Monsoons with classical music
NARESH GULATI
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Jaipur's Shruti Mandal had a feast for connoisseurs this past week.
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Shruti Mandal of Jaipur is one organisation that has unswervingly dedicated itself to the creation of a rich tradition of listening to classical music in Jaipur over the last 40 years. The society organised its annual Monsoon Festival of Sur-Varsha, the shower of notes to `invoke' suvarsha, the rains for the rain-starved state of Rajasthan this past week.
Come monsoon and it's the Malhars that become the fancy of musicians and the music organisers of Rajasthan for the monsoon remains mostly elusive for Rajasthan.
While there were exclusive Malhar festivals in recent years in Jaipur, this season has already witnessed a recital of Malhar by vocalist Maya Gautam at the local Kaundilya Sangeet Mahavidalaya. Even though the Shruti Mandal Festival did not see a rendition of Malhar this time around, something perhaps not in keeping with its spirit to relate to the rain gods, if nothing else, its endeavour can be traced to traditions. For, it all seems to emanate from the fact that the realm of classical music has never stopped recounting the tales of medieval artistes like Mian Tansen and Gopal Naik in regard to their prowess in invoking the mood and properties of the raga they rendered. Returning to the festival, it featured a sitarist from Kolkata and a tabla maestro and a vocalist, both from Delhi.
A disciple of his father Pandit Vimlendu Mukharjea, sitarist Pandit Budhaditya Mukharjea was the only artiste in concert on the first day. Selecting raga Desa for his principal recital, the maestro of the Imdadakhani Gharana lived up to his reputation as an instrumentalist of the gayaki ang. After his alaap and joda, Mukharjea did three compositions traversing the vilambit, madhya and drut laya. He later did a brief yet elegant recital of Tilak Kamod. Better known as the favourite tabla accompanist of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Ustad Shafat Ahmed Khan took to the stage on the second day in what was claimed to be the artiste's first-ever solo performance. Obviously then, the Ustad was an indulgent self as he started with peshkar and kayda and went on to do the gatas from the stable of Delhi Gharana, some of them as old as 200 years.
Ustad Iqbal's recital
Perhaps the most trying recital came from the vocalist Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan. Coming after Shafat, he settled for Darbari Kanada, the late night raga of the Asavri attributed to Tansen. Recalling the unwritten norm that for an artiste to be eligible to do a rendition of Darbari Kanada, he must be grey at least in his side-burns, the Ustad elaborated this complete raga of all the seven notes with some finesse. And even as the Ustad complained of problems due to change of weather between Delhi and Jaipur, he acquitted himself well with sargam, swara-andolan with Ga and Dha and bol-baant of the sthai hum nahi kachhu kam ke, bas bharose apne ram ke
What the two-day festival also achieved was the presence of some 100-odd young hostellers of the host school BVB Vidya Ashram who turned up at the auditorium in their speck-less white kurta-pyjamas.
That was surely a significant initiation for the Gen X.
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