Listen: Ten Indian classical music performances by writer Amit Chaudhuri from 1989 to 2002
These include a recently recovered set of recordings.
Scroll.in recently posted in these pages a 2002 recording of mine of Gujri Todi (in vilambit ektaal, madhyalaya jhaptaal, and drut teentaal), from a CD released by a small company called Lotus Print. Here, now, is its other track, raga Madhuvanti, in madhyalaya or medium-tempo jhaptaal, drut or fast teentaal, and, finally, a tarana in drut teentaal.
All three compositions, as in the Gujri Todi recording, are by my guru Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale’s father, the extraordinary Pandit Laxman Prasad Jaipurwale (1915-1977). Panditji, as the latter was called, was the most aesthetically and intellectually innovative creator of khayal compositions of his generation; possibly, even, the greatest after Sadarang and Adarang. Besides the beauty of the words, it’s the daunting but astonishingly beautiful taan and laya patterns that mark out a composition as being his.
It seems he composed no drut khayals or taranas for beginners. This is not to say there’s any excess about the compositions; they’re both unexpected and precise. I should add that his taranas are unique, as the ones in Madhuvanti and in Jog Bahar show. Their structures explore the sort of long rhythmic developments that are usually associated with dance.
In the Madhuvanti tarana, you’ll find that the sthayi (the first part of the composition) occupies three cycles of teentaal before arriving at the sama, or the one in the cycle. The Jog Bahar tarana is a reminder that layakari or rhythmic permutation in the tarana is not, for Panditji, short bursts of repetition but a complex, dance-like exploration.
A selection of other classical recordings by Amit Chaudhuri: