Our seers believed that a musician’s own personality reflects through his art as he relates to his music according to his saatwik (pristine pure), raajasik (passionate) or taamasik (dark) mindset. Saatwik sees a raga as the Almighty. Raajasik uses the raga melody to win mass approval. Taamasik coerces raga’s soul as a tool to entertain and to earn money. We always come across musicians belonging to the second and, especially, the third category. Is saatwik category completely obsolete now? No. That is because there are a few erudite musicians like Prattyush Banerjee who regaled his fans in the Mehfil Series, at Kolkata’s prestigious Choudhury House recently. This sarod maestro, popularly called “Hi-Funda” for his deep understanding of the ragas, musicology and related subjects, is a worthy torchbearer of the Senia-Shahjahanpur gharana made famous by the great Ustads like Murad Ali Khan, Abdullah Khan, Md. Ameer Khan, Sangeetacharya Radhika Mohan Maitra and Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta.
It was Prattyush’s engineer father Prasun Kumar Banerjee, a well-known connoisseur, collector and patron of music, organiser of the famous music circle “Aritra”, whose residence was practically a Makkah for musicians, saw to it that his little boy got the best of both the worlds – academics and music. He initiated Prattyush into sarod playing and brought him up in a rich musical ambience amidst distinguished artistes who were his close friends.
Due to the unfortunate event of his father’s untimely death, young Prattyush started training with Samarendra Sikdar, an eminent disciple of Radhika Mohan Maitra, and later came under the wings of another disciple of the legend, Padmabhushan Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta. The learning process continues till date but what was technique-oriented in the beginning delved deep into philosophy and rooted in musicology. The worthy disciple has stepped into the shoes of his immensely learned and now ailing Guru very smoothly. A keen student of Western music he is also a good pianist.
The enviable commercial success, evidently, nourished his inherent “saatwik” persona that reflects in his raga music. Since his debut as an 11-year old, Prattyush has been performing in all prestigious conferences in India and abroad. Remaining oblivious of his surroundings, he gets immersed in the beauty of his chosen raga and tala, mostly the complex variety. He enjoys trying less-explored permutations, combinations and ventures to improvise melody and playing techniques. Frankly, equipped with a solid technique and rich repertoire of his gharana, he exhibits a rare musical sensibility evolved through constant trials with different genres of music. That’s why most of his recitals attract initiated listeners and musicians who prefer “instant creation” to the stale delicacies hurled out from rote. This urge for novelty has paid its dividends. He is the first to play the complex tappa style of singing on the sarod. He also plays novel ladant and jhala with cross-tempo variations packed with bols (multiple-pluckings) on chikari strings and dares to tune main open strings of the sarod to raga notes (e.g. Teevra Madhyam in case of Yaman). He has a unique fingering technique and plays three-and-a-half octave movements with ease. He has mastered fluent passages of sparsh and krintan. In the field of commercial music, he plays harmony notes and chords using double-stops. Moreover, to suit his style, he made changes in his sarod.
Exploring the world of electronic technology, Prattyush has evolved a new instrument “Jyotidhwani” which he played with well-known percussionists Pete Lockett, Bickram Ghosh among others. Besides working with composers like like Salil Choudhury, Ravindra Jain and Shantanu Moitra and filmmakers like Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen, he has collaborated with star elocutionist Bratati Bandopadhyay and poet Joy Goswami and as musician-composer arranged music for more than 60 albums featuring singers like Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty, Alka Yagnik, and Kaushiki Chakrabarty.
