Below is a piece written for the SIFAS festival brochure a few years ago titled "The Jugalbandhi: Duet or Duel?" as a precursor to a featured BMK-Ajoy C jugalbandhi. Sorry about the length!
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Relative to other forms of classical art music from around the world, both leading forms of Indian classical music, Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian) are uniquely solo forms of presentation. The central artiste, vocalist or instrumentalist is the key performer. The other talented artistes on stage playing string, bowed, or wind instruments and percussion instruments such as harmonium, sarangi, violin, mridangam and tabla, are “accompanists” or “pakka vadyams” (literally side-instruments). They are rarely told beforehand what the main artiste is going to be performing. Indeed the main artiste will often decide right on stage how to begin the concert, and will make up the entire concert repertoire as a response to what she or he perceives of the audience’s mood and responsiveness.
The base of both forms of Indian music is the raga – which is more than just a scale of ascending and descending notes. A raga rendition’s essential purpose to evoke a certain mood or rasa in the audience. It has certain characteristic phrases and twists and turns, and certain no-no’s in terms of forbidden combinations of notes. The responsibility of the central artiste on stage is to offer his or her unique take on that raga for that particular audience. The artiste has to be mindful of all these complex rules, and yet must transcend the mere grammar of the raga to offer an aesthetically pleasing and spiritually uplifting performance for that audience. The accompanists are there to assist the artiste, in maintaining the sruti or base pitch, to maintain the rhthymic pace (laya) as well as the cycle (tala), to embellish the phrases of the main artiste, to inspire him or her to give off her best, and to complement what the artiste is offering to the audience.
Combining solo artistes into a jugalbandhi
Given this emphasis on the solo artiste’s expression or evocation of mood, how then do two different solo artistes come together on a stage to offer a joint presentation of a raga in a jugalbandhi? Indeed, traditionally, the only time two or more solo artistes would present concerts together were when they were siblings. Several famous pairs of brothers or sisters come to mind – the Dagar brothers of various generations in the north, and more recently the Gundecha brothers, and in the south, various pairs such the Karaikudi vainika brothers, the Alathur brothers, Brinda-Muktha of yesteryear or the Hyderabad brothers, Malladi brothers, Ranjani-Gayathri and numerous other sibling pairs of today. With grooming under a common guru, and constant practice in the accompanying presence of the other, and with the sheer experience of numerous concerts together, these pairs have all perfected the method of the duet. Each member of the pair typically has a unique strength and together they wonderfully complement each other. They are able also to come together in perfect unison for the common phrases, sangatis, and other composed sections. Even in these pairs though, sometimes, the carefully listening rasika will discern one member of the pair to sometimes have a subtly dominating presence over the other.
In the last century though, we began to see a number of attempts to stage jugalbandhis, especially in the Hindustani music scene, most famously starting with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan on sitar and sarod. Both prominent disciples of Ustad Allauddin Khan, and close collaborators over a number of years, they managed to establish a unison of performance vision that came close to the efforts of the various sibling pairs. And they were in the traditional Indian classical music sense, at least guru-bhais – brothers in the sense of being disciples of the same guru. The Ravi Shankar-Ali Akbar jugalbandhis were a novelty at their time but they went on to inspire many other successors to seek collaborations with other artistes. But there have not been many other lasting pairs who have left a long term impact as a performing couple.
Among the later pairs were notably Hariprasad Chaurasia (flute) and Shivkumar Sharma (santoor), Bismillah Khan (shehnai) paired variously with Vilayat Khan (sitar), Dr N Rajam (violin), and V G Jog (violin) and some of their recordings became all time best sellers during the latter half of the last century. Many other pairs did not last very long, with just the odd coupling or two to add spice to a festival line-up. And in the South, there have surprisingly not been too many such experiments, and very few long staying combinations, other than the very popular violin-venu-veena trio of Lalgudi Jayaraman, N Ramani and R Venkataraman of yesteryear, and the more recent pairing of Kadri Gopalnath (saxophone) playing duets with, rather than just accompanied by, A Kanyakumari (violin).
The challenge
This relative lack of success in terms of long standing partnership is perhaps a function of the very reasons mentioned before, of the solo nature of the Indian classical music art form, and the expression of an individual’s bhava or mood, as a way of evoking that same bhava in the audience for that date. Two artistes cannot easily come together on stage without adequate preparation and practice together to simultaneously participate in the “badhat” or development of a raga. It would be like asking two painters to paint together or a committee of poets to write a poem together. On the other hand, if there were too much practice and co-ordination earlier, that might ruin the spontaneous and jazz-like nature of the improvised parts of the music, which so importantly define the essence of all the Indian classical music forms.
Thus, these partnerships for the most part are titillating, provide for a fascinating combination of sounds of different instruments or voices, foster a slight sense of competition among the artistes on stage, with each exerting a slight force of inspiration on the other, and are very entertaining for a lay audience member. But to the discerning listener, looking for a grand raga development built on a strong edifice slowly but spontaneously put together for that occasion, these jugalbandhi efforts are often a little disappointing.
The cross-genre jugalbandhis
Over the last few decades, we increasingly see combinations of artistes from the South and North. Dr Balamuralikrishna has collaborated with many artistes from the North, notably Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pandit Jasraj and Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty. Many other Hindustani-Carnatic pairings have graced many a festival, including Hariprasad Chaurasia-N Ramani, the sibling violinist pair Dr N Rajam-T N Krishnan, Amjad Ali Khan-Lalgudi Jayaraman, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt-N Ravikiran, Ronu Mazumdar-Kadri Gopalnath and the spousal vocal pair Sriram Parasuram-Anuradha Sriram. Most of the recent SIFAS festivals have featured at least one such jugalbandhi.
These pairings across genres present a few specific challenges:
1. The ragas do not often match very well. Even when the musicians take up ragas that are exactly the same because one system has “borrowed” the raga from the other, like Hamsadhwani or Behag, these ragas often get very different treatment in the South versus in the North. As mentioned before, a raga is more than just a scale of ascending and descending notes. There are characteristic catch phrases, and moods that the ragas signify which are sometimes subtly different in the south versus the north. Hamsadhwani for example is almost always a concert opener in the southern tradition, and is rendered in the form of a very fast paced kriti that is uplifting and upbeat. Yet the north Indian interpretation of Hamsadhwani needs to follow the traditional format of badhat, building up from a very slow development in the lower part of the octave, to the later portions at the top of the octave. This gives a very somber and devotional mood to the exposition of the same raga. And where ragas are not exactly the same but just close substitutes, such as the popular jugalbandhi combinations of Bhoop-Mohanam and Yaman-Kalyani, there is an even bigger separation in terms of the evoked rasa or mood.
2. The form and length of exposition of the free form aalap is quite different in north and south Indian music. Indeed in the above example of Hamsadhwani, in the time taken to build up to the middle octave “ga” in a Hindustani recital, a Carnatic musician typically would have rendered raga, composition and rapid fire swaras and would have been on to the next composition! In these jugalbandhis therefore, the North Indian genre often exerts a slowing down influence on the Carnatic musician’s raga elaboration and that makes the southern musician sometimes sound like s/he is accompanying the Hindustani musician rather than being free to present the raga as in a solo recital. The North Indian musician rarely compromises, other than accepting to perform a borrowed Carnatic raga such as Simhendra Madhyamam, Kiravani or Charukesi.
3. The emphasis on tala (rhythmic cycle) and sahitya (lyrics) differs widely between the two genres, with the Carnatic version putting a lot more emphasis on both of these aspects of music. Hence the most common format presented as a jugalbandhi is the Ragam Tanam Pallavi which roughly at least corresponds to Alap, Jor and Gat/bandish. The lyrics are fewer, and there is a substantial non-rhythmic portion in the rendition. And the real rhythmic combinations are better experimented with and come to fuller effect in the tani avartanam or percussion duets of the mridangam and tabla. Thus the traditional khayal or kriti which are the mainstays of the two styles of music are not easily adaptable to be sung in a jugalbandhi format.
A possible formula
One particular “formula” which seems to work well for these cross-genre duets is:
1. The North Indian musician starts the raga development and continues the badhat into fairly late parts of the middle octave, say for ten to fifteen minutes, with the Carnatic musician adding graces here and there in the pauses.
2. The Carnatic musician then takes an equal amount of time presenting the raga exactly as she or he would for a solo Carnatic recital, feeling at liberty to traverse the octave in one fell swoop at the start itself if that is what the raga calls for, rather than following in step fashion, the example of the north Indian counterpart.
3. Once the raga’s full contours have been established at length like this, the two artists could take turns exploring various sections of the octaves in shorter and shorter sections and finally even phrases or individual notes, and at some point, if necessary, engaging in a rhythmic jod or tanam type exposition.
4. For the composition, similarly, it might be best for the Hindustani musician to develop the vilambit or slow composition (preferably the lyrics of a Sanskrit kriti’s pallavi) at length for ten to fifteen minutes, before the Carnatic musician pitches in with a full kriti rendition. And then they could join in for the improvised parts, with the north Indian taans being matched by the south Indian neravals or swaras.
A delightful recording of vocalists Shyamala Bhave (Hindustani) and Mysore Nagamani Srinath (Carnatic) shows the potential of this formula for more effectively conveying the bhava of a raga in a joint exploration. N Ravikiran also seems to adopt this formula in some of his joint ventures.
More than a synthesis of two solos
In any case, one should generally not go to a jugalbandhi concert merely expecting what one expects in a solo recital (or two!). The excitement of seeing two superbly trained artistes make music together has its own special attraction. Yes, there is the occasional sense of competition or dueling, but it is almost always in a very friendly and jesting spirit. Importantly, every once in a while, the two musicians come together in ways that vividly demonstrate the basic one-ness of both kinds of music, and perhaps even of all music. For these reasons, every jugalbandhi of this cross genre kind is a mind-opening experience.
The one in this festival between the vocal maestros Dr M Balamuralikrishna and Pandit Ajay Chakrabarty promises to be a fantastic feast for all, the novice and the expert, the North Indian and South Indian rasika, the long term Indian music fan and the non-Indian listening to these art forms for the first time. Joined as these musicians are by some fabulous accompanists, Ragavendra Rao (violin), T R Sundaresan (mridangam), Brajeswar Mukherjee (harmonium) and Yogesh Samsi (tabla), there will be much to look out for – in all aspects – raga, tala, composition and improvisation, and a rich texture of all the various sounds of this impressive ensemble in a climactic finish!
I've also come across pantuvarALi and whateveritis, which seems an OK choice, as is pUrvikalyANi/"pUrvi?". But I think these two rAgams need to be very intense in the CM, or will fall flat ... can't go hand-in-hand with the leisurely style generally adapted in HM.