Hear Bismillah Khan in Rajdhani soon

Hear Bismillah Khan in Rajdhani soon

How about hearing some classical music while travelling by Rajdhani or Shatabdi? Passengers travelling on these elite trains will soon get to enjoy rare music sourced from the All India Radio archives. According to sources, the ministry of railways wrote to the All India Radio in March proposing to source classical music, semi-classical music and music by eminent artists to be played in the Rajdhani, Shatabdi, and Duronto trains. “We immediately responded to the request of the railways. The railway officers have selected the music that will be played on the trains. We are now in the process of preparing the recordings. It basically involves cleaning and digitising the records for good sound quality. We will hand them over to railways in two to three weeks,” an AIR official told DNA. The offering includes rare raags on flute, violin, sitar, dhrupad, sarod, shahnai and tabla. One will get to enjoy raag bihaag, chaiti dhun, rag shyam kalyan and poorbi dhun by Ustad Bismillah Khan, teen taal, dharam tal, ek tal and roopak tal on tabla by Ahmed Jann Thirkawa, rag todi and rag deepavali on flute by Pannalal Ghosh. Other artists whose instrumental music will be played are Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu (violin), Pt VG Jog (violin), Pt Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), Ustad Alaudin Khan, Radhika Mohan Maitra and Sharan Rani on (sarod), and T N Rajaratnam Pillai (nagaswaram). In these trains, music is played even now. But according to railway officials, it is contemporary instrumental. Currently, AIR news is also broadcast. A railway official said, “The music will be played only in these trains as other trains do not have public announcement systems.” The railway ministry has recently taken a number of initiatives for on-board entertainment of the passengers. It is in the process of installing satellite TV facility in all the nine Shatabdis originating from New Delhi. On the luxury tourist train, Palace on wheels, the satellite TV facility has been up and running for the last two years.