Side 1:
1. Raga Abhogi Kanada (Surbahar) (10:08)
2. Raga Kalawati (Sitar) (9:54)
Side 2:
1. Raga Desh - Vilambit (Sitar) (14:53)
2. Raga Desh - Drut (Sitar) (4:56)
Showing posts with label Raga Desh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raga Desh. Show all posts
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Mohammed Sharif Khan Poonch Wala on Vichitra Veena and Raza Been (Rudra Veena) - EMCP-5041 (1976) - LP from Pakistan
The legendary Sitar player Mohammad Sharif Khan Poonchhwala (1923-1980) was also a great Vichitra Veena player and a Raza Been (Rudra Veena) player. Here a wonderful LP by the Ustad playing these two instruments. Sitar he learned from his father Ustad Rahim Bakhsh Khan, who himself was a student of Ustad Imdad Khan. The Vichitra Veena he learned from Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan Beenkar.
Tabla: Shaukat Hussain Khan
Side 1:
1. Raag Mian Ki Todi on Vichitra Veena (12:39)
2. Raag Dais (Desh) on Raza Been (12:28)
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Side 2:
1. Raag Jay Jay Wanti on Vichitra Veena (11:32)
2. Raag Bairveen on Vichitra Veena (12:41)
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Musical lineage
Ustad Sharif Khan died on May 26 in 1980 and his 32nd barsi went unnoticed among the music circles of the country
By Sarwat Ali
By Sarwat Ali
Traditionally barsis are held to honour the memory of the ustad and provide an opportunity for other musicians to express their homage. And what better way can there be of paying a tribute than in the language of music. Barsis over the centuries have become the biggest platform for performance and recognition of the significance of music lineage.
These barsis ideally should be organised by the shagirds and the connoisseurs of music and then made into a regular affair through some systematic arrangement but it has been seen that the onus of celebrating/observing these barsis falls on the progeny of the ustad. If the progeny is enterprising and has done well in life the level of the barsi programme is reasonably high and the occasion holds some promise. But if it has not fared well then the barsi is either never held or if held fizzles out to such a sorry end that one wished that it had never been held in the first place.
Not only in the case of musicians but the other celebrated individuals, writers, poets or public figures, the barsis are usually held by the progeny or extended family of the individual. The progeny is in a certain fix in this arrangement, for if the family is involved it exposes itself to all kinds of accusations and possible slander like capitalising on the fame of an ancestor for enhancing its own status and glorifying the lineage. But if they do not venture forward then no one else does and the society is deprived of the positive fallout of the event.
The immediate family of Sharif Khan lives in Lahore but the only child who made a name for himself in sitar playing Ashraf Sharif Khan moved to Germany where he has lived now for more than 15 years. He occasionally visits Pakistan to meet his family and to possibly play at a couple of concerts in the various cities of the country. When he lived in Pakistan he was able to motivate a few connoisseurs of music and admirers of Ustad Sharif Khan to organise some event to remember and honour his father’s contribution to the sitar and vichitra veena but since he moved out of the country the annual event is now more conspicuous by it not being held.
Ustad Sharif Khan was born in Hissar which is now in Haryana, probably in the third decade of the 20th century and after dabbling with the tabla and harmonium became a musician at the court of the Maharaja of Poonch. He followed the path treaded by his father Ustad Rahim Bakhsh Khan who too was associated with the state of Poonch, and according to some was the ustad of the maharaja himself.
A virtuoso himself, Ustad Rahim Khan was from a family of vocalists but had switched to the string instruments and became an outstanding instrumentalist under the tutelage of Ustad Imdad Khan, the grandfather of Ustad Vilayat Khan. Ustad Sharif Khan himself became the shagird of Ustad Inayat Khan, the son of Imdad Khan and hence the father of Ustad Vilayat Khan.
For Ustad Sharif Khan, the going was much tougher in Pakistan. He had established himself as a sitar player before partition but the lukewarm response and lack of appreciation of classical music made him look for other avenues to meet both ends. The film was the only platform that could pay him enough to survive and thus continue with his passion of exploring the musical range of both the sitar and veena. He was initially associated with Pandit Amarnath and after partition he found creative affinity with Khurshid Anwar and for whom he played the sitar and veena in his numerous compositions.
