Song Of The Universe

Aloke Das gupta deftly composes himself in a crosslegged position on the floor. His compact body radiates a disciplined energy that under other circumstances might have led him into ballet or gymnastics. A long-necked, bulbous tamboura and a sitar of rich, brown, polished gourd are arranged carefully around him.

Dasgupta leans forward slightly and places his outstretched fingers carefully on the sitar. "The human ear can hear sounds only within a certain range. Beyond that range, the universe is full of music that the ear cannot hear. For an Indian musician, one of the goals of playing is to hear that universal song. After many years of practice, I can just now begin to hear that music. When I am very still and quiet, I can hold the sound in my mind for just a moment. As I play more, I will be able to hold it longer. The music is a kind of meditation."

Over cups of tea, the thirty-one-year-old dasgupta explains his instrument—the sitar—and the music he has studied much of his life in the traditional manner, as a student of master players, most notably Ali Akbar Khan.

" 'Raga' means 'color,' " he says of the musical form most closely associated with the sitar. "The musician creates a particular color in his playing, and the audience feels that and responds." With a sweep of his hand outward from his heart toward an imaginary audience, he clearly indicates that the color is emotional.

Ragas are carefully structured songs with thousands of years of tradition and strict rules for their performance and selection. In describing the performance, Dasgupta uses jazz as a good piont of reference for Western listeners. Each song is based on a sequence of notes developed first by the sitar in a slow prelude. The tabla player listens attentively as the rhythm and melody evolve from a single dominant note into the full statement of the song. After a brief pause, the sitar and tabla begin their improvisation with the tambour establishing a neutral background, a painter's canvas, against which they can play. The tabla reflects and embellishes the lead set by the sitar within strict rhythmic counts. As the pace of the music accelerates, the musicians diverge on their own musical flights and then converge repeatedly at points within the song. What is called improvisation is really a continuous series of choices made throughout the performance. Each player selects from among the thousands of traditionally prescribed patterns of notes, rhythms, and ornaments learned in his studies and incorporates them into the songs as he plays. As to the selection of the ragas to be performed, Dasgupta explains that appropriateness is the key. Each raga reflects a specific time of day of season and a particular emotion. It is unthinkable, for instance, to play a morning raga in the evening. Dasgupta confirms the curious but logical result of that rule: since most Westerners hear ragas in evening concerts it is unlikely that the average audience has ever heard a morning or a midday song.

This strict tradition of appropriateness and the legendary power of ragas is well understood by Indian audiences. Dasgupta illustrates this with an example from a historical analysis of the raj. The British established themselves in India and took up Indian culture with considerable gusto but minimal understanding of this very Eastern way of life. The Indian people were amazed, then, when they began to hear their fiery noontime ragas being played at night, or the voluptuous evening ragas in the midday heat. This kind of meddling with the universal order, the native population assumed, could only bring misfortune on so careless a group. World War II and the eventual dissolution of the raj, apparently, were the consequences of just such a disregard for the natural flow of things.

Aloke Dasgupta will perform a concert of ragas and music based on Sufi folk tunes Saturday, June 28, in La Jolla. He will be accompanied on tabla by Swapan Choudhuri, an internationally known performer who has toured with Ali Akbar Kahn and Ravi Shankar.

Dasgupta has performed worldwide and made his American debut at Lincoln Center. He is now a full-time resident of San Diego where he teaches the complex art of the sitar.

One facet of Dasgupta's personality and one benefit of his well-trained musicianship will probably not be in evidence on Saturday. His ear would seem to be tuned not only to the music of the universe but to the music of the American regional accent. He can take a listener on a tour of American dialect in his stories about the travels in his six years in the United States. He admits he studied English by watching television; and in the fine tradition of master and disciple, he selected a mentor to emulate. The mentor? His voice lowers, he drops his chin on his chest, and says in perfect imitation, "Walter Cronkite."

Saturday's concert is sponsored by the Center for World Music and opens with Indian vocal music by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Aloke's wife. The concert is Saturday, June 28, 8:00 p.m., at Parker Auditorium, La Jolla High School, 750 Nautilus Street, La Jolla. For further information, call 265-4243. —Linda M. Nevin

VOLUME 15, NO 27 JULY, 1996 SAN DIEGO'S WEEKLY

QUARTER NUTES

BY JONATHAN SAVILLE

ALOKE DASGUPTA

San Diego State's Centre for World Music sponsored an exciting if not fully satisfying concert of Indian classical music at La Jolla's Parker Auditorium last week. The artists were sitarist Aloke Dasgupta. Aloke Dasgupta is a student of the great sarod player, Ali Akbar Khan. He has performed extensively in India, the United States, and Europe, has taken a master's degree in ethnomusicology at San Diego, the Raga Ranjini School of Music. Chaudhuri, who lives in San Rafael and teaches tabla at the Ali Akbar College of Music there (California has, curiously, become one of the important teaching centers for Indian music), has been heard in this country and elsewhere with Ali Akbar Khan and sitarist Ravi Shankar, among others.

With musicians of this caliber, it was only to be expected that the audience would be treated to exceptional playing. Mr. Dasgupta is a musician of brilliant technique, great imagination, and (at times) an engaging playfulness. Mr. Chaudhuri's command of the tabla is equally brilliant. Sanjukta Dasgupta, who performed an allegorical love song and a devotional song, has the characteristic dry sound and nasall quality of Indian singers, but with an extraordinary subtlety of shading and phrasing. She was accompanied by Mr. Chaudhuri (along with drone instruments), and the sitarist and tabla player offered an evening raga to begin with and a set of shorter pieces at the end of the program.

The classical Indian raga is a series of improvisations on a specific scale (in the case of the opening piece, C: D-flat: E: F-sharp: G: A-flat: B).

In a recent article on the structural problems of modern music, I pointed out that the key-system in Western music has provided the basis for the large-scale instrumental forms brought to such formal and expressive perfection by the masters of the classical and romantic styles: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorad, Mahler, and Strauss. In the works of these compposers, musical discourse can be sustained at great length by the principle of establishing a key center, moving away from it, and finally returing to it and reaffirming it. Such a structure is inherently dramatic, to the point of following the exile-and-return pattern of narrative romances (such as The odyssey). Even without any explicit programmatic indications, this structure calls up ideas of conflict and resolution. It creates local tensions by brief excursions outside the territory of the tonic keys into its closely related keys, and great, overarching tensions by its journeys into ever more remote keys, with a tremendous dramatic build-up of pressure to return home. Even simple melodies in this traditioin make use of its innate dramatic quality.

The Indian raga, in contrast, has a powerfully asserted tonal center but no real sense of key or key relationships. It explores the possibilities of the given scale with great thoroughness and inventiveness, but the tonal center is never replaced, even tempporarily, by some other tonal center with which it would be in tension. There is never an exile and consequently no dramatic tension about ovecoming exile and returning home. Indeed, this music is not basically dramatic at all. Its mode of existence is not the struggle of combatants, the conflict of diverse impulses, as in drama, but rather the progressively more ecstatic expression of the same state of mind (the scale), the lyrical outpouring of the self not in conflict with other selves but in conflict with other selves but in aspiration toward the divinity. As it moves through its successive sections—the opening, meditative alap, the more motoric jor, in which the rhythm instrument (the small, pitched tabla drums), first joins the melody instrument (for example, the many-stringed sitar that Mr. Dasgupta plays); the coruscating jhala with which the piece rushes joyously to its conclusion — in this movement, the soul is stirred to rise above itself, to becone one with the divine forces of the universe, to break the bonds of earth, to achieve transcendence, yet without ever moving from its place. This, then, is another way of sustaining a long instrumental piece — not human-centered, not an experience of harmonic tension and resolution but one of increasing tensiion, through ever faster tempos and ever more elaborate melodic and rhythmic improvisations, until the listener feels taken out of himself, propelled by the musilcal energy into a higher state of being. A well-performed raga addresses quite a different area of human experience from that addressed by a Mozart symphony, though with comparable power and beauty.

For this music to attain its full spiritual effect, therefore, it must occupy a considerable amount of time. A raga ought to be long, very long, for in it one experiences all the stages of the soul's movement toward God, from the first confused awakening to the transcendent union. On the program at Parker Auditorium the other night, only the first raga had anything like the scope required for it to make its point, and even it would have benefited from some uninhibited prolongation. The pieces in the final section of the program, while they demonstrated the great skills of the performers and were filled with intensely exciting moments, seemed like a series of unfulfilled fragments.

This general tendency toward truncation and fragmentation, presumably promoted as making the music more accessible to a Western audience, not only deprived sifnificant sectors of the audience of the sort of experience only a lengthy, sustained, brilliantly performed raga can give but also semed to make for difficulties in the musical relationship between the sitarist and the tabla player. The interplay between the two instrumentalists

— musical, human, spiritual—constitutes one of the glories of this music.

As they respond to each other's ideas,as they echo, imitate, challenge, support, and reinforce each other, they demonstrate the harmonious blending of diverse selves, the merger of the many into the one, that provides the fundamental meaning of the music. When the musicians know each other's styles well, when they have a long enough period within the piece to perceive each other's state of mind and to absorb, as though they were their own, the other's particular constellation of musical ideas for this particular raga in this particular place at this particular time, then their mutual responsiveness is astonishing to behold, above all in those moments when the tabla uncannily imitates the melodic phrases of the melody instrunent.

The recent concert, for all its excellences and for all the evidently superb abilities of its musicians, never really rose to this level. Mr. Dasgupta and Mr. Chaudhuri seemed unfamiliar with each other's playing; they were a bit cautious, a bit distant; and there was not enough time in any of the pieces they played together for them to overcome this distance to the degree on would have wished. Where they should finally have been warming to each other, in the last portion of the concert, the fragmentary nature of the pieces programmed, something in the manner of a sampler or anthology, impede their growing closeness and left their efforts toward the highest musical fusion still tentative and partially thwarted. But if this concert did not represent Indian classical music at its most achieved, it offered much pleasure on a less ambitiosus level, and it enabled the San Diego audience to become acquainted with two first-rate musicians of whom we may hope to hear more.

DS The Arizona RepublicFriday, Octoner 13, 1989

By Salvatore Caputo

The Arizona Republic

Remember Ravi Shankar's set in the concert movie Monterey Pop?

The 1969 movie was one of many pop-culture artifacts that gave the music of India an image problem, which its practitioners still are fighting today.

"(Western) people think of this as very exotic music," says Aloke DasGupta, founder of the Raga Ranjani School of Music in San Diego. "They have images based on the hippies and drugs, but when I talk to them about this music I tell them you do not need to take a drug to appreciate it. The music is like a drug to you."

DasGupta plays Hindustani music, the classical music of northern India on sitar, a stringed instrument that loosely resembles a guitar. The sitar has five melodic strings, two drone strings and 13 others that vibrate along with the melodic strings, creating a sound unusual to Western ears.

DasGupta will be bringing this sound to Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Tempe at 8

p.m. Saturday. Accompanying him will be Ghulam Abbas Khan, who plays tabla, an Indian drum.

Unlike Western classical music, Hindustani music changes its shape every time it is played. A performer chooses a set of notes, known as a raga, and a rhythmic pattern, known as a tala, and then sets about playing.

IF YOU GO

Performance : 8 p.m. Saturday.

Where : Holy Spirit Catholic church,1815 E. Germini Drive, Tempe.

Tickets : $9 at the door.

Well, there's more to it than that. Specific ragas are appropriate to specific times of day. And each performance has a three-part outline — something like salad, main course and dessert — that is followed.

The music is not notated. The forms have been passed on orally from teacher to student for 4,000 years.

What cannot be passed on is how to perform according to the rules and structures, a process that one of DasGupta's Western colleagues called "guided improvisation."

"Sixty percent of what we do comes from our teachers, and 40 percent is our own ideas," he says. "Our big challenge is to learn how to put life into the ragas, which are only bunches of notes withont that life."

As you might expect, this process keeps the music changing.

"Oh yes. If you listen to a performance of 20 years ago, it is completely different from a performance of today. For all the discussion of structure and techmical aspects, DasGupta focuses on something beyond. "The inner sense is the most important. It's very spiritual. ...

"It's not that complicated, that's why it's so hard."

ALOKE DAS GUPTA

"The human ear can only hear sounds within a certain range," says sitarist Aloke Das Gupta. Beyond that range the universe is full of music the ear cannot hear. For an Indian musician, one of the goals is to learn that universal song." Das Gupta studied under such Indian music legends as Ali Akbar Khan, Kalyani Roy and Shibu Chakravorty, and has the prodigious technique to prove it. Since the age of 11, the Jasmshedpur (near Calcutta) native, now resident in Los Angeles and founder of the Raga Ranjani School of Music, has immersed himself in the classical music for sitar and sarod, and holds a degree in ethnomusicology as well, which may explain his enthusiasm for world-music-inspired variations of tonality within the context of the ancient ragas. Das Gupta favors an approach that builds on Akbar Khan's traditional gharanas (regional styles) but incorporates new ways of phrasing the ragas (melodies) and talas

(rhythms). Das Gupta plays in a strong and colorful style, and his "guided improvisations" make for a mesmerizing and thrilling experience. He'll be joined by his wife, singer Sanjuktu Das Gupta, and sarod player Aloke Lahiri, who is a former student of sarod master Amjad Ali Khan and the composer of the score of Satyajit Ray's film The Chess Players. These early-evening ragas will be presented in three parts: a "Khyal" (North Indian vocal style) and "Bhajan" (spiritual song) featuring sanjuktu Das Gupta, a section spotlighting tabla player Ajeet Pathak, and a duet by and Aloke Das Gupta and Aloke Lahiri. USC Annenberg Auditorium; Sun., July28, 4:30 p.m.; $25 & $10. (310) 542-3216.

—John Payne

We also recommend: The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Overture Company of Opera Pacific's concert La Bohème at the Hollywood Bowl, Sun.; Chamber Music Under the Stars with The Los Angeles Philharmonec New Music Group and Nikolai Lugansky at the Ford Amphitheatere, Mon.

Friday January 12, 1990

PROMOTING UNIVERSAL CULTURES

A tuneful

success

SITAR star Pandit Alok

Dasgupta gave a recital in

front a large crowd at Age

Concern in High Street.

Acton, on Sunday. The

event, attended by High

Commissioner of India,

was organised by Univer

sal Cultural Exchange,

founded by Acton per

former Dr Bina Chatterjee. creche will be available.

For more details contactAge Concern Dasgupta was a shall be returning Arshi on Sheffieldwhich helps chil-student of Ustad to Britain for sev

dren, the elderly, Ali Akbar Khan, eral programmes

2725596.

and unknown who will be carry-in February," artistes, including ing out all work as added Dr ^{Advice for}

dancers. a visiting profes-Maharajkumari.

Muslims

The UCEP has sor and director of If you want to DEVOUT scholar andlong worked with Allau-Uddin Ali recommend any doctor, Umar Azam,

from Manchester, has

produced an Islamic

booklet for British Mus-done many out-Dasgupta is also cials say they will lims entitled, Practical standing and unu-exclusively man-be "only too glad

Islamic Advice.

sual programmes aged worldwide to help" with fund

Copies of Practical Is-

The Gazette

for charities in the and promoted by raising activities.

lamic Advice have al-

Friday, December 15,199

last 31 years. UCEP and left re-

ready been distributed

"UCEP is cently for India to

free of charge to Mus-

Issue 313 Friday January

12 1996 Price 52p

unique and is to-perform. He is

lim families in Manches

tally dedicated to considered to be _ter.

THE ASIAN AGE

23 FEBRUARY 1996

Milanee organises Indian classical music nite

Daya Mukherjee Jamshedpur, February 11

THE MILANEE, a centre for socio-cultural activities since 1914, organised an Indian Classical Music Soiree on Saturday, bringing together the talents of USA-based Aloke Dasgupta ("I'm the guy from Jamshedpur") on the sitar, Sreeparna Bose of odissi dance fame and noted classical vocalist Narayan Bhattacharya. That Jamshedpurians have an ear for all things classical was evident by the sizeable number of people that turned up despite another concert in progress in another part of the city and last, but not the least, the formidable wooing power of the special episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati on Star Plus that same night where the Big B had roped in Madhuri Dixit and master blaster Sachin Tendulkar.

One of the pioneer students of the Rabindra Bhavan, Jamshedpur, he went on to study music in Calcutta from where he got a scholarship to the Ustad Ali Akbar Khan College of Music in San Rafael, 50 miles from San Francisco in 1980.

Aloke also has a master's degree in Ethnomusicology from the San Diego State University, and he made his debut in 1981 at the New York FolkFestival. Since then it has been a steady stream if success, with acclaimed world-wide concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and numerous other cities in Europe, USA and India.

He has played on NBC and CBS television and his performances have been broadcast live in Los Angeles and San Francisco radio stations.

Today, Aloke Dasgupta is considered to be among the noted sitar players in the North Indian classical style.

In 1995 he was awarded the SOPAN award in Calcutta. Along with his wife, Sanjukta, a classical vocalist, he runs the Raga Ragini School of Music in Los Angeles.

"I admire Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar. It is in the world today."

But if the Indian leading lights in classical music open music colleges only in USA how will the common aspiring people of ever hope to get training from the maetros?

A little taken aback, Aloke quickly counters, "In 10 years, peopole will have to go to USA to learn Indian music. There the people really respect you and your music.

How many performers here really teach? You say Ravi Shankar teaches. Sab stamp lagane jate hain. The only poerson he has really taught is his daughter Anoushka."

28-year old Sreeparna Bose (Mitra) gave a riveting odissi performance in which the themes which she chose were Draupadi vastraharan and Moksha, based on Raag Pallavi and Bhagyashree.

A student of the Rabindra Bharati University, Sreeparna has won many accolades for her dance performance in Mumbai, Chennai, Meerut and Ahmedabad. Narayan Bhattacharya is a noted classical vocalist of Bengal.

A specialist in Bengali songs, Nazrul had the audience clamouring for more of his renderings.

The Telegraph

FRIDAY 21 FEBRUARY 1997

A 'wizard' rooted in Steel City

He crossed the seas and went to the US

e mesmerises his Western audience in 1980 to promote Hindustani music

with his rendition of classical music.

there. Today, he is a fullfledged American

He performs to packed galleries and citizen but he makes it a point to visit Indiasends them into raptures. He is the director

at least once a year. "These trips are my

of a Raaga Ranjini Music Institute at Sasn source of inspiration and sustenance.

Diego. However, he has not forgotten his

Moreover, without the approval of the

roots. His love for Jamshedpur, his place Indian audience my efforts are in vain,"

of birth, remains supreme.

he says.

Meet Aloke Dasgupta, known the Dasgupta says he did not intend to settle

world over as a wizard of sitar.

down in San Diego. "If Hindustani music

Each year, he takes time out of his busy is to be taught to Americans, the teacher

schedule to come to India and relive his

should also be a citizen of the country,"

childhood in the Steel City. His nostalgia Dasgupta says.

for the city is infective. " How can I lose

While in San Diego, Dasgupta enrolled

touch with my roots, "he asks. "I always as a student at the ethnomusicology

make it a point to inform my audience that

department of the Sasn Diego University.

I was born in Jamshedpur, a city in Bihar, He joined a private firm as an accounts

and it was here that my association with

officer to finance his studies. Within a year, he attained his

music began." masters' degree in ethnomusicology and became one of the

His unassuming and mild nature belies his inner confidence. He weaves a magic spell over his audiences with ^{selected few to play Javanese Gamelan With elan. However,} it was in 1986 that his efforts bore fruit.

every pull of the sitar strings. Dasgupta's fan following in the West should be seen to be believed. His title of a "wizard ^{He founded the Raaga Ranjini, a school of music in the} US. It began with just four students which finally rose to 40

sitarist" is not without reason. However, he has a trust with Jamshedpur, as it was here that he had picked up the subtleties ^{within a year. Significantly, Dasgupta received a major chunk} of his donations from Americans. The Indians residing there

of music. Dasgupta began his journey in music under the able ^{were, however, cold to him.} Raaga Ranjini has produced a large number of American

guidance of his uncle at a tender age of 11. He has come a long way since then. Today he is considered an "outstanding ^{performers, who have been instrumental in making Dasgupta} a cult figure in classical music. He composed several Indo

and original" sitarists in the Hindustani classical style. His critics are all praise for him. His maturity of style and ^{American Jazz numbers for the San Diego State University} Symphony. His compact disc, titled Caress of the Sitar, was

composition can draw a parallel with maestros of yester years. At the same time, his art reveals an awareness of

an instant success. Dasgupta is also the recipient of the Artists in Residence

contemporary musical movements like jazz. _{Basically, a person with an academic bent of mind,} Grant from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, to teach Indian music to school

Dasgupta has never been accused of conservatism or _{introducing the unhealthy rigidity of the gharana system.} children. Dasgupta has performed at the Lincoln Centre for Arts and Performance at New York and other concerts in

Though he has learnt the nuances of the art from his guru, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Dasgupta prefers to play along the ^{Japan and Canada.} After conquering frontiers in the West, Dasgupta has set

lines of Vilayat khan on the 'Gandhar Pancham' sitar. Dasgupta's style is based on the traditional gharana system ^{his sight on "Universal Music." He says, "The human ear} can only hear sounds within a certain range. Beyond this

of his guru. However, he has incorporated somes novel ways of presenting his ragas. His hallmark lies in his style and ^{range the universe abounds in music which the ear cannot} receive. For an Indian musician, one of the goals is to hear

innovative changes in rhythm.

Today, the little boy from Jamshedpur has crossed frontiers the universal song." and carved a niche for himself. His prolonged stay in the US has not impaired his pursuit of Indian classical music. His Sourav Mukherjee study of world music under Robsert E. Brown enhanced his knowledge of totality in music presentation. His joint performances with Zakir Hussain, Swapan Chaudhuri and Shyamal Bose and his concerts and workshops with the Californian Arts Council have gone a long way in popoularising Indian classical music throughout the world.

P.O. Box 21285, San Jose,CA 95151 Phone: (408) 274-6966 Fax: (408) 274-2733

Internet; info@indiacur.com Worldwide Web: http://www.indiacur.com/indiacur/

RAGA SOUL

ECSTASY OF STRINGS: V.G. Jog (violin) and Aloke Dasgupta (sitar) with Ashok Maitra (tabla). Sargam International, P.O. Box 3702, Thousand Oaks, CA 91359-3702

hile jump-starting a day in Califor-nia, as in India, often involves the sweet caffeination of coffee or chai to get the juices flowing, Hindustani music offers a remarkably civil extension of the awakening process for its devotees. A cornucopia of piquant morning ragas, such as the Ahir Bhairav played here by Aloke Dasgupta and the avuncular grand old man of Hindustani violin, V.G. Jog, can align your personal universe and put you in a mood to tackle even the grimmest tasks of the day. That's part of rasa theory, and it still plays a major part in the performance of Hindustani music. Time of day and raga work together to produce an essential esthetic sensitivity. To their credit, Dasgupta and Jog never lose sight of that objective. It's not a matter of virtuosic technique, it's about raga soul.

The sitarist Ram Chakravarty, looking out across the Ganges from his veranda above Hanuman ghat in Banaras and gazing at the rosy dawn evaporating over the distant eastern shore, once informed me that producing the komal rishab (flat second degree) of Ahir Bhairav, as it gently emerges from the tonic, is like realizing that evaporation process. The komal reemerges and then falls back into the sa (tonic), the drone void, or skips below it to descend, never pushing upward as a step on some ladder to an upper world. One minute it is there, rosy against a darkened sky and the next, all is white light.

The first thing you notice about this recording is its allegiance to the idea that the raga, not the artist, takes center stage. Ahir with its emergent, evocative komal restructurally prominent and the remaining major diatonic scale degrees adding a sweetness to the mix. The name of the raga itself, referencing simultaneously human Ahir pastoralists and the divine Bhairav, signal the same sense of balance between the dissonant and the consonant, the cosmic and the mundane.

Dasgupta, on sitar, plunges into the invocatory alap by approaching the dissonant tone straight away. Jog, on violin, immediately counters with a descending figure to the lower dhaivat (natural sixth degree), another prominent resting point, and the duet begins to lift off without delay, like a father and son conversing heart-to-heart. Dasgupta, with exceptionally strong right hand technique

and a sure sense of direction, pushes the music through its charted course of development, while Jog, the seasoned sage at the twilight of his long and illustrious career, fills in the openings to create a flowing, overarching whole. The recording gives us a rare intergenerational jugalbandi (duet) in which two artistic personalities retain their individuality but never lose sight of service to the raga.

In the slowly pulsating jor section, again it is Dasgupta's shimmering sitar and deft right hand that command the lead, letting Jog bridge the movement from tone to tone with longer bowing strokes. Dasgupta, who first studied in Jamshedpur with Shibu Chakrabarty, a disciple of Vilayat Khan, then with the renowned Kalyani Roy and finally with Ali Akbar Khan in San Rafael in the early 1980s, has created an impressive individual style that combines both the gayaki (vocal) and rhythmic traits of his teachers. It is in the jor and jhala, where often the innate raga essence can begin to fall away due to the propulsion of pacing, that Dasgupta really shines. His controlled construction in these sections reveals a thoughtful, musical mind— he holds a masters degree in ethnomusicology from San Diego State University—and partnering with the always affable Professor Jog helps to maintain the mood throughout.

The vilambit (slow tempo) composition, appropriately accompanied by the austere tabla playing of Ashok Maitra, reveals a simple chart on which to improvise, again without drawing overt attention to virtuosity, focusing instead on raga integrity. Here again, Dasgupta and Jog, trading phrases, continue to build

emotional momentum while strictly maintaining raga integrity and structural symmetry.

