Sunday, April 11, 2021

 Kishori Amonkar, for whom Sur was Soul of Cosmos


Although she belonged to Jaipur Gharana by lineage, she broke away from shackles of Gharanas and brought essence of Indian Music -- the bhava, emotive sentience, forward. To represent raga, was to represent the bhava and assimilate into its expression so that atmosphere is created - not attained, and without the "I".

For her, Each note was a soul. Thou soul, my soul, soul of cosmos. That scintillating spark through each one of us. A sur had material existence, just as it is transcending. They must be honored. She'd walk slowly, gracefully, checking each step towards the podium, she would sit -- deeply disturbed, in perennial anguish. The tabla didn't attune well, so did the voice-over. It echoed. How could Surs live here? And nor would she. It required order, a certain sanity, only she grasped. She lived, and sang in its embrace. 

"This world, effigy of paper..."

And yet it existed. It formed the essence on which the eternal thrived: Emotive Sentience - the bhava is everything. The early morning mist, and the twilight of evening, the scorching afternoon and emptiness of falling night, came with bhav, ragas abstracted; no; they are the bhav. "It is so minute that it that an atom can disturb it. Then there's nothing" .And we are the medium. We are 'no' thing; we are the bhava.  We should try and be the one. That is music.

"Oh, Lord, not anymore, This foreign barrenness..."


She transcended music into emotive sentience; primordial sound becomes one, as she passes away into that singularity :If ever there is one, she was it. There's no solace, no sound, only silence.

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