Deutsche Bank's annual ‘Gharana' festival, featuring a range of Hindustani artistes, provides an opportunity for music lovers in the city to connect to this rich musical tradition. Organised by the Prakriti Foundation and to be held from January 22 to 24 at Chandra Mandala, Spaces, 1, Elliots Beach Road, Besant Nagar, the focus, this year, is on the rarely heard Bettiah Gharana, a 300-year-old Dhrupad tradition from the court of Bettiah in Bihar. Pandit Indra Kishore Mishra, Pandit Arun Kumar Mishra, and Pandit Falguni Mitra, representing three lineages of the Bettiah Gharana, will perform at the festival. They will offer a variety of Dhrupad from the Bettiah Gharana's rich repertoire of compositions in the four Dhrupad Banis (Gaudhar, Dagur, Khandar and Nauhar), as well as Dhamar, Swaramalika, and Chaturang.
Accompanying artistes include M. Narmadha, a violinist equally at home in the Carnatic and Hindustani idioms, and Apurbalal Manna, an accomplished accompanist and rising soloist on the Pakhawaj. Music historian, Gajendra Narayan Singh, who was honoured with the Padmashri in 2007, Secretary, Finance, Government of Bihar, Mihir Kumar Singh and festival curator Sumitra Ranganathan will present pre-concert lectures. The lectures will contextualise the musical repertoire and aesthetic approaches of the Bettiah Gharana and introduce listeners to the cultural, social and political milieu in which this musical practice was consolidated and spread in the 18, 19th and 20{+t}{+h} Centuries.
While celebrating the depth and diversity of the musical practice, the lectures will also bring home the grave socio-economic conditions under which the Mishras of Bettiah have struggled to perpetuate their tradition.
