Rabab: String Instruments Vol I
CD audio player Somjit Dasgupta
(Anad Records Pvt Ltd.
A Review by
Evolution of the Rabab and the
Sarod and other related Instruments: A Short History
Preserving
the Heritage of his Teacher
This is the second release of the new venture, Anad Records, which has pledged to produce the work of serious musicians specializing in genres or instruments that are currently away from the commercial appeal. There are two CDs are housed in a most exquisitely produced booklet that contains reprints of historically authentic medieval miniature paintings that show the playing of dhruvapadi rabab ( the Sikh Guru Nanak singing and his disciple Mardana playing the rabab), some excellent photographs of modern rababs, of its cousin the instrument called sarod, of the accompanying drum called pakhawaj and the player Somjit. A foreward by Bhai Baldeep Singh and an extensive essay on the history of the Rabab by Bharat Gupt, make this album an authentic representation about an instrument not heard that often nowadays.
Evolution of the Rabab and the Sarod and other related Instruments: A Short History
Instruments that
look like the rabab or the sarod
certainly existed in
The rabab had a distinct place in the devotional music
of
Much later the
name rudra bina
came to be used for the large fretted instrument earlier just called ‘bin’.
The rabab had gut or silk strings, two types
of bridges were used, the flat and the standing bridge or a composite bridge
having both the features. Later after the introduction of sarod, the
standing bridge was retained by rabab and the
flat bridge went out of vogue. Rabab had two
sizes, used form Punjab to
But both bin and rabab lost this function with the advent of khayal singing which required a bowed string like the sarangi to keep pace with rapid tana-work. They were thus left out to survive as solo instruments only and a good deal of innovation was done to make them diverse and versatile. Thus started the inventions of the new instruments like the sarod, sitar, surbahar, sursingaar, mayur vina and many others.
A mortal blow was inflicted on the Mughal Empire by
Nadir Shah of Persia when he invaded North India in the middle of the 18th
Century, looted Delhi, massacred most of its population and plundered the Red
Fort, the seat of the Mughal power and went back to Iran with an immense booty
of gold, precious jewels like the Kohinoor and a huge enslaved population. He
left such a terror in the minds of
According to Somjit Dasgupta, as heard from his teacher Radhika Mohan Moitra, in Jaipur, the Madhavmal tradition of biin playing was taken up by Murad Ali Khan who was given the training of biin on the sursingaar but was forbidden to play the biin as he was not a family member of the teacher Madhav Mal. Around 1830, Murad Ali khan, invented the sarod by putting a metal plate on the rabab in place of its wooden plate. As the metal strings were also now coming to replace gut strings, the metal plate provided for greater clarity of notes. The sursingaar it seems had been given a metal plate earlier and the same change in rabab turned it into the ‘sarod’. As this was not the age of microphones the gain in the volume of the sound of the instrument was a highly welcome. Somjit thinks that now with electronic amplification rabab can make a comeback.
The compositions of the rabab repertoire were earlier framed to match with Dhruvapad beat cycles or taalas and the later compositions for the rabab were called gats just as in sitar and sarod, the two instruments that rabab preceded. Earlier the stroke work or ‘bolkaari’ of the rabab was close to Dhruvapada and also emphasized with big ‘gamakas’ and strokes of the right hand and then it evolved more like the present day rhythmic patterning or ‘layakarii; By this time that is the 18th century the rabab was not used for accompanying singing and became an independent instrument. The great maestros developed the new style of ‘gatkaarii’ and bolkarii and larant. The rabab with its gut strings and wooden base without mental plate such as in sarod, can produce all the ornamentions that are played on sarod or sitar. For jhala on rabab, they use four of the main strings in place of chikari (side strings), which are used in biin or sitar playing. As a mater of fact all the present day techniques of sarod playing are inherited from the rabab.
Rabab in Colonial Days
By the end of
the 19th century the courts of Lucknow, Jaipur etc., also faced a
decline and a new patronage developed for the musicians in the ‘courts’ or
rather coteries of the Bengali zamindaars around Calcutta, the new
capital of British India.
Somjit Dasgupta points out that Radhu Babu created 43 a new instruments, such as the sarod with less height, another with a wooden chakki, another with a flat bridge only which yielded a biin type sound and hence called mohan bina played by a tar java (plectrum). The instrument was so named by the musicologist Thakur Jai Deva Singh. Radhu Babu performed on the mohan biina in many National programs broadcasted by the All Indian Radio. Somjit recalls a famous performance on the mohan bina, in which Radhika Mohan Moitra played the raag called miyan ki malhar and Karamattulla and Prem Ballabh played pakhawaj and tabla respectively. He could also play the sitar as the maestro Ustad Inayat Khan trained him for it, and that helped him create the instrument called dilbahar, a cross between sitar and surbahar. He also invented an israj type instrument called navadeepa, another called Indian banjo. His disciples play all of these even now, says Somjit. Sudeshana Baghchi gifted 57 instruments of Radhika Mohan Moitra to Somjit Dasgupta which comprise today of a rare collection which is not an archive but a living traditon, he says.
