Naina Lagai Ke

Even in her late 70s, India's Bollywood queen Asha Bhosle has a fresh, youthful quality in her voice. And she's always been open to interesting collaborations – from Boy George to the Kronos Quartet. On paper, this pairing with sitar player Shujaat Khan seems to hark back to the wonderful Legacy recording she made with the late sarod player Ali Akbar Khan in 1997. But that was classical courtly repertoire while this is much more popular, with touches of ghazal and Bollywood.

Shujaat Khan is one of India's top classical sitar players – son of the late Vilayat Khan in a country where lineage is all important. But he also has a warm, smooth singing voice and inherits his father's lyrical style of sitar playing – particularly exquisite in the intro to Asha's solo version of ‘Naina Lagai Ke’. The title-track actually comes three times, once sung by Asha, once sung by Shujaat and once as a duet. It does hint at a possible shortage of material, but the three versions are sufficiently varied.

Alongside 'Naina Lagai Ke, the stately 'Koi Poochhe Hai Kabhi’ and lyrical 'Humre Naina’ are standout tracks. English translations are not supplied, but an Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi speaker tells me I'm not missing much. The compositions are by Shujaat Khan and performed with a small ensemble of bansuri flute, guitar, tabla, dholak and keyboards alongside Shujaat's sitar. He's clearly inherited not only his father's lyrical sitar playing, but the facility to compose a catchy melody. This is a meeting of different generations with enough musical ground in common to create something which seems effortlessly beautiful.