Between roughly the ages of 17 and 30, I went through a protracted Nikhil Banerjee “phase”. I collected every recording I could find. I followed up on every scrap of trivia. I began translating his biography into English (I abandoned it after a couple of chapters because the Bengali original is one of the most atrociously written books I have encountered). I took the train up to Berkeley every Friday to sit with Steven Baigel as he worked on his NB documentary. In short, I was a fan.
This phase slowly passed. Nikhil Banerjee appeared less and less in my playlists. I started listening to other sitarists with increasing intellectual appreciation, even if their music rarely held the same immediate appeal for me. And vocalists further extended their hegemony.
Yet NB remains a soft spot. This Hem Behag (Discogs entry) was the first recording of his that I owned. It lacks an alap and is incongruously tabla-heavy. Kishen Maharaj could be accused of going completely overboard with the constant improvisation. Yet in some strange way it works, partly because of the compositional genius of Allauddin Khan, and partly because the sitar treads a light path between restraint and whimsy.
Nikhil Banerjee passed away in 1986 at the age of 54 (cf DI #9). When I was given this recording, I was told that it was played on loudspeakers in Kolkata after his death. Many years later, I was in a taxi inching through peak Durga Puja traffic between Ekdalia and Singhi Park when I heard it again, floating above the rooftops, far above the milling crowds. Kolkata, that incurable romantic among cities, sometimes finds an impeccable sense of timing.