Meera’s creativity flowered during the pandemic, says Rajbir
The Covid lockdown has seen Indian classical musicians embrace new ways of reaching out to their audiences. From ten minutes YouTube clips, to online teaching, from jugalbandis across time and space to remote jamming, they have tried it all. But more or less, all have stuck to what they do best – sing, or play in their traditional styles. Vidushi Meera Prasad has been an exception in the sense that she has broken new ground in her form of expression, transforming from a classical sitarist to a singer-sitarist with a bent for classically oriented songs of Bollywood.
Meera is one of the foremost disciples of the doyen of the Maihar Madhubani gharana, Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra, and of the famous beenkar Ustad Ahmed Raza Khan. She has performed at the most prestigious music conferences in India including the Hari Ballabh samaroh, the Saptak samaroh, the Dover Lane Music festival, Calcutta, and at marquee locations like the Shanukhananda hall, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, and the Repertory in Moscow. Her performances have been appreciated by the connoisseurs and the gurus alike.
However, the pandemic and its resulting constraints has sparked a new flowering of creativity in her. She comes from a musical family where both her parents were accomplished singers. Her mother, Girija, had been trained by the maestro of the Banaras gharana, Pandit Omkarnath Thakur. Her father, Sureshwar’s effortless and authentic renditions of K L Saigal’s soulful melodies made him the star of many and evening. During the lockdown, deprived of avenues of creative expression, Meera combined her natural love for singing, imbibed from childhood, with her training in the sitar to come up with 40 compositions that bring to life India’s rich tradition of folk music, classically based Hindi film songs, and the Sufiyana kalam. While initially she presented purely instrumental interpretations, she soon moved to renditions that combine singing and sitar. In these compositions, Meera sings the main melody of the song, and then presents a creative interpretation on the sitar improvising in the manner of a Jazz musician.
Her compositions are unique because they combine the spontaneity of one steeped in a love for popular music with the deep training of a classical musician of 40 years standing that allows breathtaking improvisation almost without end. This series could mark a new beginning not just for Meera but also for the performance repertoire of sitar players which hitherto has been limited to instrumental presentation alone, with a few notable exceptions like Ustad Vilayat Khan. Meera described the last two years as the consummation of her career as a musician, as a time of synthesis of musical influences spanning a lifetime, and a time where she broke free of her training to emerge as a spontaneous creative artist.
The pandemic has shown that creativity knows no bounds, and that artists can flower in the most trying of conditions. Meera is an exemplar of the an entire generation of artistes who have had to learn to shine despite all odds. A link to her compositions can be found on her website: https://www.meeraprasad.com/