Crossroads Music Raga Samay Festival ancillary event: "Play Like a Lion" film screening

American-born Alam Khan, son of legendary Indian sarodist Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, is traveling from California to India on his first concert tour without his ailing father. Ali Akbar Khan, who introduced Indian classical music to the United States at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1955, was the “Emperor of Melody,” a national treasure in India and the U.S., a Grammy nominee, and, according to renowned master violinist Lord Yehudi Menuhin, “possibly the greatest musician in the world.” Alam finds it’s not always easy following a legend, so when he feels the weight of living up to his family’s North Indian Classical music tradition, he remembers his father’s advice: “Don’t worry; play like a lion!”

Directed by Joshua Dylan Mellars and shot throughout India and California, *Play Like a Lion *(2011) features Carlos Santana, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, blues slide guitarist Derek Trucks, jazz saxophone great John Handy, world-class percussionist and *tabla *artist Ustad Zakir Hussain, master tabla player Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, master Indian flutist Pandit G. S. Sachdev, master sarodist Ustad Aashish Khan, and Alam Khan. The film is 75 minutes and features narration by Mark Cohen.

Visit the movie's website here.

This is an ancillary event of Crossroads Music's Raga Samay Festival. For information on other festival events, click here.

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