With its all-pervading motto “Jan Jan Tak Sangeet” (music to the masses) as its mantra, the Sopori Academy of Music and Performing Arts (SaMaPa) organised its 13th annual Sangeet Sammelan at a packed Kamani Auditorium recently.
Following its aim of reviving Dhrupad, this year it featured Rudra veena by its celebrated exponent Ustad Bahauddin Dagar and honoured him with Sangeet Tejaswi Award. The soft, mellow tone of this majestic, ancient instrument and the reposeful, almost meditative character of his elaborate aalap in Ragavardhini (a Carnatic raga akin to Jogkauns but with a different gait) evoked deep pathos that demanded an undivided attention of the listeners. A Chautal bandish, replete with rhythmic variants-based dialogue with the pakhawaj, completed the picture supported by Pandit Dalchand Sharma’s seasoned pakhawaj.
Pandit Vinayak Torvi
The heady Gwalior-Kirana blend, a marked speciality of Dharwad region that has produced numerous renowned exponents in recent times including Pandit Venkatesh Kumar, took connoisseurs to a different plane when Pandit Vinayak Torvi, bestowed with Vitasta (lifetime achievement ) Award took the stage in the penultimate slot. With his melody-dipped robust, open voice-throw as his chief armament, he cast his spell while etching raga Bageshri (slow Ek taal, medium addha taal) replete with soulful bol-vistar and sargam singing followed by cascading taans with different grains that traversed effortlessly from lower to upper octaves. At times, his style reminded one of his legendary guru, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. He followed it up with two beautiful compositions in raga Tilak Kamod and concluded with a raagmalika-like Meera Bhajan. Durjay Bhaumik (tabla), Paromita Mukherjee (harmonium) and young Siddhartha Belmannu (vocal) followed the master with deference.
Pandit Vidyadhar Vyas, also from Gwalior school, was markedly different as the final artiste of the one evening. Flouting the usual norm, he chose to sing a Madhyam dominated raga Gorakh Kalyan first and treated the lyrics of its compositions “Dhan-dhan Bhaag Jaage” (slow Ek taal), “Payaliya Choom chhana-nana (Teen taal)) with superb sensitivity of a poet — now weaving them in emotive phrases, now lacing them with dancing taans of varied designs. He, then, sang a Pancham-pradhan raga Durga with great facility and followed it up with Bhawani a raga having only four notes (invented by Pandit Shankar Rao Vyas) that drops the Pancham of Durga! Both Shailendra Misha (tabla) and Vinay Mishra (harmonium) offered innovative fillers and yet remained careful of not drowning the soft, nasal voice of the erudite vocalist.
In fine fettle
All the three days of this grand event featured santoor exponents belonging to the power-packed Sopori-baaj, as envisaged, nurtured and propagated by Pandit Bhajan Sopori who, as the concluding artiste, played raga Kausi Kanada with SaMaPa Vitasta Awardee Pandit Anindo Chatterjee’s superb tabla support. His style includes Dhrupad and khayal gayaki related emotive vocalised elements in its thrilling and heavily ornate instrumentalism. His worthy son-disciple Abhay Rustam Sopori, while playing raga Jog flanked by Mithilesh Jha (tabla) and this year’s Yuvaratna Puraskar winner Rishi Shankar Upadhyay (pakhawaj), proved that he is striving to add new dimensions to their traditional Sufiana style of singing and playing with the help of modern sound arrangements and techniques; and Divyansh Srivastav, a very young disciple of Senior Sopori, who played a 10-and-a-half-beat based gatkari in his short but sizzling delineation of raga Kaushik Ranjani, is absorbing all that is offered by this enigmatic baaj which promises that santoor is here to stay as a respected and dynamic classical instrument.
Vidushi Manju Mehta, who won the Kalavardhan Samman 2017 for her contribution as the lifeline of Saptak (Ahmedabad), staged an impressive comeback as a sitar exponent of Maihar gharana. Her version of raga Saraswati was quietly well-designed. Young Abhishek Mishra’s tabla support was noticeably brilliant albeit a little flamboyant. With experience he is sure to rise. So will Rafiuddin Sabri, another young tabla player who accompanied flautist Chetan Joshi, who delineated raga Hemant with emphasis on tantrakari and followed it up with a thrilling Tilang thumri set to Jhap taal but with the gait of Teen taal. These traditional “Bhramaatmak” compositions were meant to fox the accompanying percussionists.
The Sammelan, also an occasion to felicitate people of substance from every walk of life belonging to a strife-ridden Kashmir along with musicians, musicologists and organisers of the entire country, opened with young talent Saif Naeem Ali’s ghazal and thumri rendition with Hafeez Ahmed Alvi and Kareem Niyazi on tabla and harmonium respectively.
