According to author Alan Clayson, the Indian players were "fascinated" to be following Western rules of harmony for the first time. The musicians were recruited by Shambhu Das, who ran Shankar's Kinnara School of Music in Bombay, and Vijay Dubey, the head of A&R for HMV Records in India. The shehnai players were Sharad Kumar and Hanuman Jadev, while the tar shehnaist was Vinayak Vora. Shambhu Das and Indranil Bhattacharya were the sitarists, and Chandrashekhar Naringrekar played surbahar (a low-register version of the sitar). The tablist was Shankar Ghosh, although the original album credits listed him on sitar.