Raga Megh by Nikhil Banerjee
p.bodd...@gmail.com
Is there a recording that contains the complete rendition of raga megh
by Nikhil Banerjee ?
thanks,
Prasad.
sit...@excite.com
sit...@excite.com
R M Reed
<p.bodd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1129675849.6...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
A.
sit...@excite.com
player as-is.
sit...@excite.com
kantid...@aol.com
Hi Prasad,
I have a CD (EMI CDPSLP5072 Title Nikhil Banerjee Sitar Recital)with
following ragas
Megh 19.43 minutes, Alap and Gat, Japtal, Tabla Swapan Chowdhury.
Malkauns 20 minutes.
Sohini 20.06 minutes.
Misra Gara 8.02 minutes.
Hope this CD is still available. I bought it from a music shop in
Leicester, England over 15 years ago,
Regards,
Kanti Dattani
Praful Kelkar
kantid...@aol.com wrote:
> I have a CD (EMI CDPSLP5072 Title Nikhil Banerjee Sitar Recital)with
> following ragas
>
> Megh 19.43 minutes, Alap and Gat, Japtal, Tabla Swapan Chowdhury.
> Malkauns 20 minutes.
> Sohini 20.06 minutes.
> Misra Gara 8.02 minutes.
This is by far one of the best recordings of Megh I have heard.
Abstolutely wonderful.
Curiously he uses kG in only in one spot, as I remember now without
having heard it recently, (with malhar ang), which some use only in
Megh Malhar. Some gharans do play Megh with lots of kG as well. Most
of his Megh is a clean pentatonic version.
-PK
barend
Does anyone know the exact difference between Megh and Madhmaad
Sarang.....because they both use the same tones.
So, what is typical for megh and what for Madhmaad sarang???
Praful Kelkar
of kN and R.
Look at Rajan Parrikar's write up on Madhamad Sarang on SAWF
http://www.sawf.org/Newedit/edit10302000/musicarts.asp
Don't miss Zhasaheb's demonstration of difference between Megh and
Madhmaad sarang. There is some more discussion in his book as well.
As always such wonderful explanations and such free sharing of
knowledge!
-PK
Johan Vikberg
> Does anyone know the exact difference between
> Megh and Madhmaad Sarang ... because they both
> use the same tones.
I don't understand the language, but Ramashreya Jha demonstrates the
difference in the following recording:
Praful Kelkar
discussion on megh, malhar, kanadas, and sarang is critical to
understanding all these raags.
Jhasaheb does not discuss the shruti-bheda in this context. The R and
kN in Megh sit lower than Sarang.
-PK
barend
great!!!
I am very interested in this (unfortunately I can not speak or read
hindi (yet))
Chetan Vinchhi
"Praful Kelkar" <praful...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1129920677.0...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Jhasaheb does not discuss the shruti-bheda in this context. The R and
> kN in Megh sit lower than Sarang.
I missed this one earlier. What do you mean by saying R
sits lower? I though that the shuddha swaras were fixed
with respect to the S.
C
abhikma...@gmail.com
> sits lower? I though that the shuddha swaras were fixed
> with respect to the S.
Not necessarily at all. For example, just as the r of Marwa is set to a
higher shruti, so is its D. One has only to compare it with the D of
Pooriya (or any other raga - Yaman, Jaijaivanti, whatever) to figure
this out. And yes, FWIW I'd say Praful is perfectly correct in his
appreciation of Megh's R and n. I have also observed the same thing
myself.
Traditionally, S and P were the only fixed notes. Some now hold that
even these notes are not as fixed as previously thought. (Don't have
details right now - got this nugget in the course of a conversation
with a dhrupadiya - promise to post more material on this as soon as I
lay my paws on it.)
Abhik
Praful Kelkar
to get into the sort of debate we did last year about the issue of
shruti.
I think the easiest to demonstrate are the shrutis of shuddha N. N in
kalyan is lower than shankara or bihag - this is the simplest example I
can give, which should be fairly easy to discern to a trained ear. As
a teacher told me once, as soon as you hear the first note of the alap
- the N one should be able to tell kalyan from bihag etc.
G in bhairav being slighly brighter, shudha M in sarang being brighter
than megh, etc. are more difficult discussions.
R in Megh sits lower than R in Sarang (similarly kN in megh is lower
than Sarang). I somewhere have a lovely demonstration of this point
by ZM Dagar in his discussion with students. Zhasaheb also makes a
reference to Shrutis of shuddha swar but then focuses on the shrutis of
komal and teevra (vide dicussion on darbari).
-PK
abhikma...@gmail.com
Err . . . brighter than what?
Abhik
Praful Kelkar
is spank on the harmonic G -- bhairav G potentially brighter [I know
some pandits like WS would not like to hear me to say this again &
again :-)]
-PK
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
Praful Kelkar wrote:
> Even the shuddha swar have different shrutis .. mind you I don't want
> to get into the sort of debate we did last year about the issue of
> shruti.
>
> I think the easiest to demonstrate are the shrutis of shuddha N. N in
> kalyan is lower than shankara or bihag - this is the simplest example I
> can give, which should be fairly easy to discern to a trained ear. As
> a teacher told me once, as soon as you hear the first note of the alap
> - the N one should be able to tell kalyan from bihag etc.
By this, do you mean that by simply hearing the sound/frequency ratio
of the unadorned Shuddh Ni (with no other melodic activity or gesture
of any kind) against the taanpura, you should be able to tell Shankara,
Kalyaan, and Bihag apart? Or do you mean that the "overall feel"
including surrounding notes is higher or lower? Same questions about
Shuddh Re and Komal Ni of Madhmad vs. Megh? There may be many folks
postulating this, but I am skeptical about the empirical consistency to
such a claim.
Sanjeev
Praful Kelkar
There are no empirical studies about shrutis and the methodological
issues are very complex. So no one can show you any convincing
empirical data. So being a skeptic is an easy task. See my previous
posts on this and also WS'.
Briefly, shruti = "that which is heard" - so by definition it is an
experential, to some extent subjective but not entirely, attirbute.
Taking that definition as the starting point one can construct various
ways of explaning why a certain swar in a certain raag sounds different
from another raag. Various factors such as - moving into the note
(from another note), movement of the note once you get to it, the
frequency of the note, etc etc go into making the note "be heard"
different.
In regards to the "frequencies" of the shrutis - there probably are no
fixed notes in ICM. So one will have to describe the frequency in some
other statistical models/terms. It is not impossible to describe
"clustering" around the frequency as a property of the shruti - and
that may be different from one raag to another. The clusters will
probably have differnent centers and different shapes.
As yet no one has done proper scientific experiments due to the
complexities. Some half baked, or even less than quarter baked,
attempts have been done by people like Levy, but the work falls way too
short to mean anything, in therms of really trying to
explain/understand the mystery of shruti. On the other hands some
others will quote you precise number for the frequency for a particular
shruti, without any data of course, which is also useless.
The shrutis are indeed higher or lower - and N in Yaman sits lower than
Bihag or Shankara. Do listen to the beautiful demonstration of kG in
Darbari by Zhasaheb & kN in Adana - and even after disregarding the
meends, the oscillations and other confounding properties, the
placement differences in kG or kN are as clear as bells (provided one
has some degree of swar-gyan). He has graciously shared his
knowledge, while some who do possess the knowledge will act secretive
in the name of some gharana non-sense.
-PK
MAUSAM
> even these notes are not as fixed as previously thought. (Don't have
> details right now - got this nugget in the course of a conversation
> with a dhrupadiya - promise to post more material on this as soon as I
> lay my paws on it.)
Interestingly, Wasifuddin Dagar once demonstrated that the Sa in Malkauns
is actually higher than the regular Sa!!!
I still have to think about what happenned there.
Btw, I have a lec-dem by Dinkar Kaikini (thanks Vimal Aga for the
recording) where he shows almost 40-50 shrutis one after the other. I can
always feel that the shruti increased and also that the next note did not
reach!! Clearly many of those shrutis would be employed in different
raags. That lec-dem makes me wonder as to why are there only "=22"
accepted shrutis.
Mausam
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
> There we go again -- this has been hashed and rehashed and re-rehashed.
Well, you have my deep apologies for daring to re-re-re-hash this...
> Various factors such as - moving into the note
> (from another note), movement of the note once you get to it, the
> frequency of the note, etc etc go into making the note "be heard"
> different.
I am well aware of this. I vehemently agree that different "surrounding
and peripheral" intonational activity can lead to a different heard
perception. Where straight, plain notes are concerned, it is not
"what's the fuss, nobody can tell the difference anyway". It is the
idea of a universally accepted ordinal scheme by raga for all the notes
that I am skeptical about.
