CHANDIGARH, JAN 31: Hearing Bhairavi at night? Well, in these times of innovations and fusion, you can have morning raagas at night. And the artiste too was not the conventional type, for this disciple of the unconventional guru, Pandit Ravi Shankar, played classical music on the Hawaiian guitar a la Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. And Barun Kumar Pal showed that it was not the medium but the ecstatic output that mattered.The concert was arranged by the Association of Resident Doctors and the Academy of Indian Classical Music and Fine Arts along with S M Vision at the PGI Auditorium this evening. Barun, whose determination to make classical music reverberate from his Hawaiian guitar moved Ravi Shankar to take him into his fold, commenced the evening with a dedication to his guru as he has just got the Bharat Ratna. It was Charukesi he chose, the Carnatic raaga made popular by his guru and we heard the undulating alaap, the rhythmic jod and the ecstatic jhala brought in by him along with tabla-player Uday Mazumdar. After an evocative Bhajan, composed by him, Barun concluded with the evergreen Babul mora in Bhairavi. And left the audience on an elevated plateau.