Ustad Sharif Khan spent long hours mastering the very difficult art of playing the veena. Nobody in his family was a veena player but when he was taunted by the nephew of Ustad Abdul Aziz Beenkar that it was almost impossible to play the vichitra veena he took it up as a challenge. The balance of both the hands and the technique to be applied had immense differences in the art of playing the two instruments but he switched from the one to the other with seeming ease. The graces in particular the meends so characteristics of the veena found their way when he took to playing the sitar seriously. These meends on the sitar expanded the musical possibilities inherent in the instruments. It can be said without fear of contradiction that no other sitar player has been able to achieve it.
Though he was given the Pride of Performance and Sitara-e-Imtiaz it was difficult for him to keep two ends meet. He really had to struggle hard and it was at the cost of his health. In most of the recordings he could not hold back his coughing and it also got recorded with his priceless music. Struggling to keep economically solvent in a society with only a qualified acceptance of music cost him dearly and he died in 1980 at the prime of his creative life.
These barsis ideally should be organised by the shagirds and the connoisseurs of music and then made into a regular affair through some systematic arrangement but it has been seen that the onus of celebrating/observing these barsis falls on the progeny of the ustad. If the progeny is enterprising and has done well in life the level of the barsi programme is reasonably high and the occasion holds some promise. But if it has not fared well then the barsi is either never held or if held fizzles out to such a sorry end that one wished that it had never been held in the first place.
Not only in the case of musicians but the other celebrated individuals, writers, poets or public figures, the barsis are usually held by the progeny or extended family of the individual. The progeny is in a certain fix in this arrangement, for if the family is involved it exposes itself to all kinds of accusations and possible slander like capitalising on the fame of an ancestor for enhancing its own status and glorifying the lineage. But if they do not venture forward then no one else does and the society is deprived of the positive fallout of the event.
The immediate family of Sharif Khan lives in Lahore but the only child who made a name for himself in sitar playing Ashraf Sharif Khan moved to Germany where he has lived now for more than 15 years. He occasionally visits Pakistan to meet his family and to possibly play at a couple of concerts in the various cities of the country. When he lived in Pakistan he was able to motivate a few connoisseurs of music and admirers of Ustad Sharif Khan to organise some event to remember and honour his father’s contribution to the sitar and vichitra veena but since he moved out of the country the annual event is now more conspicuous by it not being held.
Ustad Sharif Khan was born in Hissar which is now in Haryana, probably in the third decade of the 20th century and after dabbling with the tabla and harmonium became a musician at the court of the Maharaja of Poonch. He followed the path treaded by his father Ustad Rahim Bakhsh Khan who too was associated with the state of Poonch, and according to some was the ustad of the maharaja himself.
A virtuoso himself, Ustad Rahim Khan was from a family of vocalists but had switched to the string instruments and became an outstanding instrumentalist under the tutelage of Ustad Imdad Khan, the grandfather of Ustad Vilayat Khan. Ustad Sharif Khan himself became the shagird of Ustad Inayat Khan, the son of Imdad Khan and hence the father of Ustad Vilayat Khan.
For Ustad Sharif Khan, the going was much tougher in Pakistan. He had established himself as a sitar player before partition but the lukewarm response and lack of appreciation of classical music made him look for other avenues to meet both ends. The film was the only platform that could pay him enough to survive and thus continue with his passion of exploring the musical range of both the sitar and veena. He was initially associated with Pandit Amarnath and after partition he found creative affinity with Khurshid Anwar and for whom he played the sitar and veena in his numerous compositions.
Ustad Sharif Khan spent long hours mastering the very difficult art of playing the veena. Nobody in his family was a veena player but when he was taunted by the nephew of Ustad Abdul Aziz Beenkar that it was almost impossible to play the vichitra veena he took it up as a challenge. The balance of both the hands and the technique to be applied had immense differences in the art of playing the two instruments but he switched from the one to the other with seeming ease. The graces in particular the meends so characteristics of the veena found their way when he took to playing the sitar seriously. These meends on the sitar expanded the musical possibilities inherent in the instruments. It can be said without fear of contradiction that no other sitar player has been able to achieve it.
