India Currents, July 1991
Sitar great Nikhil Banerjee disliked being recorded. He felt that
the process distracted and somewhat compromised the inner meditative
quality of his music. "I think when any musician is recording
he becomes self-conscious and he cannot give his best," he
said.
Although he made many studio recordings before his untimely death
in 1986, few recordings of his live concerts exist. Aficionados
say that his leisurely majestic development of ragas in a concert
setting was unsurpassed.
This live recording from Raga Records, third in a series, fills
this musical void. It features the second half of a 1982 concert
at UC Berkeley in which Banerjee plays Raga Misra Kafi (The first
half is available on Raga-207). He is accompanied on tabla by
Swapan Chaudhuri, resident tabla master at Ali Akbar College of
Music in San Rafael.
Kafi is a midnight raga; its scale corresponds to the minor scale
in Western music. The misra (mixed) means that the raga is not
pure, that one will hear glimpses of other ragas as well.
The recording opens with a leisurely alap in which the artist
develops structure of the raga and its mood. The gat is set in
slow rupak tal, a rhythm cycle of seven beats. The tal has a theka,
a characteristic series of drum strokes that goes like: tin tin
na, dhin na, dhin na, with a flat sound for the first three beats
and a deep whoomp sound on the fourth and sixth beats.
The last two gats are both set to teental, a rhythm cycle of 16
beats which start off slow and pick up speed towards the end.
This recording shows what an outstanding musician Banerjee was.
When it came to music he was completely uncompromising. He did
not play for the sake of entertaining others. He wanted to communicate
with the world in a deep and profound way.
The two musicians who influenced him most were Allauddin Khan
and Ali Akbar Khan. Banerjee spent five years in strict training
with Allauddin Khan. "What is interesting is that Baba (Allauddin
Khan) played many instruments but sitar was not one of them."
said Banerjee. "Mostly his way of teaching was singing. He
used to sing and we used to follow."
Those songs are still coming our way. I never had the chance to
hear Nikhil Banerjee live and for me this recording is invaluable.
Originally mastered in analog it has been transferred to digital
from the original master tape and it shines in sound quality and
musical content.
© 1991 India Currents
Raga 204 page \\||//
Reviews \\||// Raga
CD-207 page \\||// Nikhil
Banerjee