Nadhaswaram, subtitled Musical Heralds from South India, presents Sheik Chinna Moulana, the leading master of the nadhaswaram, the long double-reed instrument that, together with the thavil drum, has opened temple festivals and processions in South India for centuries. Both instruments have since been raised to classical status, and here Moulana plays a lyrical version of Carnatic music in four long pieces.

Moulana was born in Karavadi, Andhra Pradesh, in 1924, into a family that had played the nadhaswaram for some three hundred years, and died in Srirangam in 1999. His father, Sheik Kasim Sahib, was his first teacher; he later trained with the Rajam and Duraikannu brothers of Nachiarkovil, drawn to the Thanjavur style, and became known for his raga alapana. Devoted to Lord Ranganatha, he settled in Srirangam and founded a nadhaswaram school there. He received the Padma Shri and the Sangita Kalanidhi of the Madras Music Academy, toured the United States and Canada in 1973 and played at the Festival of India in the Soviet Union in 1987; in 1991 he gave the inaugural concerts of the Festival of India in Germany. He is joined by his grandsons and disciples S. Kasim and S. Babu on nadhaswaram and by S. Subramanian on thavil.

Dhudukulu Gala, in raga Gowlai and adi tala, lasts almost 22 minutes. Ananda Sagara, in raga Garudadhvani, is shorter. The core of the disc is an alap of nearly 24 minutes in raga Subha Pantuvarali. A bhajan in raga Salaga Bhairavi closes the record.

Schott calls the nadhaswaram and thavil a pair of musical heralds, whose deafening signals start the temple festivals; on this disc they are heard as concert instruments, in the hands of the player who led the tradition in his time. The CD appeared in the series of Weltmusik, the joint label of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and Wergo.

CD, Wergo SM 1507-2, released in 1992 in the Music of World Cultures series.