Myriad shades of the monsoon
JITENDRA PRATAP
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Red Earth's weeklong event, The Monsoon, showcased a medley of creative works and readings, concluding with Urmila Srivastava's melodious kajri songs.
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CREATIVE CLOUDBURST Raag Sarath Malhar, a work by Jyoti Bhatt, which was part of the festival exhibition.
The weeklong festival The Monsoon, conceived and curated by Himanshu Verma of Red Earth and presented in collaboration with the Alliance Francaise de Delhi, showcased the special place the season holds in the Indian heart. An omnipotent creative catalyst, it is the source of multi-hued awakenings and experiences, from the delightful expression of love (in celebration and bereavement) to the experience of change as symbolised in nature (and a celebration thereof), to inspiring awe and terror with its ferocious grandeur at times. To state the obvious, it is capable even of polar experiences, as in the case of it being associated with fertility and renewal on the one hand, and havoc, chaos and destruction on the other. The monsoon is not just the rain, but also the season, that offers a range of other complex sensual, visual and aesthetic experiences. And this festival presented varied interpretations and narratives of the monsoon in visual art, music, theatre, cinema and readings.
The visual art exhibition at the Galerie Romain Rolland entitled The Monsoon Chapter, curated by Verma, comprised works of as many as 37 artists including Jatin Das, Gogi Saroj Pal, Vivek Sharma, Shamshad Hussain, Lekha Bhagat and Sanjay Bhattacharya to name just a few.
There were screenings of films like "Rain Songs of Bollywood", Sudhir Mishra's "Chameli", Rituparna Ghosh's "Raincoat", Ashim Ghosh's "My Front Balcony" and Spandan Bannerjee's "Tuesday Rushes".
"The Theater", directed and designed by Pranab Mukherjee and performed by Best of Kolkata Campus, was notable for the blend of traditions of the theatre of images and Chhau. It was based on Sri Aurobindo's translation of Kalidas' Meghdoot and with Chandra Rajan's translation of the text, weaving in a contemporary sub-text of a Sikh family in Trilokpuri in 1984. There were `Multi-lingual Readings on Monsoon' by Jeet Thayil (English), Krishna Sobti (Hindi) and Sohail Hashmi (Urdu). `The Music' (fusing musical experiences of the rain) comprised compositions by Hip Hop poet and musician Nitin Sukh with visuals by Ashim Ghosh.
The festival concluded on a melodious note with renderings of kajri by the noted folk singer from Mirzapur, Urmila Srivastava. It was preceded by a well-researched lecture-demonstration with visuals by Shefali Bhushan, CEO of Beats of India, a record label and website dedicated to the popularisation of folk music of India. Shefali described in good detail the various forms of kajri songs from the folk tradition that are sung during the monsoon. These include kajri, malhars, rituraina, alaha-udal and several others sung by the folk singers of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Malwa and Uttaranchal regions. There were a good number of video and audio clips from the Beats of India recordings.
Kajri
Urmila presented various kajris, which are the `songs of the Indian monsoon'. Most of the kajris she sang were from the Mirzapur region of Uttar Pradesh, well known for the form. She also rendered kajris from the Benares region. While the Mirzapur kajris were from folk traditions, the ones from Benares were somewhat in the semi-classical form of `thumri-dadra'. The ones that pleased most were "Piya mehndi lagao, moti bhi lao", "Suna suna mor bhawanwa" and "badarwaa rim-jhim barase". The Benares kajri, "Saawan jhari laila" was quite a liltingly sung number. Urmila impressed with her melodious renderings with good lungpower and neat enunciation of the lyrical contents.
She had a plethora of able accompanists with Om Prakash (harmonium), Mohammad Hakeem (tabla), Brijesh (dholak), Bablu Srivastava (banjo) and Pappu (side effects).
Himanshu Verma and the Red Earth team certainly did put in a lot of hard work to make the festival a success. One very much liked the colourful swing (jhoola) in the background with sculptures of Radha and Krishna.
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