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| ARTS TRIBUNE | Friday, August 31, 2001, Chandigarh, India |
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Carrying forward the sarod legacy Digital music revolution
Zee on the warpath |
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Carrying forward the sarod legacy SHREE Gangopadhayay has a mission in life — to carry the rich legacy of Hindustani classical music she inherited from her illustrious musical family to greater heights. And playing the role of a loyal daughter to her legendary father late Sangitacharya Shyam Gangopadhayay, Shree picked up the family instrument too — the Sarod. Shree is proud to have this musical lineage. With her parents, Shyam and Maya Gangopadhayay, playing the sarod and her uncle Hirendra Kumar Gangopadhyay being a famous tabla player, Shree had no other alternative than devote herself to the divinity of melody when she was barely five years old. Her repertoire is a happy synthesis of two major gharanas, that of Karamtualla Khan and Acharya Allauddin Khan of
Mehar. “At an age when kids play with dolls, listen to fairy tales, I was driven by the ambition to excel my father,” says Shree. It was the beat and rhythm — laya, taal, alaap, bandish — created by each stroke of the sarod, tabla and other instruments that used to fill up my dreams, she adds. Shree made her first appearance at the All-India Music Conference when she was only nine years old. Even today Shree enjoys the unique status of being one of the pioneer and outstanding sarod players in the country. Was it difficult for her to make her mark in a field which is solely dominated by men? “I was lucky to have proper guidance right from the beginning by my parents,” says Shree. “But women do have to face exploitation even in a noble profession such as classical music,” she adds. However, not many women have come forward to take up sarod, she rues. “Women generally opt for sitar as sarod is supposed to be a manly instrument,” says Shree. “Besides, sarod is tougher in comparison to the sitar as sarod has no freight system (grading scale) like the sitar, which means the whole process of creating melody is totally dependent on the balancing of the fingers only,” she adds. Why is sarod not popular among youngsters? “Sarod happens to be a slightly expensive instrument which can not be afforded by many enthusiasts,” Shree says. “Besides, the love for classical music in general is gradually on the decline,” she adds recalling the good old days when she used to accompany her father to concerts and the auditoriums used to be over-crowded with music lovers. Though music dominates a major part of the dedicated artiste’s life, her education was never given a secondary position. Shree holds a master’s degree in physiology from the University of Calcutta and is currently employed as a lecturer at Vidyasagar College for Women. Does holding two diverse profession’s affects each other’s efficiency? “Not any more, as I have disciplined myself to carry out both tasks seriously,” replies Shree. “However, my riyaz hours have been drastically cut because of the workload. While previously I used to play for 18 to 20 hours a day , now I can barely manage 4 to 5 hours a day,” she adds. Shree has performed in many prestigious conferences like Sadarang Music Conference, Surdas Music Conference, Banga Sanskriti Sammellan, Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan Memorial Sarod Festival, all over the country. Shree, who received the Critic Circle of India Award in 1988, is a regular performer at All India Radio and Doordarshan. She is also armed with a Sangeet Provakar degree from Prayag Sangeet Samilty, Allahabad. Shree is looking forward to her European tour which is being organised by the ICCR, Germany, and will be holding concerts in difference provinces of Germany, France and London. |
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Digital music revolution LET me take you down memory lane when we used to rush to the only music shop in town to buy the latest music album, enjoyed it till the tape sounded like grandma’s shivering voice, then repented for having spent a bomb on something that did not last long. Then evolved the most compact form of music which sounded much sharper and lasted much longer, this digital music was sold in containers called compact discs. Developed and refined between 1964 and 1985, compact-disc technology swept the consumer market during the late 1980s and early 1990s, displacing almost completely long-play vinyl albums. In the past few years, a new method of distributing digital music has become increasingly popular — transmission of containerless music files via Internet, followed by storage on personal PCs. These digital music files are saved in an audio compression format called MP3 which uses very less disk space (IMB) and are very fast to download (1 minute/IMB). The added advantage of this kind of revolutionised music is that along with music, the computer files can also store album graphics, recording-artiste biographies, notes, a link to the artiste’s website/related sites, and even the songs’ lyrics! What else could you ask for about your favourite music artiste and his latest album. Now you don’t have to spend on buying a cassette or a CD which has only two or three songs of your choice, instead you can store music of your own choice and enjoy it for as long as u want. This concept of music was a craze amongst generation X until the Napster court battle heated up which eventually led to the closure of illegal sharing and distribution of music files through Internet. But the universal appeal of music brought forth a technology. Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) and today we can not only “buy” music of our choice from the net, but can legally download ringtones on our mobile devices too! Soundbuzz is one of the first one-stop-shop for the music media needs of the retailers, consumers and corporates, offering a range of value added services to facilitate digital music commerce with a focus on the Asia Pacific region across India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. “Soundbuzz is involved in the promotion and distribution of off-line and on-line digital music content produced by major and independent record labels and independent artistes”, says Mr Mandar Thakur, Director, Music and Marketing, Soundbuzz India. It aggregates this digital music content from local and international music labels and disseminates this content through various distribution channels — TV, radio, Internet, wireless devices (mobile phones, PDA’s etc). According to Mr Vivek Paul (Head of Music and Marketing, Soundbuzz India), Microsoft® Windows MediaTM Rights Manager, the end-to-end digital rights management (DRM) system that offers content providers and retailers a flexible platform for the secure distribution of digital media files, is the technology behind the secure music downloads. So, now you can download and enjoy “your kind of music” in the comfort of your home and that too legally! |
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Zee on the warpath ZEE never does anything by halves. It prefers to do things by doubles or more. It doubled the ante with its own gameshow after KBC forged ahead with Star’s ratings. The result was disaster. It left Zee red in the face and poor Anupam Kher and Monisha Koirala with tarnished reputations through no fault of theirs. And now, after a hush-hush period, Zee has started its own little “Pearl Harbor”, or, if you prefer, “Blitzkrieg”. Mercifully, media columnists were spared the press briefing together with the customary cocktails and dinner at a five-star hotel. Before the full-page ads in newspapers, we all had to pretend it was surprise, surprise, until little Miss Sweetie Pie appeared on the screen on Day One to tell us she was the new Zee. Which, in effect means 26 new serials, no less, mostly about domestic bliss or lack of it and there are so many characters, so many plots and so many sub-plots, that one gets confused after a time about who whose and what’s what. I mainly watched the two “craze phor phoren” serials, one appropriately named “Deewane, Deewane”, to enlighten Zee’s middle-class viewers about what it feels like to be NRI parents with growing children, or alternatively, home-grown parents with children studying and working abroad. So we start “Deewane Deewane” with a shot of St. Peter’s in Rome and then pan to London Bridge to show we are in “Vilayat”. And Vicky’s parents are very worried because he spends all his time strumming away, wanting to be a pop musician when papa wants him to be a doctor and mama, who is dressed as if in “Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” even when doing the housework, supports papa. Well, we all know Vicky will ultimately become a famous pop musician. Then off to Singapore in the other serial, where daughter of fond parents, who is an architect, has consented to papa on the phone that she will meet his best friends’s son, also coincidentally in Singapore (lots of photogenic shots of high-rise buildings) with a view to arranged marriage. Dutiful Indian girl, even when abroad. Unfortunately, she meets, after her car breaks down, a handsome young Pakistani with a similar name. Danger ahead, you can see. But he is no Toba Singh, nor even a daredevil Sikh lorry driver, so hopefully it won’t feel so bad. One can be sure. Not in Singapore. All these super brats drive lush cars, but seem unhappy driving them in “phoren” traffic. You only see them driving off or with break-downs. But with so many serials, many of the leads are poor actors and look like hopefuls who have gone to Mumbai in search of stardom but landed up on the small screen because Zee was desperate. So if Zee thinks faithful viewers, however, serial addicted, will watch a new serial every day every half hour, they are being optimists. But it you ask me if I really enjoyed anything in Zee’s new look, I was greatly tickled, as must have been his many friends, to see our very own colleague Suhel Seth in a jet black false moustache, with jet black trousers to match, white shirt and brown coat in his Haan Hann Naah Naah programme. I have had a few fleeting looks at DD recently, Krishi Darshan, still well done, and a reminder of what a public service broadcaster should be doing. Then an interview by Smita Prakash of Sashi Tharoor. News anchors are not necessarily
qualified for literary interviews, and it soon became clear that what Tharoor was talking about was far above her head. Ms Prakash had lined up a long list of questions not necessarily in the right sequence (good interviews throw up new questions as they go along) and some of them were naive in the extreme. Such as how could Tharoor document something about India when he had been in the USA for so long (Tharoor kept on repeating his was a work of fiction). Why did Tharoor rake up riots in his book when there had been no riots in India for long? Ironically, the news bulletin which followed led with the riots that day in Ahmedabad. The cutting in of clips was overdone and far too literal and Smita sometimes started off with her prepared questions before Tharoor, who was courteous, informative and patient, had finished his answer. A TRIBUTE: It has hurt me to find that there were no obituaries of Doordarshan personality Mukta Srivastava, who passed away this month after a brave two-year battle against cancer. A star in her own right when DD reigned supreme, Mukta, who was from a distinguished family of Allahabad, spoke Hindi and Urdu with equal finesse, anchored several concerts of classical music which she loved and understood, and top international events like ASIAD 82, NAM, for which Indira Gandhi congratulated her and Fidel Castro literally patted her on the back. DD should have used her natural flair and vast popularity with viewers for special programmes when she was no longer doing news-related programmes after retirement. But, alas, DD will be DD and a major talent was wasted at the end. |
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