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In the early 1950s, Pandit Rajeev Taranath was a Bengaluru-based English literature student who had grown up with an affection for classical music, literature, progressive values and a dislike for the sound of sarod.
To him, the sarod music he heard through the gramophone records of his parents — the illustrious scholar Pandit Taranath and his English professor and author wife Sumathi Bai — was too staccato. It was ironic then, that Rajeev Taranath, who admired the sitar and Pandit Ravi Shakar’s playing style and discipline, found himself inseparably connected to the sarod. “I hadn’t heard my guru (Ustad Ali Akbar Khan) till then,” he said in director Amshan Kumar’s short documentary on him.
Taranath, the seniormost disciple of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and a scholar of English literature (he was referenced in the famous Arden edition of Shakespeare) passed away in Mysuru on Tuesday. He was 92.
It was a concert by Shankar and Khan in Bangaluru (then Bangalore) that took Taranath to the inward space he didn’t think existed. He had only learned vocal music and tabla from his father till then, but decided to leave everything and learn sarod. A college topper, he kept listening to music while pursuing his career as a lecturer (he held a PhD in literature), until Shankar told him to seriously learn sarod. So in 1955, he quit academics for a while to learn music.
In a conversation with The Indian Express, Taranath’s guru bhai and sarod player Tejendra Narayan Majumdar said, “He had the closest touch of my Baba Ali Akbar Khan Saab, his tone, the intellectual density in the raga presentation of the Maihar baaj (playing style). I should say he was the best exponent of Ali Akbar Khan’s baaj of our times.”
But the move to Calcutta, without a job, was hard. He lived on one meal a day and slept at bus stations until he met a famous jeweller who decided to support Taranath for the next six years, allowing him to learn from Khan. Taranath performed extensively and spoke about music and literature all around the world.
Besides Khan, Taranath was also mentored by Shankar, Annapurna Devi and Nikhil Banerjee. He performed regularly and taught throughout his life. Besides being the Head of English literature at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, Taranath also taught English in the 80s at Aden University, Florida, and was the Head of Indian Music Programme at California Institute of Arts from 1995-2005.
He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2000 and the Padma Shri in 2019.
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