The real surprise takes place in the Ram dhun that concludes the recording. The old Vishnu Digambar Paluskar chestnut, "Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram," a staple of All India Radio broadcasts and one of Mahatma Gandhi's favorite devotional songs—you can hear it on Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi" soundtrack— becomes the source of a delightful improvisational bantering between Dasgupta and Jog. While such improvisation would be difficult to imagine for a pair of vocalists, for

instance, it works in the world of strings. You'll end up humming the ubiquitous lyrics in your head as the sitar and violin advance and retreat, adding and subtracting tones of the melody, playing with the familiarity inherent in the tune. A sweet ending to a delightful morning's listening. —David Roche

David Roche is the Artistic Director for World Arts West, producers of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

Have you come across any good music lately? Share it with others. Send your review of up to 300 words and a copoy of the cover to: India Currents, P.O. Box 21285, San Jose, CA 95151-1285, reviews@indiacur. com.

A52 THE MORNING CALL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1996

NightlifeReviews

Sitarist Das Gupta rises to the challenge

Aloke Das Gupta started his program of sitar music at Springhouse Junior High School Auditorium in South whitehall Township last weekend with a slow, at times tentative, solo meditation on the instrument. The respected sitarist was pleased enough with the applause of those in attendance at its conclusion to comment on it.

"I once read an article on the New York Times," the 43-year-old Indian-born Los Angeles resident said softly, "by Mr. Robert Palmer, reviewing one of Ravi Shankar's early American performances. He said that after he played his first piece the audience didn't respond at all, but after the tabla [hand-drum] player tuned up, they clapped enthusiastically. Afterward, Ravi Shankar said, 'Maybe I should have just kept tuning up.' "

Such can be the challenge of bringing as esoteric a tradition as Indian classical music to a culture used to drive-through service and three-minute pop songs. Without a solid konwledge of what to expect, it wouldn't be too hard to mistake the gradual, deliberate buildup of a raga for simply "warming up."

But when Das Gupta and his accompaniment, Ajeet Pathak on tabla, hit their stride, there was no difficulty in identifying the beauty and complexity of this singularly un-Western music.

While the improvisatory qualities on display might be vaguely compaued to jazz, the all-important interplay between the rhythmic tabla and the voiced sitar, to the exclusion of soloing for its own sake, made the distinctions between the two forms (and their intents) quite clear.

As Das Gupta made lightning-fast runs over the strings of his instrument and Pathak's nimble hands became a blur on the hand-drums, the sound seemed as if it came from one source, one mind.

Similarly, judging from the occasional spontaneous bursts of applause, the people (mostly non-Eastern) who turned out for the concert sponsored by the India Society of the Lehigh Valley achieved their own union with a music from a far-off time and place, making cultural barriers, as imposing as they may seem, not so great after all.

—John Terlesky

John Terlesky is a free0lance writer.

Aloke Das Gupta performed ls t weekend at Springhouse Junior High School Auditorium in South Whitehall Township.

LISA LAKE Special to The Morning Call

New CoreStates Center no Oasis for music fans

Yes, the $ 215-million toy known as the CoreStates Center in Philadelphia will make other metropoli bow their heads in shame. The beers in the in-house microbrewery, Red Bell, are tasty and not too much more expensive than their mass-produced counterparts. The luxury boxes are cushy, replete with carpeting and serviced wet bars. And by God, the men's rooms have diaper-changing stations!

Too bad the arena, not unlike its predecessor, the Spectrum, is still no place to see your favorite band play. The acoustics are only improved slightly, and God help you if you're herded into the mezzanine. The vertical drop to the stage hardly makes for fun.

The interplay of violin and sitar, instruments based on the same idea but capable of infinitely varied possibilities, is uniquely satisfying to hear—even more so when presented by two recognized masters of the classical form.

Pandit Vishnu Govind Jog, one of India's best-known violin players within the Hindustani tradition, has teamed up with Alok Dasgupta, a talented and original contemporary sitar player, on the CD "Ecstasy of Strings" from the Sargam International label.

Dasgupta has earned raves from The New York Times for his "brilliant technique" and Jog is well-versed in both Southern andNorthern playing styles, with a career spanning five decades. Jog and Dasgupta explore the intracacies of Ahir Bhairav, a melodic and energetic morning raag, accompanied by Ashok Maitra on tabla. The initial alaap, slow and pensive, continues for nearly 15 minutes, giving hints of the rhythmic intensity to come. As the players move into bilambit (teentaal) and drut (teental), the promise is fulfilled.

Jog and Dasgupta toured the United States for over two months before recording "Ecstasy of Strings," learning as much about each other's playing style as possible — and delighting audiences in the process — before embarking on the project.

