Hypnotic flows of music from multi-award-winning composer and sitar virtuoso Jasdeep Singh Degun, in duet tonight with foremost tabla exponent Gurdain Rayatt, brought an evening of uplifting fascination.
Renowned for taking music collaborations in exciting, innovative directions, in 2022, Singh Degun, as Artist in Residence at Opera North in Leeds, composed and performed as part of a ground-breaking production of Monteverdi’s Orpheus, a breathtaking blend of 1600’s Western operatic singing and orchestration with colourful classical Indian music, played on Indian instruments by members of South Asian Arts UK (SAA-uk) and sung , too, in Indian singing styles. For tonight’s finale the composer played his Lament for Eurydice from that opera, a semi-classical, freer piece than a traditional raga, one of which created the mainstay of the evening. This followed, of course, a lengthy tuning-up process. With eighteen or more strings on a sitar (some plucked while others vibrate and resonate) tuning takes a while; Rayatt’s pair of little tabla drums were sorted more quickly, though, using a shiny, silver hammer and ensuring a small reserve of talcum powder was at hand. Then the Northern Indian raga began.
A raga is a traditional story-telling melody that slowly develops through different changes (or “movements”). Ragas or raags have been passed on down through the generations but each player creates their own version, bringing to the set patterns, riffs and rules of the piece their own vision, creativity, talent and emotion, each performance a fresh improvisation and with spontaneous interactions with fellow performers.
An evening raga was chosen tonight, Jasdeep pouring pensive, meditative melancholy into the long opening solo section, feeling his tranquil way toward eventual tempo accelerations, ornamentations, repeated riffs and climactic, sensuous, dynamic build-ups. Meanwhile, tabla-player and fellow teacher, Gurdain Rayatt, sat fully focused and absorbed in the mood and emotion at every moment, just like the audience (or most of them, anyway) as he waited to make his own contributions.
The two men, dressed – purely by chance – in coordinated kurta and turbans of smart black, sat cross-legged for over an hour (miraculously avoiding numb feet and bendy-leg pins and needles), focused upon each other at every moment, sharing constant eye-contact, smiles, facial expression and a great awareness and appreciation of the other’s music in order that their playing might come together, gel and dovetail, sometimes in glorious splendour.
Using a mic, Jasdeep talked and joshed in friendly fashion about the music (and the recordings available for signing afterwards, including the latest vinyl, not officially realised till next day in London). Some had hoped to hear more about the instruments but that was not to be this time.
The reflective, peaceful mood, created by the delicately sensitive, singing, ringing, clean-edged melody and familiar, pitch-bending, wailing, wafting pulls on the sitar’s strings, was eventually accompanied by the percussive ping-patter-bom of the tabla, the music again gradually gathering pace. Engaging flows of pulse, rhythm and increasing ornament built in complexity above the underlying drone, demanding more and more creative and technical mastery and versatility of the players. The excitement and energy of elaborate musicianship became truly stunning as the neat tap-slap-patter-bom acrobatics of Rayatt’s tap-dancing fingers increased to a flying, fluttering blur, and foot-tapping rhythms and pulses built to climax as wupp-woof sounds swooped and slid in heady frenzy along the neck of Singh’s singing sitar.
As tempi, dynamics and mood ebbed and flowed, vague hints of Bagpuss and the Beatles, of bottle-neck blues, jazz improvisations, zither, mandolin and classical guitar may have flitted, just fleetingly, across some minds during this “mystery tour” journey, but what an engrossing journey it was, that engaged all the way with its vibrant, uplifting beauty.
Eileen Caiger Gray
