Watch: A Patna musician has won a Grammy for Yo-Yo Ma's world music album
Sandeep Das played the tabla on The Silk Road Ensemble's 'Sing Me Home'.
Celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s group The Silk Road Ensemble won the Grammy award for Best World Music album on Sunday. Sing Me Home, the group’s seventh album, brought them their first win at the Grammys in a category where the nominees included sitarist Anoushka Shankar’s Land of Gold, a reflection on the global refugee crisis, and a live album by Brazilian legends Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
The album explores the overlap in musical styles across Eurasia. For the Indian classical sound, which is prominently featured in the track below, the group recruited Sandeep Das, who grew up in Patna. According to an article in Telegraph India, Das spent his growing up years in Bihar’s capital before eventually moving to Boston, where he has lived for the last four years.
Yo-Yo Ma, who has previously won seven Grammys, set up his group in 2000 to explore the confluence of musical styles across the famed trading route between Asia and the Middle East. One of the performers on the album includes New York-based Syrian clarinet player Kinan Azmeh, who was stranded overseas after US President Donald Trump’s executive order.
“When things like this happen, it impacts us directly because a lot of us come from a lot of those countries,” Das told reporters after accepting the award.