In its aim to contribute to the dissemination, understanding and enjoyment of classical music from India, the Musical Bridges project, developed at the Music Technology Group from Universitat Pompeu Fabra with the support of Recercaixa, organized an event dedicated to this music tradition, taking advantage of the visit to Barcelona of the young Indian tablā virtuoso Amit Mishra. This event, carried out at the Poblenou Campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, had as its main activity a concert of Hindustani classical music offered by Amit Mishra with the collaboration of Ninad Puranik in the harmonium and Venkatesh Shenoy Kadandale in the bansurī. The concert was preceded by an introductory talk to this tradition, in which the concepts of rāg and tāl, essential in this musical practice, were presented, with the purpose of easing the understanding and appreciation of the concert to the audience not familiar with this music.

Below is a short description of the two activities that formed this event dedicated to Hindustani classical music, as well as the video of each session. The audio in both videos was recorded by technicians from Phonos.

Introduction to Hindustani Classical Music: The concepts of rāg and tāl

Rāg and tāl are the two essential elements that inform every piece of Hindustani classical music, and therefore, knowing these two concepts is fundamental to be able to understand, and maybe better appreciate, the interpretation of this music tradition. With the purpose of easing the understanding of these two concepts to the audience not familiarized with this music, Rafael Caro Repetto, researcher from the Musical Bridges project, offered an introductory talk to these musical principles. Firstly, and with the help of one of the computational tools developed in this project for its study, Caro presented the concept of tāl, illustrated with tīntāl as example. Besides the visual support of the computational tool, Caro invited Amit Mishra to illustrate in the tablā the explained concepts, encouraging the audience to follow the tāl development with the traditional hand gestures. Mishra also briefly demonstrated the performance style of different tablā gharānās. Then, Caro introduced the concept of rāg. In this occasion he invited Venkatesh Shenoy Kadandale to illustrate in the bansurī the rāgs that were later performed at the concert, namely jog and bhairavī. To guide the audience's attention, Caro used a computational tool specifically developed for this event, in which upon the scale of the selected rāg a cursor moves according to the live performance by Kadandale, thus showing the evolution of the melody through the different svars of the rāg. The participants to the talk had the opportunity to experience both rāgs as well as tīntāl in the following concert.

Hindustani classical music concert, ft. Amit Mishra

Amit Mishra (http://amitmishratabla.com), the young Indian tablā virtuoso and one of the main exponents of Banaras gharānā (or performance lineage), visited Barcelona at mid-May 2019 to offer a series of concerts, including the one that took place within the event dedicated to Hindustani classical music, here presented. Originally, Mishra was supposed to be accompanied in his visit by the young and acclaimed bansurī performer Bhaskar Das, whose participation in this concert was announced. Unfortunately, some last minute problems preventing him from traveling. Luckily, two researchers from the Music Technology Group, and at the same time experienced performers of Hindustani classical music, namely, Ninad Puranik and Venkatesh Shenoy Kadandale, volunteered to accompany Mishra in order to offer the concert here presented. (In the description of the video linked below there are short bios of the musicians available).

The first piece was a tablā solo in tīntāl by Amit Mishra, accompanied in the harmonium by Ninad Puranik. This kind of works consists in improvisations by the tablā performer upon the chosen tāl in an ever increasing tempo, accompanied by an instrument, in this case the harmonium played by Ninad Puranik, which keeps a melodic basis fixed to the tāl. During his performance, Mishra took tīntāl to its expressive limits, reaching vertiginous heights of virtuosity, even causing some troubles to Puranik. Mishra took the opportunity for introducing some characteristics elements of the performance style of Banaras gharānā.

Next, Amit Mishra in the tablā and Venkatesh Shenoy Kadandale in the bansurī performed a couple of pieces, first in rāg jog, and then in rāg bhairavī. The first piece started with a long bansurī solo by Kadandale according to the form ālāp-joḍ-jhālā. In the first section of this form, ālāp, the performer presents the rāg in a rhythmically free manner. In the following sections, joḍ and jhālā, the exploration of the rāg is done more rhythmically, with the appearance of an increasingly marked and fast pulsation, thus imitating, as Kadandale himself explained, the performance style of plucked string instruments. After the presentation of the rāg, Kadandale started a bandiś, that is, a composition with a specific tāl, in this case, tīntāl, and therefore performed by both the bansurī and the tablā. Being originally a song, the bansurī now tries to imitate the style of vocal performance. Once the composition was presented, both musicians developed the rāg and the tāl through improvisations. Mishra clearly showcased his long experience and deep knowledge of this music tradition, complementing Kadandale's melody with elaborated rhythmic motives. To conclude the concert, both musicians performed a dhun, a brief instrumental piece of light character, rāg bhairavī and dādrā tāl. After the brief ālāp, Mishra offered a glimpse of his early training as a singer, singing some phrases in that rāg. For the performance of the dhun, Kadandale used a version of rāg bhairavī known as rāg miśra bhairavī, in which the twelve svars of the octave are used.

Both parts of the concert were warmly received by the more than 50 members of the audience.

This activity was organized with the support of RecerCaixa, a program from Obra Social ”la Caixa” in collaboration with ACUP, and with the technical support of Phonos.