Thursday, February 21, 2013

Dhrupad - Raag Darbari - Pt. Prem Kumar, Pt. Nishant Mallick & Bhakta Raj Bhosle

(By my Brother)

This short video was taken in Nanded, India. The event was called "Sacred Music at Shankarrao Chavan Auditorium" and was taken on Friday 26th September 2008.

A Dharbanga Dhrupad Gharana performance by Pandit Prem Kumar (Pakhawaj) and Pandit Nishant Mallick & Bhakta Raj Bhosle. This is Raag Darbari as well as others.


Dhrupad is the oldest surviving style of music in the Hindustani musical tradition in India. Like all Indian classical music, dhrupad is modal, with a single melodic line and no harmonic parts. The modes are called raga, and each raga is a complicated framework of melodic rules. What sets dhrupad apart from other styles are long elaborate alapas without drum accompaniment, with a slow and deliberate melodic development, gradually developing an accelerating rhythmic pulse.

The Mallick Family is the leading representative of the court music tradition of Darbhanga, a former state in the north-eastern corner of India, close to the Nepalese border. They retrace their line to the singers Radhakrishna and Kartaram, who appeared at the court around 1790 and made a name for themselves by averting a drought through the singing of the magical rain Raga Megh. As a result, the Maharaja of Darbhanga granted them the title Mallick - landowner - and conferred to them two villages and the surrounding landed property, where the family lives up to the present day. They served at the court up to the closing down of the state in 1947. In 1991, after the death of Ram Chatur Mallick, the last actual court singer, he and his son Bidur Mallick were the senior musicians in the family.

The Mallicks are famous all over India for a very rhythmically elaborated interpretation of Dhrupad - a style which is virtually unknown in the West. Except for old Dhrupad and Dhamar compositions - of which they possess an unparalleled stock - they are also known for their exposition of Khyal, Taranas, Ghazals, Bhajans and songs of the medieval poet Vidyapati in Thumri style.

In Europe, they appeared first in 1983, at a European Dhrupad Festival organized for the Berlin International Institute for Traditional Music by world music specialist Peter Pannke, who has lived with the Mallick family in India for many years. In 1992, he invited them again for the Parampara! Festival in Berlin, where they were performing together in the Tutti Shruti Orchestra. The 1993 European tour climaxed in the opening concert of the New Jazz Festival Moers, in 1994 they appeared at the legendary BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London.
 

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