Two generations ago, North-South Indian duets were seen by traditionalists everywhere as a breach of purity. Now they have become a popular and often highly creative part of most serious musicians' repertoires, paralleling the boom in fusion. They were given an early boost when Ravi Shankar started getting himself accompanied by a South Indian mridangam and ghatam as well as the expected tabla. This wasn't just to show himself off in a new context; the sitar maestro has always been concerned to give solo space to percussionists, and the quick-fire exchanges that resulted in this expanded situation would drive audiences wild.
They still do. There's one right at the end of the present performance, a fitting conclusion to a long night's music-making. Playing at the 2006 Saptak festival in Ahmedabad, the foursome of sitar player Shahid Parvez, Carnatic flautist Shashank, and a percussionist from each of their traditions Sukhvinder Singh and Patri Satish Kumar were the evening's final act and still going strong well after midnight. It was only the second time that Shashank had played with Shahid Parvez, and it was a pretty spontaneous encounter with no rehearsal, just a discussion of the rag. But a measure of its brilliance is that they have already shared several concerts since, in the US and Europe.
Ustad Shahid Parvez belongs to the musical family that represents the Imdadkhani gharana or tradition, also known as the Etawah gharana. He is the son of the third-generation Imdadkhani maestro Ustad Aziz Khan, who initiated him into singing and tabla at the age of three. By four he had changed to sitar and was soon recognised as a prodigy. He gave his first public sitar recital at the age of eight. He has subsequently developed a style of his own, combining the gayaki (vocal) and tantrakari (instrumental) schools of playing and in the former element shows the influence of Ustad Vilayat Khan, his father's cousin. He has performed at concert halls and music festivals all around the world, and teaches workshops regularly at the Sitar School of Toronto.
Shashank was barely nine months old when he was initiated into South Indian classical music. At six, having thus far learnt only vocal music, he picked up his father's flute and played spontaneously. Since his debut performance in Australia to the upper ranks of the Carnatic music world. At twelve, he was given the opportunity to perform at the prestigious 'Sadas' concert of the Chennai Music Academy. The Indian Express described this young boy as "Man of the Season" among the hundreds who performed for the music season of 1990-91. With his array of talents, Shashank has enthralled audiences internationally. He has performed at the President's residence in New Delhi, at UNESCO in Paris and in Fukuoka Hall, Japan, and he has made around thirty CD albums and two DVDs of live concerts.
Over the years he has evolved a concert pattern that draws in features of North Indian and South Indian classical styles, and he prefers to call himself an Indian classical flautist.To his credit are several ingenious and, for the listener, dazzling technical innovations. They include a dual octave technique which produces one octave after the other in quick succession or simultaneously and there's a fine example on this recording. Over the past two decades he has devised hollow effects, faster phrases with deep ornamentation similar to a human voice, slides and other tonguing techniques, and he continues to work on further developments. He also pursues North Indian vocal music following the legendary singer Pt. Jasraj.
Sukhvinder Singh, universally known 'in the trade' as Pinky, is a familiar figure in both Indian and UK circles, born in Punjab and now basing himself in both New Delhi and Birmingham. He gave his first major public performance in Mumbai and later in the same year, 1978, he became a disciple of tabla maestro Pandit Kishan Maharaj, doyen of the Banaras gharana. He has performed with Amjad Ali Khan, Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasia, and Pt. Jasraj. He has also been a featured soloist with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
Patri Satish Kumar was initiated to the art of Carnatic music by his mother, the late Padmavathi, a former lecturer at the Govt. Women's College, Vizianagaram. He learnt mridangam playing from Sreeramachandra Murthy, Appalaswamy and Venkayala Narasimham. Equally proficient in mridangam and kanjira, Satish has performed with many senior artists. He is known for spontaneity, fine artistry and deft fingering.
The format of this performance is North Indian, with extended alap and jor sections for the melody instruments in duet, followed by a long gat introducing the percussionists to accompany them, and finally the percussion duet. Clearly, however, the spirit is exploratory and often playful, each player interpreting according to his own tradition and experience and, beyond that, striking sparks off each other's invention and virtuosity to a degree that is unusual even in a musical culture that has improvisation at its heart. It is based on Rag Kalyani, a variant of Yaman, which is intended for the early part of the night and often associated with a feeling of grandeur here translated into a massive range of expression from the calmest of unfoldings to the most breathtaking of sprints.
It begins with an alap of quiet, languid perfection, taking all the time it needs to introduce each step of the melodic line. There is a slightly teasing manner about the sitar's first phrases, balanced by sustained notes when the flute takes over. Gradually Shashank's very fluid, seamless style asserts itself without raising the tension or turning up the volume, and indeed Shahid Parvez arrives at the upper octave pianissimo - a hushed presentation of what is often played as a moment of triumph. Once a pulse gets going, the music begins to develop more eventfully with energetic ideas from flute and an incisive, loquacious sitar. Each in turn draws applause in a passage of anything- you-can-do-I-can-do-better rivalry, capped by Shashank's octave playing which culminates in high-speed duets with himself.
The ensuing gat introduces a short composition, its dominant feature a descending phrase of five notes, and brings in mridangam to accompany flute and tabla to accompany sitar, so that the music proceeds like intercut sections of Carnatic and Hindustani pieces, with percussion handing the pulse over each time. The rhythmic cycle of sixteen beats (North), or twice eight (South), can be called teental-adital. Gradually the solos become longer; then shorter again (track 2) as the pace hots up, leading to a freely imitative 'question-answer' passage between pairs of instruments and a simultaneous jam session with both percussionists going flat out (track3). This bout of extreme sustained virtuosity ends with a shared threefold tihai-style cadence of thrilling complexity and a conclusive return to the composition.
Now for the final track it's over to the percussionists alone, with flamboyant alternating solos again in teental-adital, then a section of progressively halving phrase lengths done with subtle, non-literal and often witty imitation, and finally a burst of simultaneous display rounded off with a fetching little afterthought for all four musicians.
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