Symphony of cultures

On YouTube, I have about 100 tracks that I have set as my favourites. Most of this is Hindustani music, the majority being songs by Kumar Gandharva

In 1980 or so, when I was around 10, my father bought my sisters and I a present. It was a cassette player, one of those mono boxes that are no longer to be found, and a few cassettes. These were the soundtrack to a Hindi movie, Rishi Kapoor’s Zamaane ko dikhana hai, an album by the Caribbean band Boney M called Nightflight to Venus, an anthology of the Swedish band Abba and, less predictably, Man Machine, an album by the German electronic group Kraftwerk. I remember them well because in the months that followed we played all four so