Ravi Shankar in San Francisco - a summary
Rajan P. Parrikar
Ravi Shankar's performance on October 6 at the beautiful Nob Hill Masonic
Auditorium in San Francisco was very, very pedestrian. Musically, that is.
Socially, the show was a dazzler. Since I don't have much time today,
I'll just summarise the evening's fare.
The opener was the relatively rare Raga Gunji Kanada. This member of
the Kanada clan of Ragas is gotten by welding elements of Raga Malgunji
to the Kanada chassis. The type played by Ravi (Robi, in bongspeak) is
one of two variants of the same Raga. It employs both the gandhars, the
komal dhaivat and the komal nishad. This Raga is quite easily recognisable
by the following signature (M=shuddha madhyam):
S...(n')d' n' P'...M' P' (n')d' n' S...R n' S R G..M..P (M)g (M)g M R S
Note that while the above is swara-congruent with Raga Devgandhar, the two
are very different in both character and spirit.
RS developed the vistAr in the traditional format - AlAp, joD and
jhAlA. But instead of a thorough, detailed exploration of this grand
Raga, he quickly lapsed into the joD and then a somewhat incoherent
jhAlA. One heard very little of the meend and curves that are so very
special to Gunji Kanada and the entire treatment sounded perfunctory.
Surely this was not the Ravi Shankar we have come to admire for his
consummate mastery and understanding of the swara and Raga, for the
profoundly original ideas he brings to the Raga - attributes which distin-
guish him from the other virtuousos. All that was missing on Friday.
The gat was presented in a rare tAla (sADedas tAla) of 10.5 beats and
quickly terminated.
(For completeness, I should mention that the other variety of Gunji
Kanada brings out the Malgunji-ang more strongly via the use of shuddha
dhaivat in addition to the komal dhaivat demanded by the Kanada-ang.)
Raga Marubihag was the second item. He began the gat after a very
brief alap which in itself was an indication of his lack of enthusiasm
to really get his act going that evening. This is a fairly linear Raga
but RS had difficulty keeping up with its flow. There were quite a few
abrupt and jumpy breaks whenever he attempted sweeping phrases and on
one occasion a komal nishad stood out like a sore thumb. It was very
obvious that the convergence of advanced age and ill-health has
significantly diminished his hold over the intrument. But he failed on
the other front as well - where he could have circumvented the heroics
and instead focussed on Raga elaboration.
The post-intermission proceedings got underway with RS's daughter,
Anoushka, performing solo on the sitar. She played Raga TilakShyam
(a hybrid of Ragas Tilak Kamod and Shyam Kalyan created by Ravi
Shankar. Remember his beautiful composition from the film Anuradha
in Lata's voice? Jaane kaise sapnon meiN...). Everything she played
seemed to have been preset with no improvisation whatsoever. In other
words, there was nothing out of the ordinary to recommend her to
the audience other than a doting father's enthusiasm in promoting
his daughter.
After this piece RS brought closure on the evening with a Mishra Piloo,
somewhat enlivened by his forays into different Ragas.
Sharing the stage with RS was his disciple Partho Sarathy on the
sarod. Since we got to hear very little of him I don't have any opinion
one way or the other. On tabla was Zakir Hussain and I give him a
passing grade this time.
r
Srikanth Gopalan
: Namashkar!
: On tabla was Zakir Hussain and I give him a
: passing grade this time.
: r
So Zakir got only a passing mention eh? :-)
Sorry for the really bad PJ folks. Couldn't resist the temptation.
-Srikanth
Shridar Ganti
Rajan P. Parrikar <parr...@rococo.Colorado.EDU> wrote:
>Namashkar!
>
>Ravi Shankar's performance on October 6 at the beautiful Nob Hill Masonic
>Auditorium in San Francisco was very, very pedestrian. Musically, that is.
>Socially, the show was a dazzler.
I would agree with this assessment. First of all there were so many people
coming and going all the time. I realised one thing Indian Classical is meant
to be performed for small gathering where the atmosphere is much more
personal.
sridhar
Rajan P. Parrikar
>(For completeness, I should mention that the other variety of Gunji
>Kanada brings out the Malgunji-ang more strongly via the use of shuddha
>dhaivat in addition to the komal dhaivat demanded by the Kanada-ang.)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not true. There are several Kanada-ang Ragas that don't use the
komal dhaivat. Thanks to Siddhartha Chatterjee for noticing my
lapse. The komal dhaivat is a must in Gunji Kanada, however, since
it is built around the Darbari/Adana base.
r