Kamal Heer’s new album “Jinday Ni Jinday” is finally ready.

You may get it here.

I though I should share some of behind the curtain information and my thoughts about this album with my blog readers, who mostly tend to be musicians. My first and foremost wish is that you would like it.

I wrote two of the 8 lyrics. The title song is by Jasbir Gunachairia. The other lyricists are Sukhpal Aujla, Anil Ftehgarh Jattan, Charan Likhari, Preet Khetla and Ninder Sherkhan.

The bulk of the music for this album was recorded in Bombay at the Windlass Studios (engineers Bhanu Thakur & Tane). I would also like to mention a few musicians who have contributed to this album. The Great dhol player and our dear friend Ramzan Khavra (Ramju) played the dhol, dholak and various other percussions. A few songs have four dhols playing together. For these songs his own two sons Sajjid Khavra and Ahmed Khavra, his son-in-law and student Bashir Sheikh and his nephew Abdul Khavra accompanied him. the Famous film rhythm programmer Bharat Ghosher programmed some of the rhythm. The other players are as listed below:

Ustad Tari Khan, Ramzan Khavra, Atul Raninga, Raju Shankar, Sandeep Saxena, Sanjeev Sain, Sharafat Hussain, Naveen Sharma, Raju Sardar and Iqbal Azad.
Jugal Kishore, Pardeep Thakur, Jude Alexander, Sanju Verma, S. Jawda, Mohan Goyal, Neeraj Rath, Parbhat-Jugal Kishore.
Rashid Khan, Jatinder Thakur, Madhukant Dhumal, Dilshad Khan, Gaja, Pardeep Barot.

I also played Mandolin, Guitar, Keyboards, some Flute and Toombi.

The best thing about this album for me has to be the last song, which doesn’t even have my music at all. It was recorded live at Fiasco Bros Studio (Vancouver, Canada) just a month or so ago when the Tabla Virtuoso Ustad Tari Khan was in town. It’s a composition in 7/4, although not in Rupak but in a very Punjabi, folk taal called Dhaia (meaning 2.5). I will do another post about it later.

Although the Bombay studio recorded into Pro Tools, I work in Cubase. We have both programs along with a few others in our studio. So once I brought the raw recordings back to Los Angeles, I converted them to Cubase project files and finished them in Cubase 5. The album was also mixed in Cubase 5 by Michelle Garuik.

Working on a music album is a hard and long process (or it ought to be). It is a joint effort of many people. I am very thankful to all those who have helped me in the process and I am looking forward to see if you would find that our efforts have paid off. I hope this album will entertain millions and bring joy to even many more hearts. Enjoy.