Asha Puthli – The Essential

Asha Puthli - The Essential brings together a wide-ranging selection from a career that moved freely across psychedelic rock, classical Indian music, free jazz, pop, soul and disco. Rather than reducing Asha Puthli to a single style, this Mr Bongo collection is designed as a snapshot of an artist whose work has repeatedly shifted direction while retaining a distinctive voice.

The set reaches back to the raw Indian psychedelic garage-rock sound of Asha Puthli & The Savages, and also includes material with Asha & The Surfers. Her connection with jazz is represented through recordings with Ornette Coleman and Charlie Mariano, reflecting the improvisation and openness she recognised in both jazz and classical Indian music. Elsewhere the collection moves into the celebrated CBS-era material and the disco period, including songs such as Space Talk, I'm Gonna Dance and Music Machine.

Across the compilation, the emphasis is on the breadth of Puthli's catalogue and her willingness to reinvent herself. It is an overview that places early, rare recordings alongside better-known work and later material, presenting a career built on experimentation rather than a single genre identity.