An Eclectic Tribute To Dagarbani

For four days in January 2017, a small group of discerning aficionados of music braved Mumbai’s atrocious traffic and weekend attractions to attend Sannidhi, a performing arts festival held in memory of the dhrupad maestros Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Zia Fariduddin Dagar.

The ustads were revered by students and lovers of dhrupad music all over the world. The festival celebrated its third edition this year with a selection of art forms and artists, carefully chosen to showcase and celebrate the variety of performing art forms in India.

The Dagars were eclectic in their love of good music, and devoted to their expression of the Dagarbani style of dhrupad in its traditional form. They could appreciate the myriad dance forms of India as much as they loved the masterpieces of Western classical music. It is this diversity that Bahauddin Dagar, rudraveena exponent and son of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, seeks to preserve, propagate and celebrate. Sannidhi, true to its name, stimulates that creative expression in the artist which elevates consciousness from the base to the sublime. The performances at the festival did that, in significant measure.

Sannidhi kicked off with the Koodiyattam performance of Kapila Venu. A conferee of the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar, she gave a performance that was intense, lyrical, and emotive. The engaging rhythms to her performance was provided on the mizhavu by Jayaraj and Rajeev, and on the chenda by Unnikrishnan. The theme selected for the day was the legend of Chitrangada, one of the wives of the Pandava prince, Arjuna. Kapila selected Rabindranath Tagore’s adaptation of this legend, in which he infuses the character of the warrior princess with the emotions of love, longing and ultimate triumph in the recognition of her merit as a woman of substance. This played out in about two and a half hours, exposing the audience to the possibility of emotive expression in the absence of any kind of human language. There is economy of stage and body usage in Koodiyattam, unlike other dance forms. The artist’s hands and face are the prime agents to express emotion. It was a compelling presentation, and made for a perfect start.