Monday, September 08, 2003

sarod and tabla madness: another great ICMS concert

When and where: Saturday, September 6, 2003 | 1930 | Emory University, White Hall Room 208
Who: Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod), Subhankar Banerjee (tabla) {with Kakali Bandyopadhyay on tanpura}
Courtesy: ICMS

A rather formal performance -- at least in terms of a playlist. TNM was kind enough to attempt to announce and explain the piece before actually beginning to play it. That did not help to recover from the complex web of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic interplay that ensued. For the completely-blown away, the reaction would have been "awesome". For those (like myself) who tried to keep track of the 'sam' in the face of off-beat off-kilter taal patterns and sarod runs, it was a moment of "aha" every time the musicians converged from rather diverse tracks of improvisation. Here's what we got to hear: (a) alaap, jo.D and jhaalaa in raag lalitaa-gaurii (b) compositions in Raag puuryaa dhaanashrii in vilambit teen taal and madhya/dhrut jhap taal (I must add that this was the fastest jhap taal I had ever heard -- of course, it made it easier to count, but was still numbingly fast!) (c) intermission (d) a composition in raag gu.njii kaana.Daa in vilambit tiin taal (e) alaap and expositions in chaacho.D (14-beat-cycle) and tiin taals in raag mishra shivaranjanii (again I must note, as the performance approached the rock-solo-chaos crescendo aka find-the-'sam', TNM seemed to deviate more towards the 'mishra' aspect of things, which meant that we heard strains of piilu and maa.nD.

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