You won’t hear Vijaya Anand sing on this record. Nor will you hear him play any of the instruments. He is the invisible presence behind each of these songs. He’s the Musical Director, here to dream up sequences and carefully produce sophisticated South Indian pop perfection.
This is a glorious retrospective of Vijaya’s groundbreaking filmi music (he was among the first wave to use electronic instruments in Indian film scores), almost all sung in glorious Telugu.
For the thirtieth anniversary of Asia Classics 1: The South Indian Film Music of Vijaya Anand - Dance Raja Dance, we're putting it out on vinyl—in a gatefold jacket—for the very first time. Make it the new soundtrack to your life and the movies in your head.
A little background for those that like long messages:
It’s been more than thirty years since that fateful Fulbright funded trip to India when painter Amy Sillman and her musician boyfriend Kurt Hoffman came across a bootleg cassette with the words Vijaya Anand - Dance Raja Dance scrawled across its cover. When they played it for us, we had no idea that this would result in a decades-long project—including multiple trips to meet Vijaya and a collaboration with David Byrne.
Tracklist: