Sursangat presents mélange of offbeat raags

Nagpur: Classical music event Sursangat regaled the audience on Saturday evening with a fine mix of offbeat raags. Organized by Mehfil and Chitnavis Centre, the event featured four classical vocalists, two from the city and one each from Chandrapur and Amravati.
Organized in memory of Sushila Kalyanpurkar, the programme began with a silent tribute to city’s famous vocalist Appasaheb Indurkar who passed away recently.

The stage at the Tamarind Hall was a bit crowded with two tabla artists, four vocalists and an accompanist on harmonium. The evening began with the rendition of raag Marwah by Shyam Gundawar, who hails from Mul in Chandrapur. He has learnt from doyens of Hindustani classical music like Pt CR Vyas. He presented two bandish in madhya lay ‘Pran piya tum kaise’ and one of his own composition ‘Tumhare gun kaise karoo gananayak’. Later in the evening Gundawar also presented two more compositions in raag Hanswadhwani.

The second presentation was by Meera Navsalkar Pahurkar, a faculty member of music department at a college in Amravati. She began with a rendition of raag Sampooran Poorva, which has glimpses of raag Poorvi, Marwaha and Gauri but is different in structure from Poorvi. Meera who has influence of Agra gharana in her gayaaki, presented a bandish ‘Chatur sughad chanchal’ which was intricate. She later picked up another difficult raag Kamod Nat which has been popularized by the singers of Jaipur gharana.

The third performance was by Vinod Wakhare who belongs to the city. A disciple of Appasaheb Indurkar, at present he is also learning from Pt Rajan and Pt Sajan Mishra. Wakhare’s presentation of a bandish in raag Gaouti ‘Lao ri lao malaniya’ was a popular composition of Benaras gharana. He selected raag Bihagra, which is popular in Punjab and is part of the Guru Granth Sahib.

Also sharing stage with the three vocalists was Sadhana Shiledar, a faculty member of department of music at Morris College. Her first presentation was in raag Anoop which has been developed by Kumar Gandharv. “It is a raag based on folk tunes and was discovered by Kumarji from the folk songs sung in the region of Malwa,” she said.

Both the bandish ‘Kyon bhayo dil run udhas’ and ‘Jharat mor ankhiya’ expressed pangs of separation. Shiledar later also presented another composition of Kumar Gandharav in raag Bageshwari, ‘Tesul rang phooley’ which she said used the pancham swar in different ways.

All the raags presented were evening and night melodies, said Dinkar Kukade, organizer of Mehfil. “The artists were all from Vidarbha and they presented raags which are special to different gharanas,” he added. Mehfil has been organizing these musical events since 1964.