Somjit Dasgupta
Somjit Dasgupta (born1953) preserves the tradition of playing Hindustani classical music on string instruments belonging to the family of which the most popular today is the ‘sarod.’ As a musician he performs on sarod, rabab, sur-rabab, mohan vina and sursingaar, the playing techniques of which all he inherited from his late mentor and guru Shri Radhika Mohan Moitra, a famous sarod player and a foremost musician of our times.
Unlike the
majority of professional musicians, particularly instrumentalists, Somjit Dasgupta does not come
from a family of traditional musicians. He took to music entirely as his
passion at the same time training himself as a painter. As a child he was
fascinated by a large collection of musical instruments that his grandfather, a
gentleman of leisure and taste, had kept in his estate in the once called East
Bengal, then
Once moved in Kolkata, as a young man Somjit was an ardent listener at the concerts that flooded the cultural scene of Kolkata in 60s and 70s. He had began learning to pay the sitar at the age of 10 from his father and in his pursuit of music a deep emotional experience occurred when he heard Radhika Mohan Moitra give a six hour concert in Kolkata. That moment he decided to take up sarod as his instrument and if possible learn from ‘Radhu Babu’ as most people called Radhika Mohan Moitra. But to begin with Somjit tried his luck with Ali Akbar who told him that he was too busy traveling to be a regular teacher and suggested that no body more suitable for Somjit than Radhu Babu himself.
Radhika Mohan Moitra lived close to the Jadavpur University Campus in Kolkata in his sprawling bungalow, just as behooves a rich zamindar (big land owner) and had also hired another house nearby for his disciples and guests. This is where the young Somjit aged thirteen managed one day to visit and pleaded to be taken as a disciple. To his surprise Radhu Babu readily agreed, and after consulting the Panchang or the Indian astrological calendar for an auspicious day, he asked Somjit to come and start learning after 20 days during which he was supposed to find himself a sarod as well. Somjit managed to find one and the learning began at the fixed day in 1973. Somjit was exceptionally fortunate he was able to learn from scratch from Radhu Babu. For nearly all other disciples the usual course was to begin under the tutelage of a senior disciple such as Buddha Deva Dasgupta, who was regularly teaching at the Mohammad Amir Khan School of Music (an academy that Radhu Babu used to run to honor his own teacher Ustad Mohammad Amir Khan) and then graduate to learn with Radhu Babu. But Somjit from the day he began training stayed at the house of Radhu Babu. He stayed for eight years till the teacher passed away on October 15th, 1981. It was learning in the traditional system of total and constant proximity with the teacher, when not only music and the total knowledge of the teacher is absorbed by the student, but also the all the ways of feeling and understanding life and its conduct as lived by the teacher is also imbibed.
Preserving the Heritage of his Teacher
Somjit plans to project and preserve Radhu Babu’s
traditional wealth of instruments, which even has many kinds of instruments
from other rich patrons of music who had gifted them to Radhu Babu. This
includes a small sitar made around 1800 CE and another in 1900 CE both
presented by the
Somjit says that he preserves all these instruments for love and not money. Keeping the heritage for its constant living use, is his is mantra, he tells us. For the time being he not little beyond preservation but he is thinking of doing something bigger, such as a thorough restoration of all the instruments to their playing efficiency. His present financial assets and a fellowship from the Sangeet Natak Academy, Delhi are merely enough to keep them ‘in situ’, but for their display and demonstrative performances by the artists, a larger space to make a gallery would be needed. Added to this must be, he says, an archive of Radhika Mohan Moitra's recordings of the radio performances and public concerts which are very large in number and records of which are spread
All over the
world there are a large number of foreign recordings, some of which have been
digitized and kept at the
Track 1 Raga Allayia Bilaval Alap and Gat.
Track 2 Raga Gaud Sarang Alap and Gat.
Track 3 Raga
Kafi Gat
CD 2
Track 1 Raga Malkaus Alap and Gat
Track 2 Raga Bhimpalasi Alap and Gat
Somjit Dasgupta in his playing of the rabab has displayed the genuine style of his teacher Radhika Mohan Moitra . Though by and large this school follows the mainstream 20th century style of sarod (developed from the rabab playing as shown above) repertoire as it evolved from the revival of solo instrumental music, it has a special quality of systematic expansion (barhat) of the raga. Somjit has very effectively displayed the stroke-work of the plectrum (java) on the rabab (not easy to produce on a wooden surface. He has discreetly chosen his ragas as they are full of depths capable of being deeply explored by a creative player. The Bhimpalasi has been done in a special manner with lesser emphasis on pancama as is usual with the vocalist.
The album is indeed a connoisure’s delight and should certainly enrich a good listener’s collection.
(the review draws upon an interview with Somjit Dasgupta)
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