Playing to win the hearts of the listeners
GAUTAM CHATTERJEE
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Shahid Parvez, who just received the SNA Award, talks about his approach to music.
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THE RIGHT NOTES Shahid Parvez.
Few musicians have elicited as much adulation from music lovers as Ustad Vilayat Khan, the sovereign of romance and aesthetics. Some used to call him the Keats of Indian Music. In his footsteps now treads his near kin Shahid Parvez, who gave a sitar recital in Varanasi recently. However, the ace sitar exponent claims, "I am exceptionally different in my family, the Imdad Khani gharana. I am the only artiste in my family who never accepted any effect of any maestro, nor the effect of Pandit Ravi Shankar ji or Pandit Nikhil Banerji."
During a glorious evening organised by Sangit Parishad, Shahid played for almost one-and-a-half hours, delineating the raga Yaman Kalyan with two Madhyams, the Tivra and the Shuddha.
On that day, or whenever he performs, he evinces the same perfection of instrumental technique as Vilayat Khan did.
His sparkling tone emits the power of lightening. Tonal glides and slides — terse and highly tenuous ornamentations — are couched in sumptuous tunefulness and effortlessly executed with electrifying rapidity.
Referring to Shujaat, the famous son of Vilayat Khan, he roars, "Wo kya gaata hai?' (What rubbish he sings!) "I never sing during my sitar recital as Khan Saheb and others in this gharana used to practice. No and never. If one asks me occasionally to sing any particular piece, I sing, but I want my sitar to sing, not me. And it sings."
In the said concert, after Yaman Kalyan, he brought out the swaras of raga Shyam Kalyan, another shade of the thaat Kalyan.
It was vain to listen critically to him and thereby lessen the pleasure. Akram Khan was in charge of rhythm on the tabla. After playing the alap, jod and jhala, Shahid took up a composition in Teen tala.
Mishra Pilu was the raga Shahid chose to play at the end. "The raga reveals itself for me and I simply enjoy," he shares. "I become just a witness of that moment of bliss but it rarely comes."
Not just accurate
No doubt, the use of a particular note varies with the change of raga like in Yaman Kalyan to Shyam Kalyan, the use of Teevra Madhyam differs in tonal intensity but as Shahid explains, "My primary aim is the creation of only aural pleasure. I cannot be credited with strict accuracy of the raga. A wilful, wayward sidestepping taints my exposition. However, for those who don't know raga, the recital must have been an unmixed delight."
Encouraged by the indulgent listeners he rode roughshod over the raga to let in erroneous idioms like Sa Ni Dha, Ni Dha Pa Ma Pa Dha and Ma Ri Sa.
At the end one observes, his sensuous musical journey catches you with a sweet touch where a bare, simple note, approached directly, is a rarity.
But he does not relish the conclusion, countering, "No, on the contrary, my grandfather (from mother's side) had an expectation of having a child like me and in the same way I wait for a rare feeling in my recital for someone to listen like an absorbed child."
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