The HCL Concerts offered a unique fusion of tradition and modernity this time when they presented Dr. L. Subramaniam and Kavita Krishnamurthy in ‘Bollywood and Beyond’, their specially curated fusion act. Kavita opened it with some of her favourite Bollywood songs like ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ in Bhupali, adorning with intricate taans and a few others like the “1942: A Love Story” song “Pyar hua chupke se”, composed by R.D. Burman. She also offered some songs as a dedication to Sridevi.
The ‘beyond’ part followed when she invited her Grammy nominated husband, the renowned violinist composer, conductor Dr. L. Subramaniam to take over. Trained in both, the Carnatic classical and the Western classical music; the Padma Bhushan awardee musician is known for his virtuoso violin techniques and compositions in orchestral fusion witnessed this evening.
The meditative strains of tanpura and the imposing drone of the keyboards resounding together at the lower tonic, created the aural aura for his vivacious violin to usher an avalanche of notes traversing all the three octaves in the minor chords, sounding very much like the Carnatic Kirwani, when he opened with his famous composition ‘Indian Express’, recorded in 1980s.
The Jazz like music was interspersed with musical pieces by the keys, the base and acoustic guitars, saxophone and the rhythmic inputs of percussions that comprised mridangam, ghatam, tabla and dholak to drums.
This was followed by ‘Conversations’, composed by Stephen Gravely, where Dr. Subramaniam’s conversations with accompanying artistes, were again redolent with the perfume of Kirwani.
It concluded with a long ‘Gopucch Tihai’ getting shorter with every ‘Avartan’ (round) the percussions played one after the other. He then invited Kavita to join in for ‘Ganga’, the concluding piece. This sounded like the Carnatic Nattai and Hindustani raga Jog. Dr. L. Subramaniam opened with ‘Maha Ganapathim manasa smarami…” like phrase on violin. Kavita joined by repeating a sargam in Jog as a Lehra refrain set to 8-beat cycle for the percussions to revel in rhythm, before singing the Ganga Stuti “Devi Sureshwari Bhagwati Gange/ Tribhuvan-Tarini Taral-Tarange…” and reaching ‘Bollywood & Beyond’ to the climax of Taar Pancham and beyond.
Understanding Dhrupad
Dhrupad Sansthan (Bhopal), in association with the VSK Baithak, organised their annual Dhrupad Utsav in memory of Late Ud Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Late Ud. Zia Fariduddin Dagar at New Delhi’s WWF auditorium, with a difference. The first difference was presenting artistes from various Dhrupad gharanas on one platform instead of showcasing practitioners from the Sansthan alone. The second and more significant difference was introducing the nuances of Dhrupad to the audience by conducting an hour-long workshop each day prior to performance; initiating them into savouring Dhrupad for themselves and getting rid of their bias and the prevalent myth that Dhrupad is a very serious and difficult genre.
Pandit Umakant and Pandit Ramakant Gundecha
Pt. Umakant and Pt. Ramakant Gundecha together gave a general introduction of Dhrupad on the inaugural evening, emphasising on the importance of voice culture in Dhrupad and how to go about it. The posture for instance, they explained, should be correct first of all. The spine must be kept straight for the free flow of breath producing the sound that travels from the ‘Nabhi’ to ‘Kantha’. One ought to apply natural voice for the Dhrupad singing they reiterated, ’Falsetto’ will not do.
Then they pointed out the importance of ‘Sa’, the ‘Shadja’; from where the rest of the six notes are born, breaking the word ‘Shadja’ into ‘Shat’ or ‘Shad’ that means six and ‘Ja’ that means the one who gives ‘Janm’ or life. They made them all sing just ‘Sa’, again and again, emphasising the fact “if your ‘Sa’ is perfect you may sing all the other notes correctly”.
Pt. Akhilesh Gundecha, the pakhawaj player brother amongst the Gundecha Bandhu, took the workshop the next day explaining the importance of laya (rhythm) and tala in Dhrupad. He opened with the mythological story of how pakhawaj was created by Ganesha on the behest of His parents Shankar and Parvati. He then taught them Sool-tala of ten beats cycle. Akhilesh also analysed the other talas of 10 matras and elucidated why and how it is more suitable for Dhrupad.
The last day of workshop was focused on Dhrupad compositions. Pt. Umakant Gundecha chose the pentatonic raga Durga for this. It was amazing to see how after introducing the raga, he made then all sing the Aaroh-Avroh (notes in ascending and descending order) and then the challenging exercises of the ‘Khand-Meru’ (various permutations & combinations of the given notes) without even mentioning this technical term, that would have unnecessarily intimidated them. The Bandish (composition) “Aadi Shiva-Shakti anaadi…”, followed in Sooltala (that they had already learnt). The Sthayi, Antara and Sanchari were repeated again and again, until each section got perfected.
This novel idea of creating their own audience instead of complaining, did work. No wonder Dhrupad Sansthan had enthusiastic audience for their Dhrupad Utsav on all three days.
