Magic Carpet Father Time HQ Audio 1972

Recorded at Chalk Farm Studios, London, late 1971. Alisha Sufit - vocals, acoustic guitar Clem Alford - sitar, esraj, tamboura Jim Moyes - electric guitar Keshav Sathe - Indian tabla, percussion © 1972 Mushroom In the 1960s and 1970s, both in the UK and in US, there was a burgeoning interest in Indian culture and music, most famously spearheaded by virtuoso sitar player Ravi Shankar and sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, amongst others. Numerous UK bands of the era began to use sitar and Indian musical sounds generally to add a flavor of the east to their recordings. By contrast, Magic Carpet was a more cohesive Anglo-Indian fusion, the Indian instrumentation generating and being integral to the music, not simply an addition. Based around the classically trained sitar virtuoso, Alford, and the ethereal voice of Alisha Sufit, Magic Carpet created a distinctive sound described (perhaps misleadingly) as “psychedelic progressive folk“ music - psych prog folk.