Where "consistency" is concerned, I am not talking about matching
frequency ratios with some sort of "shruti"-meter, so don't get all
excited. If a performer's straight Shuddh Nishads for Yaman, Bihag, and
Shankara are regularly in the same relative locations (in relation to
one another), that's legit enough.
> The shrutis are indeed higher or lower - and N in Yaman sits lower than
> Bihag or Shankara. Do listen to the beautiful demonstration of kG in
> Darbari by Zhasaheb & kN in Adana - and even after disregarding the
> meends, the oscillations and other confounding properties, the
> placement differences in kG or kN are as clear as bells (provided one
> has some degree of swar-gyan).
Particularly the Adana Ni is a well-known example and yes, the higher
placement (on an *unadorned* basis) is quite audible in Jha-sahab's (by
the way, speaking of re-hashing, why do you write "Zha"?) rendition as
in others. However, it is *not* true that *every* rendition of Adana
shows this raised Nishad (or for that matter, even every passage within
*one* rendition), nor is it true that any rendition not showing this
feature can be summarily dismissed as incorrect or inadequate. Yet
another example is the Dha (as used by, among others, Kumar Gandharva)
in Jaunpuri.
That being said, I don't believe that the vast majority of performing
classical musicians practice, or even subscribe to, the
"different-unadorned-shade-of-every-note-for-every-raga" view. That
some people insist on, and even demonstrate it in performance, does not
imply that it is a universal truth.
Sanjeev
Praful Kelkar
dhrupadiyas talk about it. What I think happens there is that because
of the other swars the sa seems to be "rising" ... probably not in
absolute frequency I would guess.
Even a slightly trained ear can easily discern 30-40 shrutis. It can
be easily done on an instrument like sarod where the finernail makes a
precise contact with the string. A trained ear can discern 40-50 or
even more shrutis when played linearly -- an important question is how
accurately can one hit them while singing/playing? 22 seems like a
good number to hope for in terms of accuracy.
We all would agree that 12 notes is an achievable goal for humans
across the cultures (thus some folks get fixated with that number) &
even unmusical ears can fairly accurately hit 12 with little
training... so with training you can perhaps hit 22 fairly accurately
and reproducibly. That may be more true than some funky mathematical
formulas that arrive at the number 22.
Following may be a simple explanation for why 22 (again keeping in mind
the expected accuracy during performance rather than how many can we
hear). It is not too difficult to get 4 shrutis for following
intervals each....S-R = 4, R-G =4, G- tM = 4, P-D = 4, D-S = 4. And
S and P get 1 each. Total is 22!!
-PK
Praful Kelkar
>That being said, I don't believe that the vast majority of performing
>classical musicians practice, or even subscribe to, the
>"different-unadorned-shade-of-every-note-for-every-raga" view.
I agree with you. There are some well known shrutis that a good
performer should adhere to - like the two kG in darbari, kN in adana,
or lower kR in Todi etc. I also agree that every passage would not be
accurate, particularly the fast passages. Alap where the
intenionality is on the accuracy of swar is most conducive to this.
If in slow alap a performer uses a low kN in adana that would certainly
qualify for "half baked" or sloppy.
KG's D in Jaunpuri is differnt matter - he had the genius to stress the
boundaries of Raags that raised many eyebrows. But he had the pakka
pAyA in music that he could do it.
-PK
Town Crier
> As yet no one has done proper scientific experiments due to the
> complexities. Some half baked, or even less than quarter baked,
> attempts have been done by people like Levy, but the work falls way too
> short to mean anything, in therms of really trying to
> explain/understand the mystery of shruti. On the other hands some
> others will quote you precise number for the frequency for a particular
> shruti, without any data of course, which is also useless.
I quote from
http://www.itcsra.org/sra%5Fnews%5Fviews/sra_news_views_links/making_music_science.html
"...the SRA has used actual musical renditions by 50 representative
gurus from different schools of classical music and recorded Shruti
deployment by them in a selected set of ragas. This controlled and
coordinated effort has been an ongoing project over the last few
years."
DG
Chetan Vinchhi
<abhikma...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131982521.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> Not necessarily at all. For example, just as the r of Marwa is set to a
> higher shruti, so is its D. One has only to compare it with the D of
> Pooriya (or any other raga - Yaman, Jaijaivanti, whatever) to figure
> this out.
