Tuesday 13 January 2015

Bageshree and Char-taal-ki-sawari


At the Salt Lake Music Festival, I played Bageshree with compositions set to Char-taal-ki-sawari in the vilambit laya and Teentaal (one in madhyalaya and another in drut).
Bageshree is such a majestic raga and I am absolutely in love with the raga.
Some believe, it has it's roots in folk music of the north-west and at the hands of the Ustads it has received the final shape of the raga that it is today.
Once, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan and me were going somewhere by taxi in Kolkata. Kolkata is noted for slow traffic movements in the evenings. While inside the taxi, Ustadji showed me so many compositions on Bageshree that the sluggish traffic movement was more welcomed than hated for a change. In fact, to be honest, I wanted the traffic to stand still for the whole evening!
Out of those compositions, very interestingly, was one which had it's Sam on Pancham.
Incredible isn't it!
The Gat from the shared clip is a composition of Ustadji and the Gat starts from a very difficult but beautiful point on the time-cycle. It is very important for the amad and upaj, taans, todas and tihais, to end just before that point to bring out the true colours of this composition.
My Ustadji keeps on saying that a musician should be at ease with all the other taals as he/she is with Teentaal. And from the very beginning he has introduced me to compositions based on all kinds of taals and that has made me appreciate and enjoy laya and taal even more. I have learnt and heard quite a few beautiful compositions in Tisra-rupak, 5and1/2, Asta-rupak and other not-so-popular time-cycles. At the hands of Ustadji they sound as grand and beautiful.

Here is an excerpt from my concert -



I wrote about this concert in a previous Blog post -
http://subhranil.blogspot.in/2014/12/evening-enjoyed.html

No comments: