AN EVENING OF RAGAS

MUSIC has always been cinema's invisible character the one that moves the story forward without a word.

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On Sunday evening at Bharat Kalakshetra, it stepped into the spotlight. Manabendra Smaraney, a collective formed to pay tribute to the legendary maestro Manabendra Mukhopadhyay, conceptualised 'Raag, Roop aur Rang', an event where film songs based on classical ragas are performed by an ensemble. This edition welcomed Pt Ajoy Chakraborty for the second time to perform with his students from Shrutinandan, a Kolkata-based music institution. The evening aimed to dissolve the borders between Carnatic and Hindustani traditions.

TNIE was the media partner.

The concert began with a short audio-visual presentation of an original song, 'Ek Jaadu Ka Ped' (The Magical Tree), composed by the Shrutinandan team. It imagined a tree where birds from every corner of the world arrive, each tasting fruits of different kinds, and learning new songs in the process.

"That's what Shrutinandan is, the magical tree," Ananjan Chakraborty, Ajoy's son, who is also a music composer and a sound engineer, explained about the AV, establishing the idea of music as a shared language.