The sound of music

TK Sreevalsan

This time it was not just a supporting role.

Each of the younger artists, who shared stage with one's own acclaimed parent-guru at a classical music festival in New Delhi, ensured that they were in fact practitioners at par.

The two-day event with Hindustani musicians of four families presenting separate concerts succeeded in underscoring a valid point that keeping alive a gharana (school of rendition) does not mean meek inheritance of its features, instead adding flair to them by further enriching their nuances.

Rang Barse, which concluded on March 15, could thus mirror the essence of parampara (tradition) in the field of Hindustani music through a sample of its existing artistes ranging from the well-established Gangu Bai Hangal to the young Ali brothers.

Playing the sarangi and the sitar respectively, Fateh and Murad Ali, twins in their mid-twenties, showed eagerness to innovate the rendition, while 89-year-old Hangal's concert was more of the reposeful genre. Yet, at the end of the day, it was clear that embellishment of tradition was all they tried to prove.

Organised with the logo Mothers and Daughters: Fathers and Sons by the Indian Women's Press Corps, the fest had its opening session on March 14 as a tribandi figuring sarangi exponent Ghulam Sabir Khan and his twin sons.

Their essay of Puriya had plain and flowy notes of the evening raga pouring from the sarangi, interspersed with the resonant jingles of the sitar by Murad Ali.

While Ustad Sabir Khan, an AIR artiste, stuck to the clarity aspect typical of his Moradabad gharana, his son Fateh Ali began and ended with a dash of flamboyance -- a rare feature with the sarangi -- every time he took the cue. The trend rose to the fore more in a lighter composition taken up next in the festive raga of Kaafi.

This kind of a guru-shishya equation saw a contrast in the day's second concert when Vasundhara Komkali, wife of the legendary Kumar Gandharva, sounded a shade bolder than her daughter Kalapini.

Vasundhara, who started learning at the age of 14 under the prodigal Kumar Gandharva whom she married eventually, punctuated her Chayanat Khayal phrases with pauses so characteristic of the maestro who died in 1992. On the accent side, Kalapini came closer to her father's style.

However, it was in their forays towards the top register that the Dewas-settled mother-daughter duo sounded highly like Gandharva, whose music carried the rustic ethos of the Malwa plain land.

Grammy awardee Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt chose the reflective Gawti as the raga for his Mohan Veena rendition on March 15. In the initial alaap and jhor-jhala phase, Bhatt gave enough space for his son Salil to prove his mettle.

The concert also saw him introducing the 35-stringed Vishwa Veena capable of producing the rattling sound of the surmandal, a miniscule version of the Western Harp. The Jaipur-settled Bhatt selected spring raga Basant to play the Vishwa Veena.

The renowned Shafat Ahmed accompanied them on the tabla.

The final concert of the event, by Hubli-based Gangu Bai Hangal and her daughter Krishna, had Sudh Kalyan as the main raga.

While the octogenarian musician was unswerving on the pitch aspect, Krishna added a finer element of melody to the concert, yet retaining her mother's masculine voice.

UNI