With the golden voice of Sangeetacharya Amiya Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Jalsaghar commenced the year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary recently. Evidently the organisation, known for its long and uniquely designed chain of events based on innovative ideas, their meticulous execution and careful artiste-selections under the watchful guidance of Robin Pal (a close associate of Pandit Ravi Shankar), could not have found a better option than the venerated scion of Bengal’s centuries old Vishnupur gharana; because the 91-year-old young handsome vocalist, who still exudes tremendous lung power, is virtually a bridge between the golden past of Hindustani classical music and its restive present era!
The prestigious Vivekananda Hall, the venue offered by the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, the co-hosts, was packed to capacity when the maestro came up on the stage in his immaculate Bengali attire and began his recital in raga Puria Dhanashree. The first voice-throw was rather tentative, but within seconds the brief auchar, etched by steady, resonant, emotive throw, started throbbing with the raga’s presence. The elaboration, resting on the lyrics of the medium-slow paced Ek taal khayal “Ab toh rut maan”, unfurled the raga’s pathos-hued beauty petal by petal with the help of soulful meends. Young Soumen Nandy’s matured, perceptive tabla helped create the mood.
The behlawa segment, when sung with sol-fa phrases, displayed clearer rhythmic patterns. At slightly increased pace the sol-fa turned to barabar-ki-taan that covered octaves, followed by a few very fast and powerful aakar taans with amazingly chiselled fine grains. This, in fact, is Bandyopadhyay’s favourite zone! He, therefore, while singing fast Teen taal khayal, unleashed a barrage of fast, crisp taans while his disciples Pritam Roy and Arghya Mukherjee, on tanpuras and vocal support, filled the gaps by perching on the upper tonic. Shubhrakanti Chatterjee followed his guru devotedly on the harmonium.
Amalgamating styles
The final half of the evening turned out to be as delightful when renowned santoor exponent Tarun Bhattacharya took stage.
A worthy disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, he has carved a new vista for himself that amalgamates different styles of santoor maestros who transformed this folk instrument of Kashmir into a widely accepted classical one.
Tarun Bhattacharya
He rendered raga Janasammohini by aesthetically blending tantalizing skill-show with heart-rending emotions. With the latter as his main deployment, he set out to win hearts during the reposeful alap laced with robust meends by leaving qalam to pull strings with the left hand a la Pandit Bhajan Sopori’s style. But he used this technique consistently all through—after the rhythm encrusted phrase in the jod segment or after a long taan during the gatkari. These lovingly bent meends, albeit stretching this instrument beyond its limits, added extra melodic frills, no doubt. Similarly, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma’s technique of cutting the overpowering resonance during staccato-demanding phrases found a prominent place in Bhattacharya’s power-packed playing.
Moreover, he showed his penchant for building crescendo that tapered off into sweet whispers. The phrases rose and fell like sea-waves — all along. As his companion, Prasenjit Poddar, disciple of Ustad Sabir Khan, contributed a lot with his perceptive tabla in maintaining this dramatic element. The slow gat-bandish, set to Jhap taal, had an intriguing sawari-like gait and Bhattacharya’s innovative phraseology kept it as the mainstay during elaboration, rhythmic patterns and tihais. Apparently, due to paucity of time, he let the fast Teen taal gatkari vacillate between the lilt of a folk dhun and classical elements. By offering keherwa, addha, tabla too followed suit and displayed virtuosity in both the idioms with equal zest but Bhattacharya’s complex laya-chhandakari dominated the scene.
The concluding jhala enfolded a very melodious aalap within it. While maintaining the fast rhythm with right striker, Bhattacharya plucked the strings for a while with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to create melody. Finally at superfast speed tabla and santoor got engaged in a dialogue mode.
Jalsaghar promises to organise such delightful sessions featuring eminent musicians every moth spanning a full calendar year.
