Darbar 2013

[Tom Storer]

Darbar 2013

I'm attending the Darbar Festival of Indian music, held at the Southbank Centre in London. This is the eighth annual Darbar and my first.

Thursday, Sept. 19

1st part: Bernard Schimpelsberger, drums; sarod player whose name I didn't catch; Sukhad Munde, pakhawaj.

The first concert featured a young German (Austrian?) percussionist, originally a drummer but who fell in love with the tabla and immersed himself in Indian music. Now, however, he has embarked on finding ways to play Indian rhythms on the Western drum set.

The concert was planned as a jugalbandi of pakhawaj and drums, but Schimpelsberger called up an excellent sarod player who is his frequent musical partner. Sukhad Munde, in his UK debut, sat patiently through 80% of the concert as the other two played.

I confess I was skeptical of this affair, but in fact Schimpelsberger pulled it off. His love and knowledge of tabla music shone through and he communicated well with the public. He spent a lot of time improvising bols, the mnemonic vocal syllables Indian percussionists recite to learn pieces. That's always fun. The best part of the concert might have been when he and Sunde traded these back and forth in a joust, just as jazz musicians trade fours.

His transposition to the drum set was interesting, and as a percussion jugalbandi and solo recital it was fine. Indian classical music is open (if slow) to accepting new instruments, such as violin, saxophone, and more recently slide guitar. Will the drum set be adopted? If it is, Schimpelsberger will no doubt be the spearhead. And just as the slide guitar has been re-engineered for Indian music, he has come up with an innovation he calls the bayan bass drum. The bayan is the larger tabla drum, with a lower pitch; the tabla player typically alters pressure with the heel of the hand to get sliding variations in pitch. To emulate this, Schimpelsberger developed a bass drum whose drumhead is loosened or tightened with some kind of frame controlled by the other foot. Clever.

Part two:
Jayanthi Kumaresh, saraswati veena; Patri Satish Kumar, mridangam; RN Prakash, ghatam.

The saraswati veena is similar to the rudra veena, a large stringed instrument. But where the rudra veena resembles a bass sitar, this sounds more like a baritone sarod. It is a Carnatic instrument, hence the accompanying Carnatic percussion instruments.

This was my first Carnatic concert. I started out with Hindustani music. Kumaresh's helpful comments to the audience made it clear that the two traditions have a different, if overlapping, set of ragas and talas (rhythmic cycles). For example, she noted that a particular raga they were about to play was not identical to the Hindustani version as it contained additional notes. The talas they used were also new to me. To a neophyte like me it makes little difference, but it's interesting to know.

The general structure of a petformance is an alap, where the soloist explores the notes and intervals of the raga unaccompanied and without meter. This is followed by a composition in the raga. In Hindustani music, the composition can go through different sections with varying tempos, and the soloist improvises freely with tabla accompaniment. At times the tabla player may improvise furiously in accompaniment, but gets no solos in the jazz sense. On the other hand, he (or she--but female tabla players who record or play internationally are rare as hen's teeth) may have solo pieces , or whole recitals, featuring tabla compositions including improvisation following strict rules.

In Carnatic music, the compositions sound different--shorter, with clearer melodies and rhythmic phrases. They are more song-like and easier to follow (for me at least). In jazz terms, the compositions and group interaction (for there are typically two percussionists) are more based on riffs--with all the sophisticated rhythmic manipulation and playfulness that "riffing" can entail.

So, the concert--Kumaresh, a small woman quite in control of the situation, began her first alap and immediately captured the audience with her strong, expressive tone and the quiet drama of her phrasing. Very quickly, she was forming melodic phrases of such stylish grace and powerful focus that it drew admiring murmurs and even gasps from the front rows--which were packed with other top maestros scheduled to perform over the weekend. When the composition began, the talent of Patri Satish Kumar, on mridangam (a double-headed drum shaped like a narrow barrel, resting on the player's lap and played with the hands), and R.N. Prakash, on ghatam (a kind of big, round clay pot, also placed on the lap and producing a relatively high-pitched sound that can be brittle and staccato or warmer and more tuneful), came into play. Kumaresh showed a puckish complicity with the percussionists, confidently challenging them in exchanges that put each player on the spot and brought out all their ingenuity.

That more or less was the model for the rest of the concert. By the end, half an hour past the scheduled end, the public was in the palm of their collective hand. A very impressive start to the festival, which continues through Sunday night.

[Ron Thorne]

Wow! Thanks for that first hand account, Tom.

I'd have to read your review many more times to fully comprehend all of the complexities of these musical instruments, compositions and performance styles.

The first concert featured a young German (Austrian?) percussionist, originally a drummer but who fell in love with the tabla and immersed himself in Indian music. Now, however, he has embarked on finding ways to play Indian rhythms on the Western drum set.

This definitely caught my attention, along with his clever modification of his bass drum.

[bluenoter]

Wow! Thanks for that first hand account, Tom.

I'd have to read your review many more times to fully comprehend all of the complexities of these musical instruments, compositions and performance styles.

So say I. Thanks, Tom!