A sarod-veena jugalbandi involving Rajeev Taranath and D. Balakrishna may not sound anything new. But their coming together this weekend for Seshadripuram Ramaseva Samithi at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (on November 23, 10.30 a.m.) 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 put up a successful show in Bangalore for an invited audience when ‘synthesis’ was just in. “I remember my father telling me that he played his veena in Madhyama Shruti to match the high-pitched tone of Khan Saab’s sarod. 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 Mysore, known to have introduced the sarod in a major way to Karnataka says that it is only appropriate that the successors too have come together so that the show can 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 will 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.
