Befitting her father: Mita Nag on stage

West Bengal has a tradition of nurturing women classical instrumentalists. Even if the great Annapurna Shankar is ruled out as she was seldom heard, you have sitar players Jaya Biswas and Kalyani Roy and violinist Sisirkana Dhar Chowdhury. Mita Nag, 35, the daughter of the well-known city sitar maestro Pandit Manilal Nag, is the new torch-bearer of the tradition and if her 53-minute sitar recital at an evening of music organised by Anirban Foundation at the Indian Museum’s Ashutosh Birth Centenary Hall on June 9 is taken into consideration, she seems to be a step ahead of her woman forbears in quite a few aspects of sitar playing.

Mita Nag played the common pentatonic version of the raga Megh (Sa Re Ma Pa ni) with a combination of poise, power and artistry that must have made her father and guru sitting in the front row proud. The choice of the raga was apt because with the rainy season already on that day according to Indian almanacs, monsoon ragas could be played anytime of the night and day.

The orderly, well-structured alap had sufficiently long nishad-pancham and madhyam-rishav meends that separate this form of Megh from Madhyamadi Sarang (also known as Madhmadh Sarang). Another factor that established the raga character strongly was the emphasis on the mandra saptak (bass octave). Mita was down to the bass pancham string within three minutes of starting her alap and played on it with a dexterity befitting her father. Though the bass string business was quickly got over with, the emphasis on the mandra saptak remained throughout the 13-minute alap and nine-minute jod.

The virtually defunct Madhyamadi Sarang generally moves between madhya and tar saptaks. In other words, when playing or singing Madhyamadi, you generally don’t go lower than the madhya saptak sadaj. But in the case of Megh you have to incorporate at least the mandra Ma Pa ni segment even when you are developing the madhya saptak segment.

The alap was also notable for the perfect pitch maintained in the tar saptak, another virtue inherited from Pandit Manilal Nag. Most sitar players, both famous and not so famous, are known to stray slightly off-pitch in this region once in a while. In the jod, lapets and ladi rhythms were played with expertise and the bolkari and taankari that followed were power-packed like the fast taankari with which she wound up her alap after fast, clear and melodious jhala, another area of expertise she has inherited from her father.

The jhaptal gatkari featured very good rhythmic work and taankari. A notable feature was that the figures usually ended with a tihai just before the mukda and not the sam itself. This was the rule of traditional sitar and sarod gatkari, according to late sarod maestro Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan Sahab. There was remarkably adroit melodic development in the tan-toda. Excellent taankari, bolkariand jhala (including five-stroke kuad jhala) were played in the drut teental gatkari. Ashis Paul provided competent tabla accompaniment.

The evening ended with a vocal recital by Raka Mukherjee. She started off with a vilambit khayal composition in Anandi Kalyan that seemed to ineptly mimic the only known traditional vilambit composition in the raga. This is by Daras Piya (Ustad Mehboob Khan, Atrauli): Dhundoo bare sainya. In fact, this was the only existing khayal composition in the beginning of the heyday of Ustad Faiyaz Khan. It is said he originally merely doubled the tempo of this song when he wanted to sing a drut khayal in this raga. Much later Ustad Vilayat Hussain composed the drut khayal Aaj hun na aye Shyam for him. The sthayee of the composition Raka Mukherjee sang seemed to have the lyrics Eri piya more aye bahut dinana pare. Here, the final word appears to be in Bengali. It is certainly not Braj Bhasha in which khayal compositions generally are. The tune was a weak imitation of that of the Daras Piya composition with variations incorporated possibly to make it sound a little different.

The antara did not seem to make sense: Garaba lagau dara lagi jau. Such compositions severely undermine what is left of the north Indian classical music tradition.

The development of the khayal was very much in keeping with the standard embodied by the composition. For, apart from unduly repetitive phrase movements, the phrase Ga Ma Ga Sa Re Sa, which is more suitable to the raga Maru Bihag, could be heard. Traces of Khem Kalyan could also be found and several of the taans ended with the phrase Ga Ma Pa Ga Ma Re Sa that belongs to the raga Kamod. The brief taankari was unduly repetitive and lacked development. The words and music of the drut khayal (Hato, chhoowo na mora baiyan) was the last straw on the camel’s back and made the reviewer beat a retreat for the day.