BEST OF THE ROUGH GUIDES

It seems almost a misnomer to be talking about the BEST of the Rough Guides...perhaps we should really be talking about the "roughest" of the Rough Guides instead? The Rough Guides phenomenon now spans travel books, restaurant guides, maps and CD's and so it is not surprising to find a collection of Rough Guides spanning South Asian music.

In the summer of 1981, Mark Ellingham, a recent graduate from Bristol University, was travelling round Greece and couldn't find a guidebook that really met his needs. In a bid to avoid getting a job, Mark and a small group of writers set about creating their own guide. Back in London, Mark and the team finished their Rough Guide, as they called it, and talked Routledge into publishing the book.

That first Rough Guide to Greece, published in 1982, was a student scheme that became a publishing phenomenon. In 1994, they published the Rough Guide to World Music and Rough Guide to Classical Music; and a year later the Rough Guide to the Internet. All three books have become benchmark titles in their fields. Rough Guides now publish World Music CDs in association with World Music Network.

My favourite of the Rough Guide Collection covering South Asian music is the Rough Guide to the Asian Underground which showcases a world of tabla-driven beats, Indian classical samples and frenetic drum’n’bass, trip-hop and techno. This is followed closely by the Rough Guide to Bhangra, which marks a milestone in the history of Bhangra by bringing together, for the first time ever, most of the key artists and labels onto one CD. Every track is a classic, no padding, no ‘fillers’, just hit after hit. You don’t need to understand the words, just get the vibe.

High Drama and tear-jerkers take centre stage on the Rough Guide to Bollywood. From the early Bollywood top Indian vocalists, such as Lata Mangeshkar, her sister Asha Bhosle, and the dramatic Kishore Kumar, DJ Ritu sifts through some of the best Bollywood songs from the last 30 years and compiles them onto one CD.

Of course one cannot skim over Lata Mangeshkar's repertoire. Whether singing a bhajan (Hindu devotional song) or a raga-based film-hit, she is one of India’s greatest vocalists. In the entire history of Indian film songs, the greatest playback artists of either sex, the one who has reigned the longest, and the one that everyone looks up to is Lata Mangeshkar, so the Rough Guide to Lata Mangeshkar comes in at number 4 on our top five favourites.

Lata's sister, Asha Bhosle's effect in terms of global cultural impact and influence can not be underestimated, and her Olympian place as the most recorded artist in history, with more than 20,000 documented songs in over a dozen languages, is undisputed which means that she snags the last spot in in our top five favourites with the Rough Guide to Asha Bhosle.

OTHER ROUGH GUIDE MUSIC TITLES

Rough Guide to the Asian Beat Box
Rough Guide to Mohammed Rafi
Rough Guide to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Rough Guide to Ravi Shankar
Rough Guide to Sufi Music
Rough Guide to the Music of the Himalayas
Rough Guide to the Music of India
Rough Guide to the Music of Pakistan

Click here to check out all the Rough Guide CDs we have in stock.