In the long run...

Vocalist Ashish Kukreti impresses with his spontaneity and confidence

Coherent presentation Ashish Kukreti

A vocal recital by Ashish Kukreti last week at the India Habitat Centre attracted no attentio. After all, the singer was unknown, his learning provenance not known, and Delhi-ites are used to hearing only the big names, or if they are generous, will give their precious time to deign to hear someone whose Guru is well known.

Notwithstanding the poor attendance, Ashish Kukreti systematically and coherently presented raga Bihag, starting with a small “auchar” and then slowly building up the edifice of the raga through a vilambit ek taal composition “Jag jeevan thora”. He later explained that Pandits Rajan Sajan Mishra had converted this old composition from “teen taal” into “ek taal”. Perhaps, he prolonged this more than he should have; but what was totally impressive was his confidence in “upaj” (improvisation). He sang without inhibition, and brought himself back to the “sum” naturally, picking up the refrain at different points. It was refreshing to hear a recital that was so spontaneous, and sung with enjoyment. The second khayal was in Teen taal, “Baaje re more payaal jhanana jhanana”; here his “bol banav” was interesting. His “taans” were measured, and given his relative lack of “riyaaz” carefully presented so as not to disappoint. He then sang two compositions in raga Jog, “Sajan more ghar aaye” and “Sajan kaase kahun”. On tabla was Mahavir Chandravat and on harmonium Pranav Kumar, both from Delhi.

Musical journey

It was sobering to speak to the young natural unaffected singer after the concert, Ashish, 33, grew up in Rishikesh, with no tradition of classical music. His father enjoyed listening to classical music, as his father had learnt a little classical music They would hear concerts regularly on radio; there were no live concerts, and no TV channels that aired classical music in a sustained way. Ashish explained, the music really grabbed him and he wanted to learn, so he started learning from a local teacher in Rishikesh, Shivanand Sharma, a violinist, who had also learned tabla from an expert from the Lucknow gharana. But the teacher was not knowledgeable enough so he later directed him to someone with wider learning, for which he went to Banaras, a good around 1000 km away. Here he said he was lucky to learn from Anup Mishra, a disciple in the line of Banaras gharana doyen Pt Bade Ramdas ji. In between the learning, his parents insisted he earn his keep so he took on a job, working in Delhi and also in the Punjab; as such his musical training remained sporadic, with him unable to devote time to practice that he sorely needed. Eventually the passion for music overtook him and he quit his job to focus solely on music.

Chatting with Ashish highlighted a disturbing problem that there are no job opportunities in the field of North Indian classical music at the basic level. Opportunities to learn are, of course, scarce. For a person belonging to a middle class family, the risk involved in devoting all your time in the pursuit of music in the hope of an eventual concert career is too high. No wonder there are fewer and fewer practitioners especially from families with no musical links. Today Ashish teaches music to children in Rishikesh and tries to recover lost time by doing as much riyaaz as he can – the concerts may or may not follow – he is content with that. A young man to admire!