Though he was given the Pride of Performance and Sitara-e-Imtiaz it was difficult for him to keep two ends meet. He really had to struggle hard and it was at the cost of his health. In most of the recordings he could not hold back his coughing and it also got recorded with his priceless music. Struggling to keep economically solvent in a society with only a qualified acceptance of music cost him dearly and he died in 1980 at the prime of his creative life.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Sitar legend Ustad Shamim Ahmed Khan (1938-2012) passed away on Feb 14, 2012 - In his memory: Shamim Ahmed presents Soulful Melodies on Sitar, LP published in 1979
Shamim Ahmed - Sitar
Latif (Ahmed) Khan - Tabla
LP Philips (India) 6405 644 (1979)
Side 1:
1. Raga Ahir Bhairav (12:55)
2. Dhun Mishra Khamaj (7:48)
Side 2:
Raga Desh (21:13)
Download
“Shamim Ahmed Khan: Sitar player taught by Shankar
Shamim Ahmed Khan was one of the most eloquent sitar players of his generation and scion of a family of hereditary Hindustani classical musicians which upheld and advanced a gharana, meaning a school or style of music-making, historically generally associated with a specific geographical seat, in this case the Agra Gharana. Agra would figure largely in his musical destiny, and bring him to the attention of his life-long guru, Ravi Shankar.
Shamim Ahmed, as he was called on his early recordings, was born in 1938 in Baroda – nowadays Vadodara in Gujarat – into a family of noted Hindustani classical vocalists. From early boyhood he was instructed in classical singing by his father, an esteemed vocalist and composer. While visiting Agra he caught typhoid fever; when he recovered his vocal range had gone. He took up sitar – he recalled how he would walk to his friend's house over three miles away "to play the sitar on one pretext or the other."
He was enrolled at the Baroda Music College, and first met his future guru in 1951. "It was at a music conference in Ahmedabad," he recalled in 1995. "It was my grand-uncle [the noted classical vocalist] Ustad Faiyaz Khan's first death anniversary. Later I met Ravi Shankar with my father Ustad Ghulam Rasool Khan, who told him of my interest in music." In December 1955, in Delhi for a music competition organised by All India Radio, he met Shankar once again, and played for him.
Shankar invited him and his father to his Delhi home. The next day they underwent the ganda-bandan ceremony – the thread-tying ritual that symbolically binds guru to shishya (student-disciple) – in December 1955, making him one of Shankar's earliest pupils. From then until 1958 he would make the 1000-kilometre journey from Baroda to Delhi by train in order to study. In addition to ordinary lessons, intensive practice periods sometimes lasted five or six hours. Honouring the guru-shishya tradition, Shankar provided his shishyas with accommodation, victuals and necessities without asking for recompense, even after Shamim Ahmed was awarded a Government of India musical scholarship in 1958.
In 1960 Shankar relocated to Bombay and Shamim joined him there as a teacher at his Kinnara School of Music. On the brink of international success, Shankar moved to California and shortly afterwards invited his valuable asset to Los Angeles.
A new chapter began. He was on hand to support Alla Rakha, Shankar's tabla virtuoso, on his jointly billed Rich á la Rakha (1968) with the American jazz drummer Buddy Rich. At the age of 29 he also made his US solo recording debut, Monitor Presents India's Great For Three Ragas – for Monitor, reissued by Smithsonian Folkways Archival in 2007 – with Alla Rakha's son Zakir Hussain as his tabla accompanist.
Shamim Ahmed had a sweet, full-throated voice on the sitar, very similar to his guru's. He recorded as a principal soloist for a variety of record labels across the world. Recommended listening might include his sitar-sarod duet with Aashish Khan on Ravi Shankar's Festival From India (1968) and the UK-based Navras label's Sitar Maestro (1998). He was one of a select band of Shankar disciples, including Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Manju Mehta, Kartik Seshadri, Barry Phillips, Partho Sarathy, Anoushka Shankar and Lakshmi Shankar, on the triple-CD ShankaRagamala – A Celebration of the Maestro's Music by his Disciples (2005); his interpretation of "Janasanmodini" on that garland of Shankar raga compositions, is a glory.
In person Shamim Ahmed was an extremely modest and humble man. After one recital we chatted; quietly, without being pushy, he asked me if, when I next spoke to his guru, I would give him an honest account of how he had played. He defined Shankar's character in three words – "discipline, devotion and compassion". That description applied equally to Shamim Ahmed Khan.
Shamim Ahmed Khan, sitarist and composer: born Baroda, Baroda State (now Gujarat), India 10 September 1938; died Mumbai, Maharashtra 14 February 2012.”
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