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Sri Sandeep Bagchee in 'NAD: Understanding Raga Music' deals with the tradition of North Indian classical music in particular with detailed reference to some of the eminent doyens hailing from the Indian subcontinent along with their gharanas, the description of musical instruments and a short introduction to few ragas and talas as well.
This book is an enjoyable read, indeed. 🌸🌿

ll An Evening of Indian Classical Music ll
~~ Chakdaha ~~
8th November, 2022

Sri Ramlal Mathur was one of the earlier disciples of sarode maestro Swar Samrat Ustad Ali Akbar Khan during his Jodhpur years. In 1944 Maharaja Ummed Singh of Jodhpur appointed him as the court musician at the behest of his son and heir apparent, Kunwar Hanwant Singh on a special commission, much different from other royal appointments decreed by the Maharaja. Ramlal narrated several anecdotes related to those eventful seven years of Ustad Ali Akbar Khansahib's life at the royal court. Ramlal Mathur wrote: "It was not just the Ustad's music-- Hanwant Singh bore a deep and personal love for the man himself and this feeling was entirely mutual. Hanwant Singh was extremely fortunate in that he was one of the very few people who had the opportunity to listen to the Ustad's sarod at small, private sittings or in luxurious solitude. During these recitals, the musical genius would play with single-minded concentration and dedication, as though he were playing to himself, and the resulting music would be exquisite-- something not possible in a public auditorium packed with people." This book is an account of the faded period of royal patronage of the arts, accompanied by precious photographs and musical notations.

George Ruckert's book, titled as 'The Classical Music of North India' is a well knit conglomeration of musical theory and notations along with the history of the rich cultural heritage of North Indian classical music that he was able to learn being a disciple of Swar Samrat Ustad Ali Akbar Khan for more than twenty-five years at Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California. While referring to his Guru's lessons Ruckert wrote: "In his attitude towards the literature of rag, Khansahib is at the same time narrowly conservative and widely imaginative. He will teach and play hundreds of compositions from the standard rags in the general repertoire, and often teaches the same composition a number of times over the course of the years. Before teaching a composition, he will look over his father's notes and those he made himself while a student. He also checks in the published literature for versions of certain rags, but it is rare that he is satisfied with them." Discussing about sarode maestro's sublime stage performance George Ruckert came up with these words in his book: "As a featured artist in concert, Khansahib does not play to the gallery. He rigorously follows the dictates of his creative instincts and artistic mood. If he senses a new melodic movement in his mind, he will play it, for the first time, on the stage. ... His is a music of 'composition on the spot', and he fully trusts in the Creative Spirit of the moment." About the numerous accolades that Ustad Ali Akbar Khan got in his lifetime Ruckert wrote: "Khansahib has received awards from governments, universities, and cultural societies the world over. These include five honorary doctorates and, in 1990, the prestigious Padmavibhusan award of the Indian government. In June, 1991, he received a MacArthur Fellowship (United States) for his life's work of 'creating, cultivating, and transmitting North Indian classical music'. However, he often says that his highest honor came when his father called him Swara Samrat, 'Emperor of Notes'."

Anuradha Ghosh, the daughter of noted Bengali filmmaker Tapan Sinha wrote a biography of the greatest ever musician of the Indian subcontinent, Baba Allauddin Khan, that includes Pandit Ravi Shankar's tribute to his Guru.

We would like to express our gratitude to everyone for such an immense support within a short period of time. Our heartfelt thanks go to all the music connoisseurs and aficionados around the globe.
Best regards 🌸🌿

A genius in academics and a singer par excellence belonging to Kirana gharana Sheila Dhar has also been remembered as an author for her exquisite sense of humour tinged at times with a touch of pathos and an inquisitive pursuit for music in the lived space around. Beginning her academic life as a student of medical science she later shifted towards the world of English literature. Dhar became the lecturer of English Literature and Language at the prestigious Department of English of Delhi University. In her book 'Raga'n Josh: Stories from a Musical Life' she came up with several anecdotes related to the life of musicians of towering personalities along with those who remained at the peripheral region. The readers are chanced upon to get a glimpse of the old Delhi with its suburbs in this wonderful book as well. While talking about the subtleties of raga in the Indian classical music in the chapter titled as 'The Raga: An Inward Journey' she wrote: "The musician envisions a heightened state of being through the portraiture of the lines of the raga. The lines, colours, and feelings offered by the raga create a field of awareness in which the listener can share in the intended evocation. What the listeners hear and acknowledge is the validation of what the singer is discovering in the moment. This live chemistry of participation is a vital factor in the traditional performances where the performer is the leader and the listener the follower. Ideally, both experience the full portrait in sound simultaneously."

