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Zakir Hussain makes debut for Milestone's venture

Our Bureau

MUMBAI, Sept. 7

USTAD Zakir Hussain found humour in addressing an ``august audience in September''.

But for Rhydhun, an album with rhythm as its central theme, brothers Zakir Hussain and Taufiq Qureshi could not have chosen a better time for release than a Mumbai resonant with the beats of Ganapati.

The album, featuring the only recorded vocal rendition by their father, the late Ustad Allarakha, also marked on Tuesday, the debut of Milestone Entertainment in the niche market of `world music'.

The company has launched a new label, Free Spirit, for the purpose.

``Free Spirit will experiment in fusing Indian music with other traditional music and provide a new flavour that would appeal to a wider audience. Under the Free Spirit label, artists will have the freedom to find their own expression so that listeners c an enjoy music in its evergreen spirit,'' a related official statement said.

Mr. Jayant Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director, Milestone Group, said he expected the world music segment to grow fast. The Indian market for music, estimated at Rs. 1,200 crores annually, should double in the next three to five years. About 10 per ce nt of that is from sales abroad and the company aims to raise that figure to 20 per cent.

The world music market is, however, quite nascent, with all the accompanying risks of pioneering when entering it. But Rhydhun's, Mr. Sharma said, had manifested in a preference for initial launch using the costlier compact discs (CDs) with cassettes sch eduled only later.

CDs ensure higher per unit realisation even if the overall market is small. The album comes as an `enhanced compact disc', which not only delivers excellent sound reproduction but also provides the consumer with video, interviews and profiles of various artists in an interactive format.

Mr. Sharma said there were other world music projects also in the pipeline at Milestone.