Ancient Court Raga Traditions

Track List

Raga Malkauns
Raga Bagesri

Only part of India’s noblest classical instrumental traditions have been adequately documented on recordings, beginning with sitarist Imdad Khan in 1905. With the compact disc, raga performances could expand from pioneering 4-minute excerpts on 78 rpm discs to span well beyond an hour on CD, allowing full development and style to unfold. One vital court style remains in a fragmentary way: the ancient art of dhrupad, characterized by slowly singing and playing which favored the arhythmic alap section and based on the ancient Vedic chant. Too few of these family-based traditions survived the ending of royal patronage. Amongst them are the Pathaks, representing a musical lineage through 5 generations of dhrupad singers, veena players and sitarists, with the current generation including a composer and tabla player. The first musician to be recorded was Pandit Balaram Pathak (1923-1991), represented by two LPs released in India (Regal S/ELRZ 15; HMV ECLP 2365) and one single CD (Ocora 588672). In light of their importance and unique musical style, this scant representation created an inappropriate neglect until now.Ancient Court Raga Traditions

Balaram Pathak had been court musician to the Maharajah of Cossim-Bazar in Murshidabad, West Bengal (north of Calcutta, near Malda). When India gained independence, the system of court sponsorship of musicians came to an end. Compelled to provide for their existence by satisfying the public’s taste and developing careers, musicians in traditions favoring virtuosity rose in a star-oriented hierarchy which eclipsed the older dhrupad-based styles. Although overlooked by this change in taste, the Pathaks maintain prominence amongst musicians: Ravi Shankar, for one, deeply admired this family’s heritage and was influenced in his youth by Balaram Pathak’s father and uncle Rameswar Pathak [get quote]. As the senior Pathak admonished his four musical sons, “Your work must be bigger than your name!”

Balaram Pathak’s eldest son, Pandit Ashok Pathak (b. 1949, in Bodhgaya), studied sitar and surbahar under his father, then learned tabla and composition: “My father was always teaching and performing so these were my first musical impressions. We lived in Calcutta. I began playing when I was about 5 or 6 years old. When I was 10 or 11 I began playing in children’s concerts for the radio.”

The first raga assigned to Ashok was Yaman, then Bhairav, which his father insisted he to the exclusion of any other ragas, in-depth, over a ten-year period: “It was hard to learn one raga again and again but I still love Yaman and the Kalyan that and play it. If you learn one so well, you can play the others. I was very drawn then to learn Malkauns and Darbari Kanada. My father was often playing at home Bilaskhani Todi, Bhairavi, Pilu, Jaijaivanti and many others but every raga he played in a special way. I began studying the surbahar at 13 or 14. The first ragas I studied with surbahar were Komal Rishab Asawari. My father wished that I play on the sitar more to develop speed and technique, telling me to ‘play more sitar to open yourself’, as the surbahar favors alap and must be played slowly. But when I played it I wanted more and more to develop the alap section as it had a greater scope than the sitar for developing the alap.

“My father was thinking in this way and I now understand this because the sitar as an instrument is not meant just to play the frets, the notes. Of course you can play on such a big neck with speed, but it’s not so easy to play the low, middle and high octaves equally – it’s much work, but possible. The main point of the beauty of the sitar is the meend technique [ornamentation provided by bending notes with the fretting hand]; the sound is so sweet, like a human voice, from pulling the strings and taking out the sound. That’s why [my father] worked so much on it. [Other techniques] are possible to play on any other instrument. He said that even the faster parts, like the jhala, we are playing with meend. That’s why we develop everything in meend technique and it is the most difficult one. On the surbahar, I can play meend going up to an octave. My father also went that far, 7 or 8 notes.”

Balaram Pathak also introduced the use of harmonics on sitar with meend, heard on his one CD. This unique practice has further explored by Ashok, who uses it extensively, along with thematic playing on the sympathetic strings. Before beginning a raga, he dwells on these strings, at times playing two simultaneously, creating harmonies which he adopted after having heard it in pre-Renaissance Western music (in polyphonic works by Perotin, Josquin des Prez, etc…).

Ashok Pathak received a masters degree from the Praya Sangeet Samiti (music college) in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, his studies benefiting from theoretical and historic knowledge, whereas his performance abilities were already complete. He also assisted in the workshop of Hiren Roy, the master instrument builder of Calcutta, for over a 15-year period, learning the construction and becoming adept at the shaping and filing of sitar and surbahar tuning bridges (rabbin jiwari). But the main influence remained his father’s art, and that of his mother’s family. His maternal grandfather was the pakawaj player Chote Narayan Mallick, a family member of the noted Mallick dhrupad gharana and a relative of the Siyaram Tiwary, noted member of another dhrupad-singing family. His grandfather was Ram Chatur Mallick, the distinguished dhrupad singer with whom he performed in 1971-1974 and had received lessons. Another member of their family was the late tabla master Mahapurush Mishra, related on the paternal side. The family knew the Dagars, Ashok having heard the senior brother perform, as well as their elder relative Rahimuddin, the first recorded member of their gharana.

A resident of Delft, Holland, Ashok Pathak divides his time between teaching at the Het Koorenhuis World Music center in Den Haag [The Hague} and performs concerts throughout Europe and India of traditional ragas, along with projects involving other traditions. Our recording took place over two afternoons. Each raga was played through once and without any changes or edits, and the decision was made to play Malkauns on the second afternoon. As Balaram Pathak recorded one short work on surbahar, these performances further reveal the rare court tradition Pandit Ashok represents, its continuation despite the odds of a diminishing public which prefers khyal, and the musical contributions made by the performer himself to further their lineage.

Ashok Pathak discography:
1993: Saraswati Records CD 3301: The Colourful World of Pandit Ashok Pathak
with Sandip Bhattacharya, tabla and pakhawaj
ragas: Bhairav [surbahar], Gayan Kali [sitar], Hindol bahar [sitar]

1996: Clic Music [private edition]:
with Sandip Bhattacharya, tabla
Raga Kausik Dwani; Dhun in Shivranjani [sitar]

2000: Vision Productions VP 7300: Synergy
with Sandip Bhattacharya, tabla
Ragas Ahir Bhairav, Kirwani, Dhun in Mishra Shivranjani [sitar]

World Arbiter 2003

Pandit Ashok Pathak, surbahar

Track List