Reworked 'Traveller' a bit for live shows: Anoushka Shankar

On CNBC-TV18's show Beautiful People, sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar discusses her new album 'Traveller' with Anuradha SenGupta. To promote her album, she is travelling across India and performing the album live.

Below is an edited transcript of her interview. Watch the accompanying videos for more.

Q: You are back performing live in India after a while?

A: Two years. I did a series of classical concerts with my father in the spring of 2010 so that was almost two years ago.

Q: How does it feel to be back and performing in India?

A: It's so lovely to be back especially with this album that's a crossover between Indian music and flamenco. We have been presenting it in Europe for a few months now. It feels so important to then come and do the parallel and present it here in India. I am really excited to be back.

Q: I remember meeting you previously when you did 'Rise'. That was your first album as a composer?

A: As a composer, yes.

Q: When you did 'Rise', you were speaking about the fact that there was one track there called 'Voice of the moon' and you said - there are some tracks which are great to perform live because they offer you great energy and excitement among the musicians who are performing at that moment. On this album - Traveler, would I be right in saying that this 'Buleria Con Ricardo' must me the track that's really exciting to perform live?

A: Yes, it's definitely one of the highlights that people seem to really respond to and is a lot of fun for us because it's a very driven, very rhythmic track but I also have kind of taken all the tracks from this album that we perform live and have reworked them a bit so that we are not reproducing them exactly as on the record. They do all have a really interesting live energy and the band that I am with is so particularly brilliant that they bring that energy to every piece.

Q: Flamenco music is the music of the gypsies isn't it?

A: Of Spain, yes.

Q: Is there a gypsy association?

A: There absolutely is. The gypsy community in Spain is largely what dominates the flamenco tradition. Even today it is the music of the gypsies but you will have non-gypsy musicians. However the strong areas that flamenco music develops are for example Madrid, Barcelona where the gypsy communities are strong and it is really their music.

In fact that Gypsy connection is one that traces all the way back to India from the nomadic peoples from Rajasthan and beyond that travels across Central Asia, the Middle East and landed up in Spain. That was what I was really interested in, in retracing on this album.

Q: The title track - Traveller, would I be right if I interpret it saying that it has a very folk Indian sound to it?

A: Absolutely.

Q: Less Spanish flamenco or how does it work? Explain it to a layperson?

A: What I didn't want to do was just go and make a flamenco album. I am an Indian musician, I am a sitar player. There are million flamenco musicians who can make a better flamenco album than I would make. What I was interested in making was a collaboration between Indian music and flamenco and to allow these two styles to interact with each other in different ways and to create new sounds.

Some of the pieces on the album are ones in which I travel completely over to the flamenco side and have developed techniques on the sitar to match flamenco guitar and so on.

Q: So 'Inside me' would be the first track that is more flamenco?

A: Yes, it's definitely more in the flamenco style or 'Kanya' in fact is something that's very much in a famous old flamenco style. Then in the other pieces it's about coming in the other direction and having for example Spanish musicians or rhythms but presenting more of an Indian piece. The third is of course when the two styles combine and end up in a place that's not quite one or the other and that's very interesting as well.

Q: Which track do you think it best brings that out?

A: I would say 'Boy meets girl' is a very interesting one. It's deceptively simple in the sense that it's just a duet between sitar and guitar which is played by a great master Pepe Habichuela. But it was actually a very complex track to create because we were trying to allow two simultaneous forms to exist at the same time - one being the presentation of an Indian raga and one being a form called the granaína (one of the classical flamenco cante) from flamenco.

We had to work quite hard to find a way to make that work but as it stands if you were just listening it sounds just like a very simple beautiful melody but actually its two very old styles that are completely separate being able to coexist.

Watch the accompanying videos for the complete show...