Indian Music Serves Up Instrumental Smorgasbord

Author: Laura Rockefeller

Some music has the marvelous gift of being able to create new and beautiful worlds, giving rise to dormant feelings and stirring imaginations to soar far away from whatever dreary surroundings in which they find themselves trapped. Such was the mysterious music that filled the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on Sunday night in the concert entitled "Ghazal."

This performance was a series of improvisations in the Persian and Indian traditions on three instruments that are rarely, if ever, used in Western music - the sitar, the kamancheh and the tabla. The sitar and the kamancheh (which, literally translated, means "spike violin"), blended beautifully together while still maintaining distinct qualities. Their sounds gave poignancy to the moments when one instrument would echo a theme introduced by the other. The tabla, a set of two hand drums, not only provided a grounding beat in parts of the piece but also, when the drummer slid the base of his palm over the top of the drum, emitted a sound with a distinct pitch. At times it almost sounded like the cry of a human voice.

The musicians themselves, Shujaat Hussain Khan on the sitar and vocals, Kayhan Kalhor on the kamancheh and Sandeep Das on the tabla, seemed to completely lose themselves in the beautiful sounds they were creating. Their movements as they played took on elements of choreography as Kalhor and Das on the sides swayed back and forth in time with the rhythms. Khan embellished his vocals with graceful hand gestures. They were certainly a very elegant visual, sitting on a beautiful Persian carpet, raised slightly above the stage on a platform covered with a white sheet, almost giving the impression that they were floating just above the stage on the energy created by their music.

Each half of the concert consisted of two improvised pieces that together lasted roughly half an hour a piece and were designed to evoke different moods corresponding to the different times of day. Khan explained that the phrases played during the first half of the concert were those that usually assigned to music in the morning, while the second half of the concert was made up of phrases mainly heard in music played at night. Although within each half the two pieces often sounded very similar, there was a distinct difference between the mood of the pieces before and after intermission.

The first half of the concert had a very positive and introspective flavor. The sprightly notes and frequent calls back and forth between the sitar and the kamancheh produced the effect of spreading a great feeling of beauty and contentment. The rhythm vacillated between fast and slow, and the stirring beat of the tabla came in and out. There was always a feeling of hope and promise embedded somewhere in the music.

When the strains of the second act began to flow from the instruments, however, there was suddenly a strong sense of longing, as though the music were reaching out, searching for something unattainable - for home or companionship or something just out of reach. There was an intense feeling of nostalgia for the past. The beauty of the music was not of this time or place but from a richer, more spiritual past that is shrouded in the mists of time. Although not all of the audience members returned after intermission (one of the hazards of giving a concert of relaxing music to college students on a Sunday night) those who did stay gave the performers a unanimous standing ovation at the end of the evening. The concert had proven a wonderful escape from the prosaic reality of the cold and rainy October night in Vermont.