The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture presented what it termed a lecture demonstration by the famed sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at the Vivekananda Hall on March 18. This was followed by his electric violinist pupils Deb and Jyoti Sankar playing Amjad Ali sarod compositions with tabla, mridangam, Hans mike, keyboards and other percussive gizmos as accompaniment.

The ustad, far from delivering anything that could be termed a lecture, spoke informally about how music was not a profession but a way of life as far he was concerned, and his own views about music, religion and life in general. People had thronged the reasonably big hall, perhaps hoping that the ustad would play the sarod. However, they seemed to be happy to hear him singing sarod compositions, with rhythmic vistar, sargam taans and even fast bolkari with the sarod mnemonics in the ragas Marwa, Kamod, Jaunpuri, Hansadhvani, Kedar and Darbari Kanada.

The Sankars are expert violinists but seemed to be very poor arrangers as their presentation of well-known Amjad Ali gats in Hansadhvani, Shankara, Yaman, Shyam Shree, Shivranjani-Shubalakshmi and Kalavati were crass and naïve with cheap dance hall electronic effects and sounds popularised by A.R. Rahman dished out enthusiastically by Tanmoy Bose. The only intelligent effect took shape when the violins modulated from Shivranjani to Shubhalakshmi (named after the ustad’s wife).