Alap 0:03-2:18
Medium Fast Gat in Teental 2:19-7:50
These performances are from a selection of about thirty gat compositions out of several hundred preserved and taught by Ustad Irfan Khan, the hereditary 'khalifa' or head, of one of the founding schools of sarod music, the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana. Even though Khansahib has credited this particular composition to Basat Khan, the Senia teacher of his ancestor Niamatullah Khan, it bears the signature of the Lucknow and Rampur sarod masters of the 19th century, so one would not be surprised if it is actually a creation of the great Niamatullah Khan himself.
The objective of this presentation is to take this timeless treasure from the past -- dating from around 1820 to the late 20th century -- and to give it a contemporary voice. Arnab Chakrabarty, one of the most renowned sarod artists of the present times, started learning this material from Ustad Irfan Khan in 2017. Himself a disciple of the late Dr. Kalyan Mukherjea and Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta, Chakrabarty comes from a lineage that employs a set of techniques and voicing roughly analogous to those used by Irfan Khan and his family. This ensures the compatibility necessary to retain the innate aesthetics of the music while still presenting it in the artist's own way.
The artist gratefully acknowledges funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as strong support from the Small World Music Centre and Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, throughout this recording project. Without this support, it would not have been possible to present this music with such production values.
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Personnel:
Sarod: Arnab Chakrabarty (web: sarod.ca)
Tabla: Jasmeet Chana
Videography: Golan Sahraei
Audio: Reza Moghaddas
Editing and graphics: Edgar Maldonado