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Notes of ideas

Photo: Murali Kumar K.

CARRYING ON TRADITION Taranath acknowledges with great reverence that his guru is his soul and body, his playing fingers and his music

“It is only in Robinson Crusoe’s world that there can be no classical music,” Pandit Rajeev Taranath, Chairperson of 39th Annual Music Conference of The Bangalore Gayana Samaja, struck a brilliant note. Classical musi c is shared knowledge, an engagement between the musician and the listener. Like a sport where a common world of known norms operate, here too, whether it is the experience of a raga or the journey of a tala or the subtle musical joys and thrills that pop up, it needs a discerning mind, a sahrudaya, to capture the nuances of musical experience. It is only out of “yamasadhane”, a robust term in Kannada for consistent and rigorous application, that a sadhaka emerges. He is one who can simply play in the musical arena, journey with great speed, dance and simply take off on a vihara. He hailed the mastery of Vilayat Khan saab whose playing offered immense and inexhaustible possibilities and Pandit Halim Jaffar Khan whose masterly playing left nothing more to be desired. The essence of the choicest and the truly delightful – “outtamyada saara” as Taranath puts it – gathered over hundreds of years constitutes classical music; it knows no falsity or humbug.

Rajeev Taranath is a true blue Kannadiga who inherits the Kannada world that his illustrious father nurtured. Son of the legendary Pandit Taranath, a mighty presence in Karnataka of the pre-independent era , philosopher, practitioner of ayurveda and yoga, among others, Rajeev Taranath chose to pursue the sarod, a non-presence in South India of those days and went on to become an eminent artist of international repute. A distinguished disciple of the great maestro Ali Akbar Khan, Taranath acknowledges in great reverence that his guru is his soul and body, his playing fingers and his music. Relationship with the sarod, for Pandit Taranath, has been an unbroken engagement for a lifetime. Early training in vocal music came from his father Pandit Taranath, vocalist and a delightful tabla player. The continued search took him to Pandit Ravi Shankar’s music everytime he visited Bangalore. His music held young Taranath in awe and led him to a lifetime engagement with the Maihar Gharana. His choice was clearly the sarod, Khan saab’s sarod and none other. Taranath’s sarod concerts, which draw substance from this lineage, are invariably marked by a shift from an introspective meditative zone to an area where swara and laya patterns are intricately woven along an intense journey.

When it comes to teaching of music, there is a trio – a teacher, a learner and an instrument. The teacher demonstrates how he has put the instrument to use and what he has been able to achieve. The attempt here is a give and take of such experience. This exploration of possibilities, initially in the form of bits and pieces, as alankaras or tabla bols or whatever, later on turns into an exercise in bringing together these little experiences to construct a creative whole. Further on, it is a kind of invitation to the learner to live with the teacher in the common world of music and in this journey together, the learner may even reach beyond. Each one’s style of playing is guided by one’s own possibilities, difficulties and impossibilities.

Pondering over the absence of song in North Indian instrumental music, he observed how good rendering of a song becomes the yardstick in say Carnatic music where kritis are rendered. Even in Hindustani music, it happens when a thumri or bhajan or a bandish is presented. But in instrumental music, technique becomes vital and technical nuances vary from instrument to instrument. Each instrument is constructed differently, makes different demands and exerts different pressures on the players.

Analysing the non-Indian music scene with his American experience in the backdrop, his lament was clear. Another three generations from now, there would be Americans and other non-Indians playing the sarod and all of our youngsters would be playing only computers. Though students outside India take to learning in great earnestness, there is an inherent disadvantage that they encounter. However good their music, they are relegated to play in Indian restaurants with a supposedly Indian ambience marked by hanging sarees and icons of Meera Bai and Krishna. They can never aspire to become heroes in the mainstream of their nation while single-minded pursuit of music can make celebrities out of successful players here. The crucial question, however, remains: whose effort is greater?

Performances and teaching assignments have taken him all over the world. A learned and highly articulate musician with a fine sensibility, his research as a Ford Foundation scholar on the Teaching Techniques of the Maihar-Allauddin Gharana remains a rare document of a musician’s engagement with his gharana. Sangeeta Kalaratna award from The Bangalore Gayana Samaja on the August 12, 2007, will be an addition to several of the most prestigious National and State awards conferred upon him in recognition of his achievement in the field of Hindustani Instrumental music. The prestigious chair offers Pandit Taranath an opportunity to translate his concern for upcoming artists into formulating assured ways of promoting musical talent and creating an atmosphere wherein music can become a secure profession.

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