Amir Khan's Untitled/Chandramadhu
Ushnish Basu
I was listening to the cassette of Amir Khan which has an untitled raag and
Chandramadhu (I suppose a lot of people have this cassette), and I came to the
following conclusion. The raag which is labelled as Chandramadhu on the
cassette is actually Madhukauns, and the untitled raag is in fact
Chandramadhu. I'm saying this because of the following reasons -
a) I have a recording of Madhukauns by Amir Khan, the bol of which is "Bairan
Bhai Rain". I know this to be Madhukauns for sure since it goes as
Sa ga(komal) Ma(tivra) Pa ni(komal)
for most of the time, except for a bit at the beginning, where the Dha is
also included. The recording in the "Untitled..." cassette follows the same
route. Significantly, the bandish(and the bol, of course) is the same in both
cases.
b) I also have a recording of Chandramadhu by Sultan Khan (sarangi) which
happens to have the same bandish(!) as in the untitled raag, and moves on
the same route more or less. From what I could make out, the bandish goes
something like
Ma _ Pa Ma ga _ Sa Ni Sa
The bol in the Amir Khan version is "Paar karoon jamuna" (?).
The reason I'm a bit apprehensive about my conclusion is that it seems to me
that if this were indeed true, somebody would already have realized it earlier
and the fact would have been public knowledge. Could someone please offer
their comments/clarifications on this?
About Chandramadhu, it seems to me that it is composed by putting in the
shuddha ni of Chandrakauns into Madhukauns. In fact, I recall reading
somewhere that Chandramadhu is a creation of Amir Khan, created by mixing
Chandrakauns and Madhukauns. Also, the fact that Sultan Khan was playing the
same bandish (on the sarangi) as Amir Khan, suggests that not too many
bandishes exist for this raag. Could someone please offer more definitive
information about Chandramadhu?
About Sultan Khan, it seems that he belongs to the same gharana as Amir Khan
(Indore, although it is indeed unreasonable to say that AK belonged to a
particular gharana). There might be a possibility that he has been influenced
by Amir Khan a lot (which is a damn good thing ;-)). Could someone clarify
this issue?
TIA
Ushnish Basu
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Ushnish Basu ub...@uclink.berkeley.edu
Graduate Student, SEMM
Dept. of Civil & Env. Engg.,
721, Davis Hall Home Address:
University of California, Berkeley 1836, Hearst Avenue, #G
Berkeley CA 94720 Berkeley CA 94703-1362
Phone: (510)-642-6463 Phone: (510)-644-1906
Fax: (510)-643-8928 #include<std.disclaimer>
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