It was in early 1990's when we opened Ava Studios, the first commercial digital recording studio in India and among a few in the entire world, that we encountered resistance with low acceptance of the new digital technology. Today, of course, all recordings are digital.
Until then, there were still arguments about digital vs analog, and it was a common belief at that time that digital recordings may not be suitable for Indian music, as our recordings at that time were often overloaded or recorded in the 'RED', where such sound would 'clip' in digital, to which it was very intolerant.
For the sake of proving that digital could record Indian instruments faithfully, we decided to create an album using all live instruments to prove the point. And we succeeded.
We found an old live recording of ghazals that had been performed at someone's house. It was barely audible, and we decided to recreate the entire performance in the same atmosphere of live recording albeit without audience disturbances, and we played it to many bold clients and convinced them that digital was 'good'.
Twenty years on the 75th birth anniversary of Late Utpal Biswas we announced the release of teh album "Aqidat" under the auspices of Anil Biswas Foundation.
Late Utpal Biswas and Amit Biswas supervised this entire recording with Bhavdeep Jaipurwale on the mic and supervising the live instruments.
"Aqidat" is an album of 7 Ghazals.
Aqidat Album Credits-
Singer: Pt. Bhavdeep Jaipurwale
Music Director: Unknown
Lyrics: Unknown
Music Supervised by : Late Utpal Biswas & Amit Biswas
Music Arranger: Pt. Bhavdeep Jaipurwale
Rhythm Arranger: Ravindra Rajbhatt
Musicians:
Swarlin: Pt. Rajendra Singh Sodha
Flute: Pt. Ronu Majumdar
Sitar: Ustad Dastgir Khan
Sarod: Pt. Pradeep Barot
Violin: Deepak Pandit
Sarangi: Dilshad Khan
Tabla: Ravindra Rajbhatt & Rajesh Rajbhatt
Keyboards: Atul Raninga
Bass Guitar: Tony Vaz
Spanish Guitar: Sanjay Jaipurwale & Bapu Biwalkar
Percussions: Rajesh Rajbhatt, Deepak Borkar, Vivek Samarth & Hemant Gangani
Recorded, mixed & mastered by Henry Moniz at Ava Studios, Mumbai.