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Kumar Gandharva, as I See Him
Synthesis: Episode 2
Song, Speech and Rare Recordings
Musicians
Noted musician and scholar Satyasheel Deshpande, delves into and demystifies the music of his guru Padmavibhushan Pandit Kumar Gandharva (whose centenary is ongoing) in an illustrated talk. This rich, flavourful mehfil, in Hindi with some English, will begin with a recording of Kumar Gandharva, the child prodigy, before moving on to include both speech and song that span the many facets of his musical personality and ideas as they evolved from the 1950s to 1992 when he passed away.
Satyasheel Deshpande will also share anecdotes from his years with Kumar ji, who was a close friend of his father, the renowned musicologist Vamanrao Deshpande, visiting and staying at their culturally vibrant Walkeshwar home in South Mumbai along with other great musicians of the era. The evening will end with a rarely seen video recording of Kumarji’s music.
He will be accompanied by his disciple and son, the performer, teacher and archivist of Hindustani Khayal music, Srijan Deshpande on vocal support and Rupak Kharvandikar on tabla.
The two-hour presentation will attempt to cover the following themes:
Parampara: Satyasheel ji will demonstrate and discuss the traditional musical material Kumarji received, primarily from his guru BR Deodhar, but also from a number of other sources, the many gharanedar buzurgs (elders) as well as non-gharana musicians he came to be associated with through Deodhar and his school, as well as through his own relationships and independent study. This approach – of studying the tradition independently and developing one’s own aesthetics through this study is the message Kumarji transmitted to Satyasheel ji in his taleem, and this is the approach he has tried to build upon through his subsequent work with Samvaad Foundation. So there will be demonstrations here of traditional bandishes and gayaki Kumarji received and taught in turn and the diverse aesthetics they embody.
Rag-vichar: Kumarji was an inheritor of the Deodhar-Paluskar-Bhatkhande reformist lineage and was invested in bringing clarity and specificity to the raga-complex of Hindustani music. We will see through demonstrations how he did this, and how he took Deodhar’s hard-earned raga-clarity forward and imbued it with his own musical personality.
Nav-Sarjan: After recovering from his illness, Kumarji created and presented an astonishing amount of new music. We will demonstrate prominent examples from his repertoire and explore its links with tradition and delve into what he was trying to express through this work.
Gayaki: While Kumarji was widely recognised as an icon, he was also criticized for what many saw as a rejection of or a rebellion against traditional approaches to gayaki. We will explore Kumarji’s treatment of vilambit, madhyalay and drut khayal to get to the bottom of what Kumarji was trying to do differently and why.
Bhavishya: What does it mean to embrace and build upon Kumarji’s music today? As a case-study in answering this question, Satyasheelji will demonstrate a few of his own compositions that have emerged in response to the challenges his teacher placed before the world of Hindustani music, and will demonstrate how today’s musicians can take his ideas forward.
And finally, we will conclude the session with a screening of a rare video from one of Kumarji’s informal baithaks.
This is the second episode of Synthesis, a multidisciplinary quarterly musical series that will present a set of fine Indian Classical musicians (Hindustani and Carnatic) who seek to create a specially contemporary resonance with their listeners by exploring and integrating a more multidisciplinary worldview into their art form and its expression. While the core Indian Classical music concert experience retains its form and aesthetic principles, the musicians hope to add layers and interfaces with intersecting ideas from other art forms.
In collaboration with:
Supported by:
Musicians
Satyasheel Deshpande
Pt. Satyasheel Deshpande, based in Pune, is a uniquely creative Hindustani classical vocalist who is widely respected for his contributions as a performer, composer, musicologist, scholar, researcher, author and guru. He is the son of the renowned musicologist Pt. Vamanrao Deshpande and senior disciple of Padmavibhushan Pt. Kumar Gandharva.
In 1983, Satyasheel established the Samvaad Foundation at his residence in Mumbai. Here he created one of the largest and most valuable collections of Hindustani classical vocal music in India, a collection that continues to serve as an unrivalled source for the comparative study of this tradition. It was through this process that his unique, wide-ranging, eclectic and complex musical personality was forged. He is thus known today to be a performing musician with a rare understanding of diverse approaches to music making within the Hindustani tradition.
He has also sung for films, most famously in ‘Lekin’ with Smt. Asha Bhosle, for which he won the Best Playback Singer of the Year award. ‘Kahen’, one of his most popular albums, was published by the Master Deenanath Mangeshkar Foundation and launched by Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkar.
Satyasheel has received many awards including the Homi Bhabha Fellowship 1996, the Kumar Gandharva Fellowship 1999, Sursingar Samsad’s Tansen award, the Raza award for creativity in 2006, the Vatsalabai Bhimsen Joshi award 2013 and, Kusumagraj Pratishthan’s Godavari Gaurav Puraskar, 2018. His Marathi book on his musical journey, Gaan Gunagaan, (Rajhans Prakashan, 2022) is already in its second edition, has become a bestseller, and has won the Lokmat Sahitya Puraskar 2023.
Srijan Deshpande
Srijan Deshpande, based in Pune is a dedicated performer, researcher, teacher, and archivist of Hindustani vocal Khayal music. He continues to receive training in the genre from his father, the acclaimed vocalist and musicologist Pt. Satyasheel Deshpande. Srijan has over a decade of experience in the preservation, documentation, and dissemination of music at some of the most important music archives in India. He holds a doctoral degree in music research from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India, and his dissertation constructs a rigorous account of the musical alterity of the iconic vocalist Pt. Kumar Gandharva in the context of the twentieth-century tradition of Khayal music.
Srijan has previously taught courses on vocal music at various Indian universities, including FLAME University, Pune, and Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad. He was also co-creator/instructor for the MOOC course ‘Appreciating Hindustani Music’, produced by the Government of India’s Swayam program, and co-creator of a video series on Gharana music for the India Foundation for the Arts.
Srijan also writes on music for leading Indian publications such as The Hindu, Frontline Magazine and Scroll, and currently divides his time between performing, teaching, and studying Hindustani music as an independent researcher.
Rupak Kharvandikar
A software engineer by profession, Rupak Kharvandikar is a popular and talented Tabla accompanist of the younger generation based in Mumbai. Rupak had the good fortune of receiving guidance in Tabla under the tutelage of late Guru Pandit Bhai Gaitonde. He has explored the aesthetics of Tabla accompaniment for various genres such as Classical (Khayal), Semi Classical (Thumri, Dadra), Natyasangeet and light music (Ghazal, Bhakti Sangeet).
Rupak’s accompaniment is distinguished by the steadiness of rhythm, the clarity of his bol-s and a heightened sensitivity to the performer’s specific needs. He has received blessings from stalwart vocalists such as Pt. Satyasheel Deshpande, Pta. Asha Khadillkar, Pt. Vinayak Torvi, Ustad Raja Miya Khan for his Tabla accompaniment. He has also accompanied popular vocalists of the younger generation such as Rahul Deshpande, Jaytirth Mevundi, Smt. Devaki Pandit, Shashwati Mandal at concerts in India and abroad.
