REPORTS

Making Music - The inheritors of tradition

Meena Banerjee

The Statesman
26th January 2010

INSPIRING AWARD
This is an era of ironies. We witness very little respect for experience in our society nowadays but in the cultural arena very little is allowed to grow under the thickets of experience. As a result, very few reputed organizations take the risk of featuring upcoming youth in their prestigious programmes, leave alone inspire their aesthetically inclined spirits with timely awards. Bharatiya Sanskriti Samsad, in many ways, is different from such organizations. They bestowed the Best Vocalist award on Arshad Ali Khan recently.

This was followed by the recital of this brilliant scholar of ITC SRA, training under his uncles Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan and also Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan of Kirana gharana. He began with Marwa – one of the most favoured ragas of the gharana. As is usual with the style, emotive, elaborate raga delineation, intertwined with the lyrics of Piya morey set to extra slow jhumra, was followed by a fast teental bandish and a faster tarana heavily decked up with taans at breakneck speed. His second choice was Shahaana, another regal evening melody. Following the grammar of such presentations to the tee, Arshad began with Morey aaye kunwar Kanhaayi in medium paced jhaptal only to climax in fast teental tarana. Veteran tabla exponent Gopal Mishra and young sarangi player Sarwar Hussain provided sensitive support to this young maestro.