REPORTS

A Mixed Bag

Meena Banerjee
Jansatta, Kolkata, Friday 20, March 2009

The splash of melodic tones on the sprawling, emerald green lawns of IT Sangeet Research Academy (ITC SRA) celebrates the true spirit of Spring every year. This year’s multihued open-air extravaganza, divided in two parts, actually exemplified the gaping difference between the intrinsic worth of guru shishya parampara and the maladies of atai or suni tradition. While the first offers total grooming of a learner’ musical persona under the watchful eyes of the guru, the latter, hugely depending on records or recitals, offers a veneer, fragile enough to crumble at any pretext.

ITC SRA, one of the premier institutions of the country upholding the Guru Shishya Parampara, celebrated its 30 years of glorious existence through its 16th Sangeet Sammelan recently featuring SRA’s gurus, top ranking vocalists Ajoy Chakrabarty, Ulhas Kashalkar, Arun Bhaduri, Mashkoor Ali Khan, and instrumentalists Buddhadev Dasgupta and Manilal Nag along with their disciples. They once again established the virtues of this age-old tradition with thumping success.

It was, therefore, expected that under their direction the students, some of whom have already carved a niche for themselves in classical arena, will do justice to all the select genres of vocal music weaving the theme of Holi, the festival of colours. While the instrumental section of SRA played the host by welcoming performers, the dhrupad section, led by Guru Falguni Mitra, commenced the evening with a dhrupad composition of Bengal’s own Jadu Bhatta, set to tewra, and a vibrant dhamar, replete with interesting rhythmic variants. Boys and girls had to strike upon a common scale (not easy for classical singers) to facilitate this group singing studded with small pieces of solo alap, baant and tihais.

The senior scholars Arshad, Sandeep, Pinaki, Sameehan, Samarth, Sucheta and Manali stole the show with their virtuosity. They presented beautiful khayal, thumri, dadra along with traditional folk compositions describing spring and Holi, mostly set to ragas Basant, Bahar, Sohini and Kafi. Manali Bose’s powerful khayal and Abir Hossain’s sarod renditions caught the attention of connoisseurs during the earlier Sammelan as well. This evening Kasturi and Anal, albeit junior impressed with their improvisations.

It was this ‘improvisation’ that was completely missing in the second half as veteran Prabhati Mukherjee belted out several thumris, dadras, immortalized by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Begham Akhtar, the tow legendary vocalists from whom she claims to have received training. She sings by rote. It was apparent in all her three light classical recitals and a sole, inept khayal rendition I happened to witness over a period of time. On this occasion she could not carry her chosen idioms beyond three minutes and even mixed up sam and khali of simple kaharwa and dadra talas. “her forte is Bangla gaan, taught by Robi Guha Majumdar (omitted in her impressive bio-data) who was a friend of my father Nutu Mukherjee,” confirmed thumri exponent Mitali Sengupta.