Vilambit Rupak Taal based Gat in raga Charukeshi

I love this sublime composition by my Ustadji.

There is so much scope for elaboration yet it expresses the mood of the raga Charukeshi so well in only 4 lines.

I have seen that mostly instrumentalists end their taans (when accompanied by tihais) at the sam.

But you will see that Ustadji's way is to end at the mukhra.

Which is indeed very difficult to execute when the mukhra of the gat falls in a space between two beats and not on a beat (like in the traditional way). Spontaneous taans, tihais and vistar become even more difficult in such a setup.

But when and if you make them arrive in the right manner, they sound even more beautiful I feel!

On the tabla is Hindole Majumdar, a senior disciple of Pandit Sankha Chatterjee.

Please enjoy my recital. 

You can also take a look at my previous blog entry about this evening. -
http://subhranil.blogspot.in/2015/03/full-house-concert-on-3rd-of-march.html

Full-house concert on the 3rd of March

Now-a-days, you will see that even small auditoriums in Kolkata do not reach capacity, when it's not something like Bollywood/Tollywood/band music which is being served. It's rarer to have full-house concerts of Classical Music in Kolkata, considered the Mecca of Indian Classical Music.

'Pt. Laxmikanta Laha Music and Cultural Academy' had organized an evening of Indian Classical Music on the 3rd of March at Birla Academy. It was great to see that there were even quite a few people standing, as the auditorium was packed.

There were many top level musicians in the audience. It was indeed my pleasure to play for Pandit Subroto Roy Chowdhury (Sitar-vadak), Pandit Joydeep Ghosh (Sarodiya), Pandit Sugata Nag (Sitar-vadak), Pandit Abhijit Banerjee (Tabla-vadak), Pandit Sandip Deb (tabla-vadak), Pandit Siddhartha Roy-Choudhury (Sarodiya). It was great to see my colleagues there in the audience.

But, it was an honour and my pleasure to have one of the foremost Sitar maestros of the world, Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee in the front row.

I started the concert by taking Ijazzat from the maestro.

Hindole Bhai, one of the foremost disciples of Pandit Sankha Chatterjee, was on tabla and Soham, my student, on tanpura. Hindole Bhai has been playing with my Ustad for around 20 years now, so he knows our style and compositions better than many. His accompaniment was enjoyable.

The concert was very well appreciated. But, I would say that it was an honour to get Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee's blessings and appreciation. It was indeed very kind of him to listen to my complete 1 hour recital with patience and love.

Every other musician mentioned, expressed their appreciation.

Joydeep Da hugged and kissed me after my recital. Well, they are the torchbearers in whose footsteps we, the younger generation, are following. So, if they found something to appreciate in my music, the credit should go to my Guru Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan and to them.

It was also great to have one of the foremost Sitar-makers of India, Jayanta Sengupta in the audience. My Sitar is a fully custom made one. We have worked together for years to get this instrument done in the way I wanted it to be. There have been many failed attempts as well. Everything starting from the measurements of the body, curvature of frets and material of bridge to the decorative work and even the tailpiece is different from a standard Gandhar-Pancham Sitar. I had supplied him with measurements and parameters to work his magic on. I have, myself, handpicked the gourd out of 100 others. So it was a proud moment for Jayanta Da that his hand-made Sitar's voice was appreciated. Quite a few musicians asked me about the maker of the Sitar. So it was good to have Jayanta Da there.

Several people from the media were also present, including Music critic and vocalist Meena Banerjee, student of Srikant Bakhre, So, perhaps, her review will be out this Saturday in the Marquee (The Statesman).

Some moments from that concert (photo courtesy Vinayak, my student)-

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

Please visit the following link if you wish to know more about Hindole Majumdar -

https://sites.google.com/site/hindolemajumdar/

Other links that you may wish to see -

http://www.budhaditya.com/

http://www.arunimadatta.com/sandip-kumar-deb

http://www.itcsra.org/aom/artist_ofthe_month.asp?id=130

http://www.joydeepghosh.in/index2.php

http://www.sugatonag.com/

http://www.abhijitbanerjee.com/

https://vistarmusic.wordpress.com/principal/

Charukeshi

The raga Charukeshi's origin is shrouded in mystery.
Some believe that it's the raga Zilaf composed by Hazrat Amir Khusru and it belongs to the Bhairav Thaat.

However the fact remains that Charukeshi, in it's present form, entered Hindustani Classical music from Carnatic Classical Music only recently. And a majority of Ustads haven't performed this raga until recently. Traditional vocal compositions are also rare to come by in this raga in it's present form.
There is also a disagreement among musicians about the time of performance of this raga.

However, if we can keep all these aside, Charukeshi is such a beautiful raga.
For me it's 'sukoon'.
My absolute favourites in this raga are Ustad Amir Khansahab's 'laaj rakho tum mori gusaiyan' in Madhyalaya Teental, my Ustadji's composition in Rupak and Ustad Rais Khan's composition in Drut Teentaal.

Here, is a clip from a concert of mine where I have played that composition of my Ustadji set to Rupak taal.
Many musicians were there in the audience and their 'daad' at the right places made it even more enjoyable.
On the tabla is the young Unmesh Banerjee, disciple of his father Pandit Sunil Banerjee, Vidwan S Sekhar, and Pandit Shankar Ghosh.

Gat-Toda and traditional Todas

A few days ago, I had shared this video of mine on Facebook.

After listening to it, a few of my Facebook friends had wanted to know more about this type of composition and it's provenance.

Well, this is a type of composition which we call Gat-Toda.
Gat-Toda is a purely instrumental baaj where matching Todas come with the Gat like a bouquet. They are often composed with phrases from the Gat itself.

To explain, let me quote a passage from an article at the ITC SRA website (since it is nicely written)-
"During the formative period of sitar music, techniques were borrowed from the 'been' and 'dhrupad',
and 'gat-toda' emerged as the first instrumental music style as opposed to vocal music. From this evolved the Masitkhani baaz.."

Now, I came across a photo of Ustad Enayat Khan on my friend Adrian Mcneil's FB Timeline. Adrian is a noted scholar of instrumental music history and a sarod player himself. It is a rare photo of Ustad Enayat Khan from the proceedings of the All India Music Conference - Lucknow 1925 published in a book. The caption says 'Inayat Khan (son of Imdad Khan; Sitar-player; Gat-Jora, Jor Alap Style; Indore State)'. Here, I suspect there has been a typographical error. I feel it's Gat-Toda and not Gat-Jora. One thing we have to keep in mind is that the people at the printing press are not musicians in general.

I have learnt from Prof. Amlan Dasgupta that there was a time when connoisseurs waited eagerly to listen to those Todas which were synonymous with an Ustad's music and if the Ustad chose not to play those, often requests were made to play those specific Todas in Mehfils.