A sarod-veena jugalbandi from Rajeev Taranath and D. Balakrishna may not sound anything new. But their coming together this weekend for Seshadripuram Ramaseva Samithi, at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (November 23, 10-30am) is all set to transport us back to a memorable jugalbandi nearly five decades ago.
It was in 1963 that Rajeev Taranath’s guru Ali Akbar Khan and D. Balakrishna’s father Veena Doreswamy Iyengar had a successful show in Bengaluru for an invited audience when ‘synthesis’ was just in. “I remember my father telling me that he played on his veena in Madhyama Shruti to match the high-pitched tone of Khan Saab’s Sarod. Raga Yaman had proved a smashing hit in the melodic amalgam and Ustad Khan had strongly felt that the Veena, with deeper resonances, was far more suitable for a jugalbandi-pairing with the Sarod compared to a Sitar,” recollects Balakrishna.
Rajeev Taranath, based in Mysuru, known to have introduced the Sarod in a major way to Karnataka says, it is only appropriate that the successors too “came together often for the show to go on.” Taranath says the tradition of jugalbandi is said to have had its initial sparkles even during Tansen’s time, but gradually it was Sarod maestro Ustad Allauddin Khan, the architect of the Maihar Gharana, who trained his son Ali Akbar Khan and Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar into popularising the integrated streaming.
Saarasaangi and Nat-Behag would be explored for a major share at the weekend concert, says Taranath. “Beyond that let it remain a surprise,” adds Balakrishna who would be matching his veena with a C-Sharp shruti for the Sarod. The concert is in memory of V. Krishnamurthy, the eminent lawyer and a patron of music who was the man behind Seshadripuram Ramaseva Samithi, before Tarakaram and Revathy Tarakaram took over.
