Bhubaneswar, Oct 14: Music exponent Gopal Chandra Panda has written a book to popularise ragas of Odissi.

The book, Odissi Raga Ratnavali, is a collection of original Odissi ragas where their history, notation, meaning are described, along with their examples.

“Odissi music will be accepted as classical form only when we promote its original ragas and rendition style. The book aims to do the same. It is an outcome of my 40 years of research in the field of Odissi music,” said Gopal Chandra Panda.

The book was released at the second annual event of the Guru Gopal Panda Odishi Academy at Rabindra Mandap here.

Panda has also authored various other books on classical Odissi music, including Odissi Sangeeta Manjaree, Odissi Raga Prakasha, Odissi Raga Parichaya, Odissi Raga Bigyan and Shree Geeta Govinda Swaralipi. His research work and compositions on Geeta Govinda have been critically acclaimed.

He has composed for innumerable dance ballets, dance dramas and dance features, apart from albums of classical music.

During the two-day event, a number of performances by exponents of Odissi music and dance took place. The students of Panda’s academy staged a group recital, while vocalists Ramahari Das gave a solo performance on popular Odissi ragas.

Besides, Odissi dancers such as Delhi-based Madhavi Mudgal and Sujata Mohapatra also performed on the compositions of Panda.

Main focus was on original Odissi ragas and its style of singing. “Like Odia language, Odissi music is hundreds of years old. But nowadays, it is getting influenced by other styles of singing and gradually losing it originality. There are hundreds of ragas in Odissi style, which we must use and codify them according to our own grammatical framework,” added the vocalist.

For their contribution to Odissi music, Shyamamani Pattnaik was conferred with the Guru Singhari Samman and Arati Mishra received the Bhagabati Smruti Samman on the occasion.