Nadd Foundation, working to spread the message of peace and harmony through music, dedicated its recent ‘Concert for Harmony’, as a tribute to the martyrs of Pulwama. Organised in collaboration with the National Foundation for Communal Harmony at the Chinmaya Mission, the concert featured Prateek Choudhury on sitar and a lively tabla-pakhawaj jugalbandi (duet) between Akram Khan and Ravi Shankar Upadhyay respectively. Although about an hour behind the scheduled time, the concert retained Nadd Foundation’s loyal members comprising mostly musicians and students of music, who stayed till the end.
Degree of contrast
Trained under his father/guru Pt. Debabrata Choudhary and also his guru, Ud. Mushtaq Ali Khan; Prateek is a cleanly honed performer in the tradition of Ud. Mushtaq Ali Khan, who earnestly maintains the 17 fret sitar till date. His sitar recital this evening, attracted the audience first and foremostly with the tonal quality of his sitar. Accompanied on tabla by Durjay Bhaumik, he opened his performance with raga Patdeep. Surprisingly, the alaap lasted hardly 10 or 12 minutes. And even in that short span of time, it sounded quite repetitive because instead of following a proper ‘silsila’ (sequential order of notes), Prateek tried to sketch the picture of the raga in one go. Obviously, there was no way out than repeating the same phrases encompassing the whole scale, time and again.
The masitkhani gat composition set to Teentala, saw Durjay making his impact from the very first uthan of tabla. Prateek, with in ten minutes took resort to singing and playing the film song, “Megha chhaye aadhi raat bairan bhai nindiya…” and then started the drut gat composition set to his own tala Hanumant, that he created during Sankat Mochan Samaroh, he informed. As announced by Prateek, it comprised a time cycle of 5 and ¼ beats but the musical composition or the gat he played, came out to be conveniently set to double of it, i.e. in 9 and ½ beats cycle.
Durjay with the lightness of his sensitive touch and an unassertive low-key style, tried his best to enhance the sitar recital but Prateek himself seemed more interested in the lec-dem (lecture-demonstration), speaking about the rhythmic calculations, interrupting his own sitar recital repeatedly. Ultimately, for the convenience of jhala, he came back to resume drut Teentala and ended up with the jet speed jhala that got the tuneful sitar totally haywire, but of course got him the loud applause.
Illustrious lineage
The main attraction of the evening was the tabla and pakhawaj jugalbandi between Akram Khan and Ravi Shankar Upadhyay. Both coming from illustrious lineages, Akram is the torch bearer of Ajrada gharana. The gifted son and disciple of Ud. Hashmat Ali Khan, Akram has also been groomed under Ud. Niyazoo Khan. Ravi Shankar Upadhyay is the son of the famous Pakhawaj player and Guru Pt. Ramji Upadhyaya and is properly groomed through the Vasudev parampara (tradition) of pakhawaj.
The mutual understanding between both the mature artistes was evident from the very beginning, right from the selection of talas, when they opened with Chautala, mostly played on pakhawaj with dhrupad and ended up with Teentala mostly played on tabla with khayal singing or instrumental music. Ravi Shankar Upadhyay first recited the auspicious Ganesh Paran, transcribed it word by word on pakhawaj and made his opening remark with the Ganesh Paran. Akram responded with a traditional peshkara of his gharana, with the same reverence. The quayeda on tabla was reciprocated with chala on Pakhawaj opening with Khand Jati Chhand of five beats, continuing with Tisra-3, Chatusra-4 and Misra-7 beats. Akram also replied with compositions in 5,4,3, and 7 matra chhand. In response to the ghegha paran of the Pakhawaj, Akram recited crisp parhant (recitation) of the same nature and played on tabla.
In Teentala, both of them were seen in their elements with the affirmative audience inspiring them to give their best. The specific parans of pakhawaj were reciprocated with the exquisite gat compositions of even the Punjab Baaj of tabla. The scintillating sawal-jawab got them extra rounds of applause. The tabla-pakhawaj duet was worth the wait and made up for everything.