Today marks the 91st Birth Anniversary of renowned sitarist Padma Bhusan Pandit Nikhil Bannerjee who carved a niche of his own during the time of Ustad Vilayat Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar. Born in a lower-middle class family on 14th October, 1931 (27th Aswin, Bengali Year 1338) he took his initial lessons from his father, Jitendranath Bandyopadhyay along with Banshidhar Rao, John Gomes, Ustad Mushtaq Ali Khan and Birendrakrishna Roychowdhury. He finally came all the way to Maihar to learn the nuances of artistry from the legendary musician of Indian subcontinent, Baba Allauddin Khan. He was closely associated with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan throughout his life.
In the forward to the biographical account of Pandit Nikhil Bannerjee, titled as 'Nikhil Banerjee: Down the Heart of Sitar' by Swapan Bandyopadhyay Annapurna Devi wrote: "My first assignment, as it were, was to teach Nikhil the tameez needed for learning from Baba. However, I don't think I did a good job of it. I had advised him against performing before Baba, but when Baba told him, 'Kya, raga bajate ho, humko sunao', he proudly played Raga Purvi. When he finished, Baba jumped up, gave him thumbs down and yelled, 'Purvi nahi murgi bajaya, murgi.' And then Baba put him up in a room next to his and Nikhil started in earnest: palta, alankara, murchhana, taan, meend... Baba always adjusted his taalim to a particular student's personality and temperament. Nikhil was shy and his temperament sober. Baba's individualized taalim in Dhrupad style gave Nikhil's playing that haunting feel and helped him create magic and maintain the mood of the raga whenever he played Shivaranjani, Malkauns or Sindhu Bhairavi." Swapan Bandyopadhyay in the preface to his book wrote: "Listening to Pandit Nikhil Bannerjee is instructive and contemplative. A performance by Nikhil Bannerjee was a rare assimilation of classical precision, grandeur, and dignity. Indeed it is great art-- a perfect balance of imaginative depth and sensitivity. Music for him was a path of self-realization, to be performed in a spirit of prayer. While playing, he would completely immerse himself in the raga. As he often said, it was important to submit to the notes of a raga, not merely strike it, but to embrace it with the purest feelings of one's heart. In his interview to Landgraten, Nikhil spoke of his vision of the elevation of all great art into the realm of the supreme: '... for a few moments good music, good literature, good poetry, a good picture lifts you up and you forget your whole body and surroundings. This is the purpose of the art.'"
Best regards 🌸🌿

Today is the fourth Death Anniversary of eminent sadhika of surbahar and sitar, Padma Bhusan Vidushi Annapurna Devi (daughter of the musician of musicians, Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan). Her original name was Roshanara Khan. The Maharaja of Maihar Estate, Brijnath Singh named her as 'Annapurna' out of sheer reverence. She was the former wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Best regards 🌸🌿
Pranam 🙏🏻

Today is the 98th birth anniversary of noted Bengali singer Kanika Bandyopadhyay who was closely associated with Rabindranath Tagore. Her original name was 'Anima'. It was Tagore who named her as 'Kanika'.
Best regards 🌸🌿
Pranam 🙏🏻

Professor Dhyanesh Khan (son of Padma Vibhusan Ustad Ali Akbar Khan), sarode maestro, composer of music and an ideal Guru in the true sense of the term passed this life thirty one years ago on this day.
Best regards 🌸🌿
Pranam 🙏🏻

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Audio_Track

This book is the conference proceeding resulted in after an international conference, titled as 'Music, Modernity and Public Sphere' took place at the Delhi Centre of University of Chicago from February 26-28, 2016 particpated by Dipesh Chakraborty (University of Chicago), Urmila Bhirdekar (Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar), Aditi Deo (IISER, Pune), Thomas Christensen (University of Chicago), Partho Datta (Delhi University), Tejaswini Niranjana (TISS Mumbai and Lingan University, Hong Kong), Surabhi Sharma (Film-maker, Mumbai), Lakshmi Subramanian (CSSSC, Kolkata) and others. The primary concern of the conference is quoted as saying-- "A key aim of the conference was to assemble and refine our conceptual frameworks for understanding the changes brought about by, in and through music in a South Asian context. We hope to interrogate the concept of the 'public sphere' and examine its vitality in terms of how it can or cannot capture these kinds of changes. Another important aspect of our conference was to rethink the relationship between the musical text or performance and the context within which its formal and social meanings are realized. We seek, in short, to answer the ambitious question of what it might mean to speak about a 'musical public sphere' in a broadly global context." Thus the goal of this book is focused on the introspection into the effects of numerous musical traditions on the public sphere and vice versa. Thomas Christensen in his forward to the book wrote: "In this volume, authors explore questions in a postcolonial, Indian context that could be asked about almost any nation state around the globe: How is it that music seems to play such a catalytic role in forming identities of nationhood, class, or ethnicity? And how do twentieth-century technologies of sound reproduction and commercial marketing contribute to that role? A number of authors explore how tensions between classical and vernacular musical canons help in the formation of national or ethnic identities." The thought-provoking essays featured in this book deal with the creation of a musical public connected to social inclusions and exclusions, the idea of music linked to the changing forms of patronage for Hindustani music, key moments of change in the musical knowledge during the post-independence emergence of the state as the major patron of Hindustani music, the way a particular taste or a consensus of taste in any musical production gets shaped through the forms of 'social intimacy', formation of a fairly contemporary aural public consisting of vernacular rustic performers from Northern and Northwestern India with their metropolitan and diasporic listeners and such other interesting issues related to the dissemination of music in the public arena.

