Sounds of Israel

The group named The Idan Raichel Project often collaborates with artists from different ethnicities, giving their music a distinctive flavour. During this tour too, Idan hopes to meet more Indian musicians. CS caught up with the singer:

India calling
This is our second visit to India; our first time here was more than five years ago! We wanted to come back for long. I am so happy for this opportunity to come to India and do such a wide tour. We are performing everywhere, from Delhi in the North to Bangalore in the South, not forgetting the East and of course, Mumbai.

Local flavour
I am a great admirer of Nitin Sawhney. His music and production has influenced me. Two years ago, I also met an amazing singer Shweta Pandit. I hope to meet more local musicians during this tour; it is always a great experience. I have also collaborated with Swati Natekar before. She has performed with us. She was completely spontaneous during our shows in the UK last year. I hope we will work again soon!

Reaching out
During our tours, we always try to reach out to local musicians, so if any musician is reading this, please write to us on our social networking site page (Idan Raichel), I would love to check out your music! It happens a lot that during tours we meet musicians, mostly by accident, and then we collaborate on stage. Once, we performed with the driver that took us from the airport.

Play with the music
Indian culture is so rich and colourful and it is always tempting to ‘play' with it and combine it in my music. My flute player, Eyal Sela, plays the bansuri in our show. It adds so much to the music!

Tours galore
We are now planning a wider tour for next year that will include Thailand, India and Singapore. We cannot announce the concerts yet, but we are hopeful that after this tour, we can visit more cities in India next time.u00a0