Am falling a bit behind in putting up fresh ragas, so here’s a small episode from a recent concert, where I played the afternoon raga – Madhuvanti. (Known as Dharmavati in Carnatic music).
Madhuvanti has the scale:
S g m P N S (m= teevra Ma)
S N D P m g R S
The phrase S g m brings great tension to this raga. The roll back to the R on the descending relieves some of this tension. In some ways, Madhuvanti is the logical successor to Multani – which has a more stricter form than Madhuvanti.
My imagery of Madhuvanti is as follows:
Ascending scale – Expectantly going up to the door to see if your guest/friend has arrived – tension and expectation
Descending scale- No, he/she hasn’t – it’s futile, let’s get back to our base (Sa)
As I did not get an opportunity to rehearse, I communicated the gats by recording them on my iPhone Voice Memo and sending them over via Dropbox. The resultant sound files are here: (the iPhone is not too bad at audio, I’d say)
Madhuvanti Vilambit Teentaal – standard run composition
Madhuvanti Drut Teentaal – I think my phone was too close to the tabla rather than the sarod – an adaptation of the famous khayal “Kahe Maan Karo”
This is raw audio -however, I think it’s best to publish “real life” examples rather than the curated, sanitised versions recorded in a home studio…
A few points to students about the whole set up – you will notice especially in the vilambit the degree of sustain – especially after the gat ends – the Re lingers on… This is primarily achieved by having a perfectly tuned sarod. I play the Amjad Ali variant of the sarod which has less sustain than say the Maihar construction, but with perfect tuning, you can get very good sustain and clean sound. Please, please tune the tarabs and other strings to perfection before starting. It is vital.
Will be setting up a Youtube Channel in Sep/Oct.
Off to Varanasi – back mid September.