Most New York concerts come with an internal clock. Doors at seven, music at eight, subway arithmetic by ten. Khayal works differently. A phrase may return several times before its meaning becomes clear, altered slightly with each pass.

That was the attraction of hearing the Saami Brothers at Merkin Hall, with their father, Ustad Naseeruddin Saami, appearing as a special guest. The family belongs to the Delhi Qawwal Bacha Gharana, a musical lineage associated with Amir Khusrau. The history is formidable, but it was more useful to listen first and read the genealogy later.

Rauf and Urooj Saami sing with Ahmed Saami on harmonium. Their music depends on distinctions of pitch and phrasing that can initially seem minute. Give it time and those distinctions become the event. Voices meet and pull apart; the tabla gives the music motion; the sarangi follows the singers so closely that instrument and voice can seem to be answering each other.

Merkin Hall helped. It is an intimate, relatively plain room, and this was music that benefited from having little between performer and listener. There was no visual concept to decode. The work was in the listening.

For somebody coming to khayal without a lifetime of knowledge behind him, that turned out to be enough. The Saamis did not need to make the tradition more familiar or more obviously contemporary. The evening simply required a different pace of attention. New York is not particularly good at that, which may be why it felt so welcome.