RFD: Indian music

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.