At the recent Shriram Shankarlal Music Festival, scions from various classical gharanas had the audience in thrall with their flute jugalbandis. Utpal K Banerjee reports
There is a favourite theory among world’s life-scientists, an individual’s life-story is a near repetition of the long racial life-history behind him. We all notice the baby crawling first, before it stands on its two feet. Is this not uncannily akin to the aeons when men had to prowl for food on the forest-floor on all fours, before they reached the ingenuity of standing up as the lone bipedsIJ
In a cultural context, it was wonderful in the recent Shriram Shankarlal Music Festival to hear the young flautist Rakesh Chaurasia, who seemed to be the quintessence of the redoubtable Hariprasad Chaurasia, his paternal uncle, Bengal’s great flute-player, Pannalal Ghosh and generations of flautists who have come and gone before. Similarly, the classical vocalists, Rajan and Sajan Mishra, were carrying on with the musical mantle on their able shoulders: as the progeny of the musician Pt Hanuman Mishra, the celebrated uncle Pt Gopal Mishra and all the previous singers from Banaras gharana.
On one side, Rakesh professionally played his jhala with rapid-fire breathing: first introduced by his famous uncle, but never practised before for flute. On the other side, he alternated his long bamboo-flute with a shorter metal-version at the end, which emitted too shrill a sound to suit the melodic milieu already created. This, too, was an innovation created by recent flautists: without, alas, caring much for the listener-response! In a similar vein, Rajan and Sajan Mishra’s preludes — especially the bol-taan and bol-alap — were, although of uniformly high quality, always a little too laidback, going on endlessly — almost like the placid Ganga: serenely flowing nearby. But, then this has been the heritage of the whole Purbi ang: the phylogeny if you like!
Rakesh was in his elements in the raga Puriya Kalyan. The usual alap, jod and jhala were followed by the gat in an unusual nine-beat rhythm. Then came the Carnatic raga Hamsadhwani, with the first composition mirroring Muthuswamy Dikshiter’s trade-mark: Batapi Ganapathy… and the second one reverting back to the Hindustani fold, in the style of Ustad Amir Ali who made this raga popular in the north, in the first place. Among two endearing features of Rakesh, one was that whenever he yielded the platform to his tabliya, he brought down the sound of own flute to a subdued, almost whispering, level so that the percussionist could be heard off at his best. The other was his later game — much like the common hide-and-seek — of leaving the sam (rhythm-cycle’s end): as either ateet (passed already) or anagat (not reached yet) to be rightly guessed for synchronising tabla: enjoyed enormously by the listeners!
Rajan and Sajan Mishra took the stage with a relatively rare raga Nand and sang with verve two compositions: Baa Re Saiyan… and Hey Saloni Shyamarai Re… in vilambit ektaal and teentaal.On the issue of guru-shishya parampara, Rakesh remarked, “Both institutions and gurukul systems are found today, all to the good of the learners.”
On the question of influx of debutantes flocking to the classical platforms, both agreed that there was no noticeable dearth of interest. Added Sajan in particular, “Organisations like Spic Macay have been doing a commendable job: by drawing the younger generations to their classical roots.”
On the preference for specific ragas among today’s youth, Rakesh was again reticent, “There’s a general liking for the popular ragas among all musician.” Sajan elaborated, “Aprachalit (uncommon) raga is a notional matter and is attributed occasionally to the idea of mishra (blended) raga. But whenever our illustrious predecessors created mixed ragas, say, Vilaskhani Todi, they did so on a knowledgeable foundation, having due regard to the quality of blending.”