They cast a spell
GARIMELLA SUBRAMANIAM
| Shashank and Purbayan Chatterjee combined to offer all the
excitement of an ODI. |
ELECTRIFYING: Shashank on
the flute and Purbayan Chatterjee on the sitar. Photo: K. V.
Srinivasan.
The electrifying atmosphere in Monday's jugalbandi
might as well have been a nail-biting one-day international cricket
match. Except the contest was not between bat and ball, but from
breath-taking spells by Shashank on the flute and Purbayan
Chatterjee's baffling finger movements on the sitar; and the venue
was the Music Academy and not the Chepauk stadium. Such was the
sensation the team of youngsters, which included Shubhanker Banerjee
on the tabla and P. Satish on the mridangam, created in the latter
part of the recital.
It didn't matter in the end if you didn't remember
what they played. The manner in which they performed cast a spell
and this was truly of the essence. We must for now leave behind the
cricketing metaphor and get on with ragas and talas, at least for
the sake of the Music Season. At any rate, music, unlike cricket,
seems less prone to the vagaries of the weather.
The choice of ragas itself gave the jugalbandi a
welcome freshness since Abhogi and Latangi are both part of the
Carnatic repertoire. The former has been adopted into the Hindustani
tradition only fairly recently.
Shashank's first spell of Abhogi in the middle
octave was stylistically speaking every inch the southern
characterisation. But Chatterjee's reply seemed to indicate a faint
touch of the nishad. Following a 10-minute alap, they took up
Tyagaraja's "Nannubrova." The kriti rendition was by no means
unrecognisable. But after the anupallavi it was an improvised style,
prominent in the charanam.
After an absorbing 45 minutes of the pentatonic
scale, the change to Latangi, a pleasant pratimadhyama ragam, was
welcome. The progression of the composition was in the Hindustani
mode. But there was not a trace of unfamiliarity in Purbayan's
exposition despite his relative recent acquaintance with Latangi.
When a short alap was finished, it was time for the fireworks to
begin in the madhyalay. The tabla and the mridangam joined in a
seven-beat Rupak tal and from then on, there was a steady increase
in tempo.
Showcasing his own virtuosity, Chatterjee and
Shashank raised the momentum to a higher pitch. The percussion duo
took over from there and for a good 20 minutes blasted their way
through every tan in the textbook — the tarana in Sindubhairvi was
just another excuse to provide more of the same excitement — until
they had established that their music, like ODIs, is another facet
of an otherwise more sober entertainment.
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