Reviews

Monsoon Mood in Kolkata - Malhar Festival

A packed Vivekananda Hall welcomed sarod maestro Ashish Khan, an NRI, who came down to script the grand finale of the Malhar Festival organised by the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture on 12 August 2023.

 

We live in an era of technical brilliance wherein every classical artist is almost predictable. The unpredictability of the maestros of the golden era is passé, but Khan carries the traits of his legendary grandfather, Baba Alauddin Khan, and that is perhaps his winning or losing point. Unfortunately, the successor of Maihar gharana was in his ‘off’ mood and could not do justice to his gharana’s unique method of treating raga Des as Des-Malhar by applying deviated Komal Gandhar (ga ma ri sa) as the closing phrase of each melodic statement. This brought it too close to Jaijaiwanti, his next choice. Atish Mukherjee accompanied his octogenarian ustad with commendable sensitivity, and Sabir Khan on the tabla (Farukhabad gharana), tried his best to break the monotony by offering brilliant jawabi and saat sangat.

 

However, the festival commenced with a unique and brilliant jugalbandi in raga Megh featuring Arshad Ali Khan (vocal) and Sandeep Chatterjee (santoor). Inevitably, in the alap segment, the powerful and dexterous voice overpowered the delicate instrument bereft of meend, gamak-like essential adornments of Indian music. But Sandeep amiably assisted Arshad in portraying the heavy movements of rain-bearing clouds by adding pleasant melodic phrases akin to the rain droplets. Santoor came to the fore in the jod segment with rhythmic patterns and bol-based cascading taans. Arshad took to sargams very wisely, and both concluded with fast taans. Supported by the well-known Tanmay Bose on the tabla, their gatkaris in medium-paced jhaptal and fast Teen taal took a delighting shape with multiple designs of taans that were punctuated by Arshad’s emotive standing notes and meend-laden note-combinations. Sandeep’s aesthetical volume variations at the high speed of another composition set to Ek taal completed the raga’s portrait.

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