The magic of Malhar
JITENDRA PRATAP
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Delhiites got drenched in monsoon ragas at the Malhar Utsav organised by Delhi University.
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REPOSEFUL Shanti Sharma gave a sober recital.
The Faculty of Music and Fine Arts of Delhi University presented a two-day festival of monsoon melodies, Malhar Utsav in memory of the late shehnai wizard Ustad Bismillah Khan at the Shankerlal Hall on the University campus. Professor Geeta Paintel, the Dean of the faculty paid glowing tributes to the ustad. The festival commenced with Ojesh Pratap Singh's vocal renderings in ragas Dhulia Malhar and Jayant Malhar. Besides being laced with neat and tuneful nuances, it also indicated the young vocalist's scholastic awareness of the ragas.
Pandit Arun Kashalkar from Mumbai gave further boost to the festival with renderings of several compositions in raga Gaud Malhar including one with the `nom tom alap' that was typical of the Agra gharana singers.
One, however, failed to understand the reasons for his rendering the well-known song "Maan naa kariye gori" in Roopak tala and in other time cycles, since this gem of music from the Gwalior musicians' repertoire is basically rendered in the slow tempo 16-beat Tilwada tala.
However, there were scores of pleasingly deployed embellishments and sweeping tana flourishes with remarkable clarity. He had commendable accompaniment on the harmonium by Mehmood Dhaulpuri and on the tabla by Subhash Nirwan.
Neat and crisp
The other vocalist to impress was Shanti Sharma, a disciple of the late Pandit Amarnath of the Indore gharana. Her renderings on raga Mian ki Malhar, an immortal creation of the illustrious Mian Tansen, was given a befitting handling with a reposeful alap-badhat followed by colourful embellishments in sargams, followed by neat and crisp sequences in taans. One particularly relished her exposition of the famous song, "Karim naam tero" reposefully rendered in the 12-beat slow tempo time cycle of Ek tala. She had good accompaniment by Vijay Sharma on the harmonium and Nissar Ahmed on the tabla.
The sitar recitals by Rajiv Verma in raga Gaud Malhar and by Harvinder Kumar Sharma in raga Ramdasi Malhar fell soothingly on the ears and impressed for their neat and tuneful handling of the frets and the strings.
The duo had excellent tabla accompaniment by Rashid Zafar whose handling of the drums fell pleasingly on the ears for being neat and resonant.
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