Realising the ITC-SRA Vision

ITC-SRA focuses on vocal music

The loss of royal patronage threw the arts open to public mercy. Classical music, in its pure form, is fundamentally a complex study and therefore, cannot come within the reach of the uninitiated. As a result, serious music suffered. Pt. V N Bhatkhande and Pt. V D Paluskar tried to bring classical music within the reach of the middle class intelligentsia, in a systematic way, by introducing music education in universities and institutions. But such institutions rarely succeeded in producing musicians.

History reveals that the only effective method to impart the complex techniques of any art form, especially music, is through long years of close involvement between teacher and student. This enables the teacher help the student imbibe music as an art form, while yet allowing it to naturally unfold in its full creative splendour.

ITC Ltd., therefore, chose classical music as its area of social responsibility. It has played an important role in the resurgence and nurturing of this rich heritage. The ITC Sangeet Research Academy was created with the aim of stemming the process of gradual distortion and dissipation in traditional forms and techniques of Indian classical music. It has begun this noble mission with preserving and propagating Hindustani Classical Music.

The three basic objectives of ITC-SRA are:

1. Creation of an effective training system.
2. To rationalise traditional data with the help of modern research methods and technology
3. Promotion and propagation of music

ITC-SRA has provided the security and the comforts of a home and the opportunity for a brighter future to both the gurus and the scholars. It has achieved this through the implementation of its objectives based on a training system that is essentially the Guru-Shishya Parampara with suitable contemporary fine-tuning.

The quality of the average listener plays a vital role in the development of music. In the current Indian classical music scenario, where the audience has assumed the role of the most decisive patron, the task of nourishing a solid base of high quality listeners has become a critical factor for the survival of the best values in music.

ITC-SRA has undertaken the task of creating a wide variety of platforms all over the country and abroad, which attempt:

1. To take high quality music systematically to areas and sections of the population who otherwise do not enjoy access to it.

2. To cater to specialised audience needs and create connoisseurs of music by changing the conventional conference mould and creating new thematic profiles.

3. To commemorate those veterans and doyens of classical music whose 'pursuit of music as a form of knowledge has enabled us to establish and perpetuate a community of shared values'.

Realising the ITC-SRA Vision

The responsibility to implement the visionary project was taken on by Pandit Vijay Kichlu, a reputed gharane-dar musician with a national cultural stature and with 23 years of managerial experience.

ITC-SRA focuses on vocal music

Nissar Hussain Khan

Hirabai Barodekar

ITC-SRA initially devoted itself solely to training in Hindustani vocal music, acknowledged as the source of all learning in "shastriya sangeet". The initial focus had to be on vocal music to preserve and nurture the pristine purity of whatever was left of traditional Hindustani Classical Music.

The thinning down of the royal patronage of traditional Hindustani Classical Music had imperceptibly diluted this invaluable musical heritage. In the late Seventies, very few masters who had learnt music the classical way were left. More and more musicians had begun to sacrifice the truly classical at the altar of personal popularity.

Nivrittibua Sarnaik

Ishtiaq Hussain Khan

Among the luminaries in the world of Hindustani Classical music who readily identified themselves with the ITC-SRA cause were, Nissar Hussain Khan (Sahaswan Gharana), Hirabai Barodekar (Kirana Gharana), Ishtiaq Hussain Khan (Rampur Gharana), Nivrittibua Sarnaik (Atrauli-Jaipur Gharana), Girija Devi (Benaras Gharana), Latafat Hussain Khan (Agra Gharana) . All of them happily settled down in Kolkata and helped to create an institution epitomising the Guru-Shishya Parampara.

Girija Devi

Latafat Hussain Khan

A. Kanan and Malabika Kanan joined in 1979.