Abhik, others,
While I agree that there may be some straying of
actually played or sung shrutis for shuddha swaras
(leading to clustering of some kind as Praful said),
I do not hear a consistent shift in shrutis. Not
in D of Puriya/Marwa, not in N of Shankara/Yaman.
A shuddha swara may appear (and sometimes even
be sung/played) a little higher if approached from
a higher note and vice versa. So for raagas that
emphasize an avarohi approach to a particular
swara, it will tend to appear a little high.
Also, other attributes such as whether it is used
for nyaasa or not, what the intervals surrounding
it are, etc. will color our perception of the swara.
However, I remain skeptical about actual musical
value in deliberately deviating from the nominal
shruti.
> Traditionally, S and P were the only fixed notes. Some now hold that
> even these notes are not as fixed as previously thought. (Don't have
> details right now - got this nugget in the course of a conversation
> with a dhrupadiya - promise to post more material on this as soon as I
> lay my paws on it.)
Will look forward to this material.
C
Chetan Vinchhi
"MAUSAM" <mau...@cs.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64N.05...@gerhilde.cs.washington.edu...
>
> Interestingly, Wasifuddin Dagar once demonstrated that the Sa in
> Malkauns is actually higher than the regular Sa!!!
> I still have to think about what happenned there.
I would have to too! This goes against the very core
of my idea of ICM. The best I can admit to is that
all the notes of Malkauns are lower than their
"regular" values (this opens up the issue of M being
mobile, which is also dubious). Unless the contention
is that the interval between madhya S and taar S' is
less than an octave, which I don't buy.
So, what happened there?
C
abhikma...@gmail.com
> Interestingly, Wasifuddin Dagar once demonstrated that the Sa in Malkauns
> is actually higher than the regular Sa!!!
> I still have to think about what happenned there.
and then Praful Kelkar wrote:
> Moving Sa is a difficult undertaking.. although I have heard
> dhrupadiyas talk about it.
I have a conceptual difficulty about this whole exercise. If all notes
lie relative to each other, then what do we use as a starting point?
The dhrupadiya I was talking to (Ashish Sankrityayan) said that actualy
two Sa-a exist, one that derives from the Tanpura (and relative to
which the positions of the other notes are worked out), and the other
that emerges out of the context of the Raga. I couldn't talk to him in
detail about it, and I'm sure he has a perfectly valid point, but
somehow it did seem a bit too abstract to me.
Abhik
Abhik Majumdar
sit...@excite.com wrote:
> Take a look, you'll find it here.
>
> http://homepage.mac.com/sitar/FileSharing68.html
What's happened to this page? Seems to've gone offline. Any idea where
it's moved?
Abhik
Praful Kelkar
actual publication or data......
-PK
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
Praful Kelkar wrote:
> >That being said, I don't believe that the vast majority of performing
> >classical musicians practice, or even subscribe to, the
> >"different-unadorned-shade-of-every-note-for-every-raga" view.
>
> I agree with you. There are some well known shrutis that a good
> performer should adhere to - like the two kG in darbari, kN in adana,
> or lower kR in Todi etc. I also agree that every passage would not be
> accurate, particularly the fast passages. Alap where the
> intenionality is on the accuracy of swar is most conducive to this.
> If in slow alap a performer uses a low kN in adana that would certainly
> qualify for "half baked" or sloppy.
Hmmm...I don't immediately recall which one Bade Ghulam Ali's Adana
uses (I don't mean in taans), but I also don't distinctly remember his
being higher. For that matter, Jha-sahab's own student Shubha Mudgal
has recorded Adana and as far as I can remember, hers was a "normal"
komal Ni all the way through - I need to check that though. I have a
similar doubt about the recent Fateh Ali Khan release of Adana. In all
these cases, even if my memory were correct, I would be hesitant to
call these "half-baked". My impression is that even amongst performers
of stature, this is a commonly held view, but not a universal one.
> KG's D in Jaunpuri is differnt matter - he had the genius to stress the
> boundaries of Raags that raised many eyebrows. But he had the pakka
> pAyA in music that he could do it.
Sure, his Dhaivat is definitely intentional and consistent - I don't
particularly like the sound of it myself, but then of course that sort
of quirkiness is no isolated occurence with KG. For that matter, upon
searching my memory, I realized that his is the only Jaunpuri I have
heard with that Dha placement - any others?
Sanjeev
Praful Kelkar
specifically - before we declare them how-much-baked.