Today is the birthday of Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, widely known as Mallika-e-Ghazal, Begum Akhtar. Yatindra Mishra edited a wonderful collection of articles written on her illustrious musical career. This edited volume is divided into four parts--- 1. Reflections on her life and music, 2. Memories, mentions, reminiscences, 3. In conversations with disciples and 4. A discussion with Begum Akhtar and a lesson in singing. Eminent persons like historian Saleem Kidwai, author-cum-singer Sheila Dhar, Aneesh Pradhan and others came up with their write-ups on the legendary singer-actress. Her disciples, namely Shanti Hiranand and Rita Ganguly also remembered Begum Akhtar with reverence. Saleem Kidwai wrote: "Akhtari Bai was skilled in Urdu and knew its poetry, particularly the ghazal form, intimately. With complete command over her musical idiom, she inflected nuances into love poems that might have surprised and delighted the poets themselves. Purabi, the dialect of western Awadh, was the dominant language of the region, understood and spoken across classes; and Akhtari was at home in it too. She introduced a Purabi languor into her thumris and dadras, which made even heartbreak sound seductive. She loved to sing, but disliked dancing and left it to the other ladies who lived with her. Her intelligence and wit shone in her repartee, her seductive glamour, and in her refined manners; her sophistication and charm quickly became legendary." Yatindra Mishra while remembering her wrote: "Begum Akhtar was an example of how the pain of an everyday, common life can be given the shape of classical dignity. I have no hesitation in clarifying here that at a time when her contemporaries were beating the drum of 'pucca gaana' (pure classical music) through their amazing talent, Begum Akhtar was way ahead of them through the elegance of her expressions, singing ghazals bound by couplets in literary Urdu-- on the one hand singing ghazals of Mir, Ghalib, Momin and Daagh-- on the other picking up ghazals of new poets like Kaifi Azmi, Shakeel Badayuni, Jigar Moradabadi, and Sudarsan Faakir."

Today marks the 160th janmatithi of Acharya Baba Alauddin Khan, the greatest ever musician born in the Indian subcontinent.
Best regards 🌸🌿

Ajit Krishna Basu aka A.Kri.Ba narrates his acquaintances with several stalwarts in the arena of Indian classical and other genres of music in his anecdotal references, named as 'Ostad Kahini'. The way he portrays numerous episodes brings in mind a Kaleidoscopic vision of an eventful era in the history of Indian music at large. Basu in his book deals with the illustrious musical career of Ustad Viswadeb Chattopadhyay, Krishnachandra Dey and Tarapada Chakraborty who have immensely influenced him to evolve as a music aficionado. Along with them Ajit Krishna Basu as a connoisseur of music also refers to Aftab-e-Maushiqui Ustad Faiyaz Khan, Khan Saheb Abdul Karim Khan and others as well.

Ian Woodfield, an acclaimed musicologist at the School of Music, Queen's University at Belfast in Ireland dealt in detail the musical world of the Anglo-Indian community in particular in the late eighteenth century during the Raj. He went through several accounts of the colonial era, e.g. private letters of amateur musicians in order to trace the encounter between English music and its Indian counterpart. This book is undeniably an important read because of the resources that the author resorted to in this socio-economical history of music in India.

Festive hours are around the corner!
Seasonal greetings from Audio_Track.

The aesthetic sensibilities of Rabindranath Tagore are reflected in his treatise on music, titled as 'Sangit-chinta'. Alluding to Herbert Spenser's 'On the Origin and Function of Music' Tagore deals with the nuanced relationship between emotive feelings and musical expressions. He does not ever rely heavily on the normative rigidity of any musical form. According to Tagore, "Art is never an exhibition but a revelation." The letters exchanged between Rabindranath Tagore and Dilip Kumar Roy, the son of eminent Bengali playwright, lyricist and composer Dwijendralal Roy, Dhurjatiprasad Mukhopadhyay and Smt. Indira Devi bring forth Tagore's radical ideas in relation to music as a creative artefact.

Richard Widdess (Professor of Musicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) in his seminal book, 'Ragas of Early Indian Music: Modes, melodies and musical notations from Gupta period to c. 1250)' locates the origin of the age-old tradition of Indian classical music as early as the Gupta period while also referring to Abhinabagupta's commentaries on Bharata's early first millennium AD magnum opus-- 'Natyasastra', 'Dattilam' of saint Dattila, 'Sangitratnakara' of Sarngadeva, 'Bharatvasya' of Nanyadeva, 'Kalanidhi' of Kallinatha, 'Brhad-desi' of Matanga along with several other texts as well.

Dr. Anirban Bhattacharyya (HoD of English, Shantipur College, West Bengal) philosophises on Tagore's songs in a thought provoking article that has been published in a Bengali journal.

Remembering Acharya Baba Allauddin Khan, the finest of musicians ever born in Indian subcontinent on his golden jubilee death anniversary...
Pranam at his lotus feet 🌸🌿