RFD: Indian music

Whoa, iTunes has like 20 Hariharan albums on sale for $5.99 apiece!

Should I get Ghazals or Great Ghazals? I mean the latter seems like it's the greater album but sometimes the originals are best.

Did you decide?

Nope. I really really just want more music with this vibe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeaVRC453M0

Can't figure out which album that's from though!

making a mix for a friend's conference and they've asked for 'lively indian music', i'm thinking something kinda modern and slightly westernised, can anyone recommend me a good compilation of this? (vague, i know!)

I dont know of any comps but if you find one please let me know!

Maybe something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnV4bNhnFc&noredirect=1

will do! the mix i'm making is first half indian music going into a 2nd half of 'bloke-rock' which will be a mission to make not sound mental

can someone help me out?

Love: Daler Mehndi, Colonial Cousins, some various Gurbani/Ghazals albums but I still prefer to go more into the pop realm. I feel like there's a ton of good crossover stuff out there but I have no knowledge of this scene.

Basically, looking for more music like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWNGyeeJJqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rz6JfgCJtk

Can anyone recommend a decent book on North Indian classical music? Looking for cultural history, definition of terms, biographies of notable players, etc.

my knowledge of indian music pretty much beins and ends with sampled material. except for this one album of indian classical that my rad friend brought me back on a cassette tape when he visited india once-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCjf7Nl6dqg
shivkumar+rahul sharma - "wanderlust (ode to nature)" (late 90s?)

If there’s anything in particular you’re looking for this is probably one of the only areas where I may be useful

If you just want Indian/Hindustani classical the India Archive Music label by Lyle Wachovsky is great and totally overlooked — most of the recordings are from like ‘89-‘00 so in some cases the artists are past their prime (there are a ton of Vilayat Khan recordings on this label but he was in his 60s/70s at that point, for example — they’re still really good, though!) but the sound quality is pristine and the liner notes are indispensable in pretty much every case. Apparently Lyle paid these artists really well out of his own pocket, like I want to say 10 grand per session I saw somewhere (no way he recouped that in sales), but he then went broke himself in recent years.