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When did Indo-Western fusion really begin? On the coattails of the first colonial encounter after Bengali fisherfolk heard the odd ditties of British traders who landed along with Charnock? Or when ustads at the Mughal durbar overheard the occasional English ambassador who may have tucked his favourite instrument into his baggage to while away the time in arduous, exotic India? Or in even remoter memory, if Indian melodies travelled westwards on camel caravans through the Middle East via the Arabs into North Africa and Spain, influencing Europeans during the Moorish occupation?

These questions may occur to listeners as they hear this CD of Amit Chaudhuri and band. Understandably, Amit is leery of associating with the fusion bandwagon, because the word came to mean pejoratively, in popular quarters, an anything-goes approach in which the musical rigour of both traditions got watered down into self-indulgent freedom of expression.

To tell the truth, all music is fusion. No musical form remains untouched by acculturation, though classical pandits still turn up their noses at the perjury committed by colleagues who jam with jazzmen. To pin those purists down on hybridization, just ask them how their Ragas Kafi or Miyan ki Malhar got those names, or how the violin found such a hallowed place in south India. Listen to Carla Bley’s A.I.R. (1971), a brooding, more melancholy interpretation than Amit’s of All India Radio’s raga-based theme tune.

Just like you cannot dam the waters of a river from flowing into the sea, just like no one could prevent people from migrating to distant lands since time immemorial, so also you cannot squeeze music into watertight compartments and label them. Music always overflows outward like the rhythms of life; it always crosses boundaries.

Amit’s flow into these channels took an interesting course. In 2001, I had directed an evening of poetry and jazz with readers like Dhritiman Chaterji and Nandita Das delivering Amit’s works against a score by Indo-jazz composer Arthur Gracias. I had even goaded him into singing Hindustani classical alongside Arthur’s sensitive guitar. In 2004 he called me, enthused about his latest project for which he had written new compositions, such as Spanish Bhairav. I remember asking him whether it consciously echoed the famed experiment of Jyotirindranath Tagore (Rabindranath’s eldest brother) with “Italian Jhinjhoti” for Desdemona’s Willow Song in his play Asrumati (1880). That’s the earliest historical instance of Indo-Western fusion I know.

But Amit and gang went further when the concert, titled “This Is Not Fusion”, materialized in January 2005. It was a sparkling yet thoughtful gig, melding Indian classical with rock. Possibly for the first time ever, a Hindustani vocalist used the blues as bandish, on the Gershwin classic Summertime. The result was divine. Derek and The Dominos’ Layla riff was another stunner that set me off on a different chain of thought: could Eric Clapton, inspired for this song by George Harrison’s wife Patti, have heard his best friend George playing the bhaktiful Raga Todi some time – either on sitar or a record by George’s guru Ravi Shankar – and the tune stayed on his mind? Stranger things have happened.