Ira Landgarten
From March/April 1992 Volume 15, Number 4
The fundamental premise of Raga records is the presentation
of live recordings of Northern Indian classical music. Despite
numerous excellent recordings available from many artists, few
live recitals have been published. Considering the importance
given to spontaneity and improvisation, the recording process
can be a hindrance to the flowering of a work. Raga's philosophy
is surprisingly simple and absolutely essential in an age of vanishing
Indian musicians. Banerjee's death in 1986 helped this realization
crystallize in the mind of John Wilton, the founder. He has focused
on Banerjee's art and is responsible for the previously released
1967 radio recital (Raga 201) and the remainder of the concert
(Raga 204) heard on this box set.
It will be a new experience to those readers unaccustomed to concerts
of Indian music to absorb the breadth of a hundred-minute composition.
What one could find until now is aptly termed in the accompanying
text as "bleeding chunks": ragas in which the performer
not only had to triumph over the sterility of the studio, but
to truncate works which should be offered beyond any time limitations.
Therefore the uniqueness of this raga as explored and rendered
by the great Banerjee without constraint is not only rare as a
document, but an important experience to those wishing to Indian
classical music at its fullest.
Banerjee was a disciple of Ustad Allauddin Khan, the famed teacher
of Ravi Shankar and his own son Ali Akbar Khan who lived ten years
past his hundredth birthday and was able to play most instruments
at virtuoso level. Allauddin Khan holds a place in music as a
great innovator who combined various vocal styles and projected
his own originality into a tradition otherwise adhering rigorously
to whatever lay within its confines. Banerjee's playing is therefore
a synthesis not only of his teacher's, but a further development
of his master's playing by contributing his own insight. Allauddin
Khan forbade Banerjee to play or practice the Alap, the initial
raga section in which the sitar plays unaccompanied without a
rhythmic pulse, until he neared the completion of his rigorous
studies which lasted for some five years, during which Banerjee
practiced some fourteen hours daily (as did most of Allauddin's
pupils). His Alap style resembles that of his colleagues (Shankar,
Ali Akbar Khan) but has certain personal elements, one of which
is heard here and quite breathtaking: The entire twenty-nine-minute
alap seemed rushed with impetuous and rapidly articulated sparse
motifs of several notes. This creates considerable tension as
the raga unfolds itself within a chaos of fragments which have
an outer serene expressivity while cloaking seemingly unrelated
gestures and patterns. With the smooth transition into a rhythmic
pulse, the jor, the rhythm supports, clarifies, and resolves the
suspended array of material which took nearly half an hour to
expound. This way of establishing an arc of details into a cleverly
woven massive structure with retrospective resolutions is masterly
and something which cannot exist in an abridged format. The raga
progresses to its conclusion with the introduction of the tabla,
its final sections an increasing acceleration in tempo.
Equally fascinating and indispensable is the thirty-two page booklet
reproducing a lengthy interview with the artist in which he describes
his musical formation and approach. Along with Ravi Shankar's
autobiography, written at a time when he was introducing his music
to Western listeners, Banerjee's rare interview offers a candid
passageway into his discreet art. Raga (John Wilton) is to be
congratulated for having found a way to convey the full grandeur
of the raga in the art of Banerjee. Those readers unfamiliar with
Banerjee's playing are urged to hear each and all of his Raga
recordings; while his studio recordings were never fully satisfying
to him, the salvation of these live performances does him full
justice. Raga plans further releases of Dhrupad singing and other
North Indian masters, past and present. This writer hopes that
live performances of Allauddin Khan on the sarod or violin might
surface, offering a perspective of the guiding genius behind Banerjee
and so many other of the finest sitarists we know. Incidentally,
the quality of the recording should shame most Western classical
music engineers, whose digital equipment has yet to project the
naturalness and balance heard here. (Raga Records, P.O. Box 635,
New York, NY 10014.) -- Allan Evans