This year,the Hindustani Classical Instrumental category at the Global Indian Music Awards,to be presented shortly,has a surprise entry. Alongside Ustad Shujaat Khan,Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia,Pandit Ronu Majumdar and Murad and Fateh Ali,Debanjan Bhattacharjees name would seem a misfit to most. But listeners following this young sarod player,might see this nomination as a deserved boost to his prospects. Bhattacharjee hasnt been the luckiest when it comes to getting breaks. In 2010,the organisers of Dover Lane Music Conference in Kolkata had dedicated a nightlong session to the memory of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,who had died the previous year. Five sarod players of the Maihar Gharana were lined up as tribute to the late maestros instrument and gharana,including his two sons Ustad Ashish Khan and Alam Khan. However,there was a glaring absence. It is not often that an exclusion gets talked about at the four-day Dover Lane event but listeners had expected to see Bhattacharjees name in a Maihar bonanza. Bhattacharjee,a disciple of Ustad Ashish Khan,was 24 at the time and had already made his mark at the smaller music organisations. Regular listeners were tipping him to be the next big sarod phenomenon from Maihar. A slot at Dover Lane would have served him well. The slot still eludes him. Bhattacharjee is an unusually reticent musician for his generation. Bespectacled,trained as an engineer,he is protective of his dignity,incapable of cold-calling organisers to promote himself. Even in his interviews,the pithy quotes,that are now part of every young musicians artillery,are missing. He usually ends his answers with Am I making sense? or Does that sound right? He prefers to wait for people to find him. He has got some of his better opportunities,including one at a prestigious international music festival at Qatar,through the democratic selection process of YouTube. More than anything else,this vindicates the quality of his music. He has internalised the Maihar ethos and has embellished it with his own ideas. At a recent concert,he played Bageshree Kanada for almost an hour and a half. There was mature restraint as he peeled open the sombre raga and,astonishingly,steered clear of repeating melodic motifs. He attributes his on-stage spontaneity to his gurus teaching methods. His (Khan's) style of teaching allows us to explore our own thoughts. In class,the tabla keeps playing,so we never lose track of the rhythm,and we have to keep improvising in the raga that we are learning. Guruji starts off and then we join in. Its a class,but with the structure of a performance, says Bhattacharjee. Despite his interests in musical explorations,he has not grabbed at collaborative music offers. Most of his contemporaries are regulars on the non-classical circuits,and the sarod is as popular a fusion instrument as any,but Debanjan is cautious about taking the plunge. He has done the occasional collaboration with the saxophone in Sweden,and a stringed orchestra in Doha but he has a few conditions before he agrees to a project. The music has to be such where the characteristics of the sarod can be realised. The sarod must be played as a sarod,with all its intrinsic playing aspects. I only know how to play Hindustani classical on the sarod,so I am going to do only that,in whatever context I play. And the other musicians will play their music,of course. And the two should blend, he says. He is not comfortable playing another genre of music,using the sarod as just another stringed instrument. His puritanism might seem at odds with current trends amongst young Hindustani musicians,but Bhattacharjee is more likely to benefit from this approach than otherwise. Many organisers in the country still shrink away from artistes who dabble in other genres of music. To them,as to many listeners from the same school of thought,Bhattacharjee is likely to stand out as a resolute young musician who is refusing to buckle under commercial pressures. He would certainly not like to see himself in this narrow framework,but if his perceived image serves him well,he has no reason to complain.
