Meera Bai - Harikatha

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rshankar
Posts: 13754
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:26

Meera Bai - Harikatha

Post by rshankar »

I had downloaded a set of 5 tracks from Arvind's dad's blogspot (you know what I mean) of a harikatha on the life and compositions of mIrA bAi by Smt. Vishakha Hari that I finally got to hear recently. The music was beautiful, and the artist presented some very wonderfully tuned hitherto unheard compositions, and her use of the compositions was very imaginative. However, I had several concerns about the overall presentation - I am not aware if these have been raised before:
1) According to evidence I am aware of, mIrA becomes a widow and is tortured by her brother-in-law who ascends the throne after her husband dies without a male heir. Finally, she decides to leave rAjasthAn and heads to vrindAvan where she spends many years of her life before merging with krishNa. In many of the compositions, she refers to the tortures she was subjected to by her brother-in-law (whom she refers to as the king, rANA) - as in 'vish kA pyAlA rANAjI nE bhEjyA' and the episode where he sends her a snake...
2) In filming the movie 'Meera' certain changes were made, and the saint-poetess was shown as a 'sumangali' when she merges with krishNa...
3) Smt. Hari chose to follow the story-line in #2, and altered the stories in the compositions to fit this - what I mean by this is that she interpretted the cruel rANA of mIrA's compositions as her husband, and not her brother-in-law. This lead to a sequence of stories that I do not think are correct.
4) The lyrics of several of the compositions used (many of them very well known) were incorrect in several places, it made me flinch. I think that every artist has the obligation to authenticate the lyrics they sing, but for a harikatha artist, it should become a sacred 'duty'. These days, with no dearth of experts who are available for consultation, it is inexcusable to not do so.
5) Her pronunciation of hindi/rAjasthAni left much to be desired. From someone who does a very good job with sanskrit words, I was very surprised to hear these egregious mispronunciations.
But despite these major (they are major to me) flaws, the program was undoubtedly engaging. AND, let me repeat, the musicailty of the program did not suffer from the issues highlighted above.

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