By turns introspective and playful, "Ecstasy of Strings" celebrates the talents of these two masterful players.

V. G. Jog, Alok Dasgupta In a State of 'Ecstasy'

By a Staff Reporter

THE Doves, Darius, Daisy, Dina and Baby Din Din, had met a very talented family recently.

The father is a well-known sitarist and the mother a talented classical vocalist. Can their son, little Riju Dasgupta (also called Abhigyan) lag behind? Obviously

not. Riju stays in the Prarie Avenue, Torrance, in USA with his parents — Alok and Sanjukta. The three are naturally a close-knit family but music is more than responsible for it than anything else.

Says Alok to Darius Dove, "Somehow, this is

possibly one case where blood had to take a second place. We are all so musically tied to each other that sometimes it's really uncanny". His wife Sanjukta seconds him. Five-year-old Riju is already going to school and is also an aspiring painter.

With both the parents busy with their respective careers — they also run a music school called Raga Ranjani — how does little Riju get all the attention that he needs, asks Mamma Daisy. "No problem, when I see my parents doing their riyaz, I feel that I am quite a part of that. I mean, I do not feel neglected." Riju assures her.

Sanjukta, of course, takes a lot of care of Riju's studies which are still light at this moment. Riju has a lot of friends but says he loves his parents more than anybody else.

The Doves beamed. You know that a united and loving family pleases them more than anything else!

Indian music: when instruments 'talk' to each other

By ROBERT NOTT

Friday, November 24, 1995

Woodstock. The name conjures up images of hippies, peace, love-ins, the 1960s and, of course, rock music pervades Woodstock this weekend as Indian classical musicians Aloke Das Gupta ans Polash Gomes perform two benefit concerts at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Mountain View Studio off Rock City Road. Proceeds from both concerts go to Auroville International, a nonprofit grass-roots organization dedicated to preserving the environment, using appropriate technology and fostering cooperation betweenn people as well as nations.

Producer Julian Lines, who operates the Woodstock-based boutique Pondicherry, said the concerts will serve as an introduction to Indian classical music, music that has its own distinct rhythm and tone.

"Indian classical music has a very spiritual context," Lines said. "Certainly there is sacred music context in the West, but in the Indian tradition music is a way of getting into contact with the divine. Aloke's goal is to use music as spiritual discipline."

Maybe the same thing could be said of the infamous Woodstock concert of 1969, yet the two music forms couldn't be more different.

Indian classical music is not notated. Instead, the form is passed on orally from teacher to student, musician to musician. The music changes in shape every time it is played, though there is some room for improvisation.

The basic form, in fact, is not unlike that of an American jazz trio's. In this case Das Gupta will play the sitar while Gomes performs with the tabla (think of a bongo drum).

"In the West, there is a much narrower field for improvisation because the music is based on notes," Aloke Das Gupta will play his sitar at two benefit concerts at 4:30and 7:30

p.m. tomorrow at the Mountain View Studio in Woodstock. Gupta, who is the director of the Raja Ranjani School of Music in Los Angeles, will explain the concept of Indian classical music at the

Lines said. "But with Indian classical music, you sort of have a conversation between the various instruments, a dialogue between sitar and tabla. It's humorous and exciting to hear this dialogue. It's like a game of tag combined with Simon Says.' In some ways it's a competition."

Das Gupta is the director of the Raga Ranjani School of Music in Los Angeles. He has been studying music since age 11, and holds a master's degree in ethnomusicology. As Das Gupta is well versed in explaining the concept of Indian classical music to Westerners, he will continue the tradition at the concert at 4:30 p.m., which is billed as a workshop/ demonstration.

Lines said that concert is aimed more at families, offering children a chance to hear this unusual musical form. In India, Lines said, concerts are much more informal, allowing entire families to come and go as they please, and even talk if they like.

And while American concert-goers may favor the idea of just sitting back 4:30 concert.

and taking in the music without interference, Lines said the 4:30 concert offers audiences a chance to come in and let loose. In short, you don't have to sit on your hands. Tickets for that concert, on the other hand, is geared primarily toward adults, and admission is $7.

Lines said that while audiences can just enjoy the music for what it is, Indian classical music offers much more latitude for a heightened experience.

"The best possible experience is to allow the music to transport you into a state of higher consciousness or bliss," he said. "But there are different levels you can plug into."

Robert Nott is a free -lance writer living in New windsor