Strings that Bind

Alam opened his performance with the night melody of Baageshri Kanada. His first note hinted at the focus he would bring to the performance with two resonators (most people play with a single resonator). With the bandish, he gained momentum even as the tabla joined in. Khan’s fingers hovered around pa (pancham) and touched the note as infrequently as possible, avoiding it in faster passages, something that is important in the raga. What the piece lacked in finesse (the transitions were not as smooth), it made up with its meditative quality. Alam didn’t experiment a lot with the meends (glide from one note to another).

We saw only touches of the beenkaari baaj but waited for a gust of his music steeped in his Californian upbringing to give us a flavour of the streets of Maihar, which reverberate with LPs of Khan and Shankar’s music even today. He brought the yearning notes of raag Maand Khamaj to the fore. The intricate zigzag patterns of notes, like a trapeze act, delighted the audience with the raga, which has evolved from Rajasthani folk music. Every komal swar was brought to perfection, and unconventional and old world taans were delightful.

Alam came across as a more introspective sarod player than his contemporaries. He did not go for heavy strumming for a jhaala towards the end. There were no vigorous tihaais or any flamboyance, but a simple melodic ending, the way Ustad Ali Akbar Khan would have wanted it.