at archery hail from many Indian states including the Indian North East and interior regions of Odisha, Jharkhand and Rajasthan. One of the most notable names in the world of modern Indian archery is Limba Ram, who hails from a tribal community of Rajasthan and is currently one of the coaches for the Indian archery team at the Olympics 2012. Some of the other Indian archers who have represented India in the sport include Tarundeep Rai, Satyadev Prasad, Jayanta Talukdar, Dola Banerjee, Rahul Banerjee, L. Bombayla Devi, Chekrovolu Swuro and Deepika Kumari, who, at the time of going to print, is ranked world No. 1.

Marathi (Ma-raa-tee) is spoken predominantly in the state of Maharashtra. The word ‘Marathi’ itself is presumed to be derived from ‘maharashtri’ meaning ‘the language of the great land’. It is written in the Devanagari script, just like Hindi. However, as compared to Hindi, it has a heavy influence of Sanskrit-derived words.
The most fascinating literary traditions in Marathi language is the contribution of philosophers and saint-poets like Moropant, Dnyaneshwar, Eknath, Namdev, Chokhmela, Samarth Ramdas, and the prolific Tukaram who composed thousands of abhangs – Marathi devotional poems in praise of the Hindu god, Vittal sung during an annual pilgrimage called Warkari
Contemporary writers, poets and playwrights include Sane Guruji, P.L. Deshpande, Ranjit Desai, Mangesh Padgaonkar, Kusumagraj, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Vijay Tendulkar and Dilip Chitre.
According to the 2001 Indian census, there are 71,701,478 speakers of Marathi in the country with as many as 42 dialects.