The other issue is that, when you ask a seasoned musician to show the
kN in adana or 2 kGs in darabri or 2 tM in Lalit - they mostly do it
with consistency. That should in fact be one part of the scientific
study. Next part would be to check their recordings of performances
etc.
Also need to make sure that harmonium is not used or if used is not
loud - it will force wrong shrutis in what we hear, or even sometimes
in what is being sung (most vocalist would say that they simply ignore
the harmonium as they sing - it is a filler for the audience). In
older recordings other noises such as this can be a big problem. If
you are listening to Sitar - make sure that taraf is not rigning too
loud - since that too drives a fixed shruti.
-PK
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
Praful Kelkar wrote:
> Firstly, don't just quote from indistinct memories that are not checked
> specifically - before we declare them how-much-baked.
My indistinct memory actually happens to be pretty good - it's just
that I'm less willing than others on this forum to brandish it as
truth, so I put less qualifiers on it. The harmonium point is valid,
but its obscuring the heard note is not an issue for the recordings I
am thinking of. It's not possible to establish, just from the
recording, that the use of harmonium misled a vocalist into singing
something different than that which he/she would have sung with just
the taanpura. Just heard the Fateh Ali recording again and came away
with the same feeling.
In any case, I am not hammering on the scientific experiment part - it
just seems that some people insist on the higher kN and some don't, and
I am not willing to discard an Adana just for the absence of this
higher kN.
Sanjeev
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
Sanjeev Ramabhadran wrote:
> Praful Kelkar wrote:
> > Firstly, don't just quote from indistinct memories that are not checked
> > specifically - before we declare them how-much-baked.
>
> My indistinct memory actually happens to be pretty good - it's just
> that I'm less willing than others on this forum to brandish it as
> truth, so I put less qualifiers on it.
Oops - meant *more* qualifiers.
Town Crier
http://www.itcsra.org/sra_story/sra_story_archives/sra_story_archives_links/sra_story_archives_docs/sra_story_publication_srd.html
is
78. Evaluation of srutis in Hindustani Music from recorded performances
- A K Datta et.al. ITC Sangeet Research Academy
- Proc. Frontiers of Research on Speech and Music (FRSM-2005), 6-7
January, 2005.
- Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India
Praful Kelkar
Parriker's article ... the kN seems high indeed at least in places ..
and this is a drut bandish & from a small clip it is not easy to hear
everything well.
http://www.sawf.org/audio/kanada/fatehali_adana.ram
see nice example of a good kN betwenn 24-27 secs (during a line from
the bandish hence more likely to maintain purity of the raag -- later
as he starts more aggressive gamaks etc things get blurry - and he
sings in approximations.
~~~~~
I think there was some kind of a confernece arranged several years ago
to decide if different gharanas agree on the structure of Raags etc.
I do not know any details, but I am told that the senior Dagar bandhus
had participated there. I wonder if they ever get into details about
shruti etc.
I don't know if a modern day conference would attack this issue -- may
be gandharva mahavidyalay sammelan .... or SRA topic or ncpa ..... a
thought anyway.
-PK
ani...@yahoo.com
sit...@excite.com wrote:
> Take a look, you'll find it here.
>
> http://homepage.mac.com/sitar/FileSharing68.html
Hello,
Would you mind uploading it again? I could not find it there.
Thanks,
Anirban.
Sanjeev Ramabhadran
Praful Kelkar wrote:
> Are you talking about the young Fateh Ali? Here's a clip from from
> Parriker's article ... the kN seems high indeed at least in places ..
> and this is a drut bandish & from a small clip it is not easy to hear
> everything well.
>
> http://www.sawf.org/audio/kanada/fatehali_adana.ram
> see nice example of a good kN betwenn 24-27 secs (during a line from
> the bandish hence more likely to maintain purity of the raag -- later
> as he starts more aggressive gamaks etc things get blurry - and he
> sings in approximations.
I'm talking about the same rendition - it's the recent release (Gharana
series?) which also includes Gunkali, Gujri Todi, and Darbari. I agree
about gamaks blurring the picture, but the kN doesn't sound
conspicuously higher on any consistent basis to me even in the slower
portions of the madhyalaya (before "Taan Kaptaan")...I guess we'll have
to agree to disagree, but regardless, there are clearly a large number
of musicians subscribing to (and practicing) the higher Ni view.
Sanjeev