The origin of Hindustani and Carnatic music was the same, but today, the two streams are quite different. Not only are the ragas different, the method of unfolding the raga, the format of the concert, the dealing of laya, even the duration of each segment varies. As such, for two senior exponents of each tradition to sit together and make music which is coherent and seamless is a big achievement. Add the physical difficulties involved — the adjusting to a different scale, the limitations of each instrument, the limitations put on one’s creativity — it is no wonder most musicians choose never to perform jugalbandis at all, and with a different musical genre, even less so. There is no doubt that jugalbandis are restrictive and the full creativity of an artist can rarely be fully explored, maybe that is why today there are a handful of artists, vocal as well as instrumental, who venture in this field, and one notices, the tried and tested combinations that succeed are the ones that are repeated.
One such successful combination is Senia Maihar sarodiya Pandit Tejendra Mazumdar, with Carnatic violinist Vidwan Mysore Manjunath, who have been performing together for years all over the world, having played at least 25 concerts. Dr Manjunath confessed that the main difficulty of a jugalbandi is that no artist is ever taught how to play a jugalbandi; one has not been taught how to collaborate musically. So it’s purely by instinct and a sense of aesthetics. Another constraint he said was; that “nothing could be pre-planned, or it would sound stale and contrived”. Tejendra interjected, “the only pre-planned phrase was the ending ‘tihai’ in which all four players together ended in crescendo”. Manjunath continued “the spontaneity on stage came with a risk — the music could end up sounding too similar musically, and thus bland; or too divergent, with no coming together.” Tejendra felt the most important element in a successful jugalbandi was the similar musical mind set, and mutual respect for each other’s music.
The two instrumentalists came together at the Tagore Theatre in Chandigarh last week, after their last meeting at the Bengal Foundation Festival in Dhaka in December end. The concert was presented by The Pioneer Arts Education Society, along with Chandigarh based Praveen Kala Kendra headed by noted Kathak dancer Shobha Koser. Accompanying them were B. Ravi Shankar on mridangam, also from Mysore, and Ojas Adhiya from Mumbai on tabla. Lalit Narang of the Pioneer Art Society explained that this concert in the series entitled “Uttar Dakshin” was the first one of 2018, and that their aim was to bring the two different musical genres closer together through jugalbandis, between instrumentalists and vocalists. So far, they had had only instrumentalists of both genres collaborate; they wanted to try vocalists, and vocalists with instrumentalists too.
Pt. Ravi Shankar’s favourite
The first raga presented was a Carnatic raga, Simhendramadhyamam, which used to be played quite a lot by Pandit Ravi Shankar, despite not having a similar equivalent raga in the Hindustani tradition. Though the raga was a Carnatic one, the format of presentation was Hindustani, with an alap, jod and very brief jhala, followed by compositions (gat). Both instruments were able to bring out the expressiveness of the raga with their “meend” work; the beautifully mellow bow movements of the violin echoing the more rounded bass sounds of the sarod. During the alap, the violin made darts into unexplored new note combinations, with tempestuous movements, while the sarod remained restrained in the note exploration, with a plaintive appeal. During the “jod”, the violin relied more on speed and the sarod more on “gamak” and intricate note phraseology. “Jhala” can be better expressed on the sarod, yet somehow Tejendra chose to skim over this portion and not dwell on it. They then played two compositions, both in Teen taal (Adi taal in the Carnatic nomenclature) where the emphasis was totally on the “laya”; they both appeared to be playing the same genre, and there was a close knit quality in their music. Both gats were composed by Tejendra; as he put it “it was important to create something that was appropriate for both genres; neither totally Carnatic, nor totally Hindustani, but which would gels with both”.
Manjunath chose to engage in a “sawaal jawab” type sequence with mridangam; Tejendra chose to show variations of beat, off the beat work, coming to the sum slightly before and after, and other such variations. The music they created was certainly racy and energetic and achieved frequent applause. It was quite apparent that they enjoy each other’s music enormously and there was no attempt to upstage, repeat the musical phrases or change the mood created by the other. This is truly the essence of a good jugalbandi; to create a musical whole.
The conclusion was with a very exciting “tani avartanam” portion between the two expert percussionists who amazingly have never met each other before, far less played together, yet managed to follow each other with dexterity and an enviable synergy. Ojas Adhiya, at under 30 years, is already a master. It was sad to see a limited audience in the 700 seat theatre; classical music audiences in cities like Chandigarh need to be nurtured.
