Jun 30 2023 to Jun 30 2023 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Noted musician and scholar Satyasheel Deshpande, delves into and demystifies the music of his guru Padmavibhushan Pandit Kumar Gandharva (whose centenary is ongoing) in an illustrated talk. This rich, flavourful mehfil, in Hindi with some English, will begin with a recording of Kumar Gandharva, the child prodigy, before moving on to include both speech and song that span the many facets of his musical personality and ideas as they evolved from the 1950s to 1992 when he passed away. Satyasheel Deshpande will also share anecdotes from his years with Kumar ji, who was a close friend of his father, the renowned musicologist Vamanrao Deshpande, visiting and staying at their culturally vibrant Walkeshwar home in South Mumbai along with other great musicians of the era. The evening will end with a rarely-seen video recording of Kumarji’s music. He will be accompanied by his disciple and son, the performer, teacher and archivist of Hindustani Khayal music, Srijan Deshpande on vocal support and Rupak Kharvandikar on tabla.

The two-hour presentation will attempt to cover the following themes:

Parampara: Satyasheel ji will demonstrate and discuss the traditional musical material Kumarji received, primarily from his guru BR Deodhar, but also from a number of other sources, the many gharanedar buzurgs (elders) as well as non-gharana musicians he came to be associated with through Deodhar and his school, as well as through his own relationships and independent study. This approach – of studying the tradition independently and developing one’s own aesthetics through this study is the message Kumarji transmitted to Satyasheel ji in his taleem, and this is the approach he has tried to build upon through his subsequent work with Samvaad Foundation. So there will be demonstrations here of traditional bandishes and gayaki Kumarji received and taught in turn and the diverse aesthetics they embody.

Rag-vichar: Kumarji was an inheritor of the Deodhar-Paluskar-Bhatkhande reformist lineage and was invested in bringing clarity and specificity to the raga-complex of Hindustani music. We will see through demonstrations how he did this, and how he took Deodhar’s hard-earned raga-clarity forward and imbued it with his own musical personality.

Nav-Sarjan: After recovering from his illness, Kumarji created and presented an astonishing amount of new music. We will demonstrate prominent examples from his repertoire and explore its links with tradition and delve into what he was trying to express through this work.

Gayaki: While Kumarji was widely recognised as an icon, he was also criticized for what many saw as a rejection of or a rebellion against traditional approaches to gayaki. We will explore Kumarji’s treatment of vilambit, madhyalay and drut khayal to get to the bottom of what Kumarji was trying to do differently and why.

Bhavishya: What does it mean to embrace and build upon Kumarji’s music today? As a case-study in answering this question, Satyasheelji will demonstrate a few of his own compositions that have emerged in response to the challenges his teacher placed before the world of Hindustani music, and will demonstrate how today’s musicians can take his ideas forward. And finally, we will conclude the session with a screening of a rare video from one of Kumarji’s informal baithaks.

This is the second episode of Synthesis, a multidisciplinary quarterly musical series that will present a set of fine Indian Classical musicians (Hindustani and Carnatic) who seek to create a specially contemporary resonance with their listeners by exploring and integrating a more multidisciplinary worldview into their art form and its expression. While the core Indian Classical music concert experience retains its form and aesthetic principles, the musicians hope to add layers and interfaces with intersecting ideas from other art forms.