She nurtured Raag Nat Bhairav while he cultivated Raag Madhuvanti. But, together their worlds blended so beautifully that it did not matter that they were both simultaneously singing two different raags in two different scales. On the second day of The Hindu Friday Review November Fest, Ashwini Bhide Deshpande and Pandit Sanjeev Abhyankar presented the Jasrangi Jugalbandi, brainchild of Pandit Jasraj, that was created to enable a male and a female vocalist to sing together in perfect harmony.
“There is a difference of half an octave between a male and a female singer’s voice. In order to preserve their tonal quality, this jugalbandi was created. It is based on the Moorchana principle of classical music,” explained Abhyankar at the start of the evening. Interestingly, right after this explanation, he said, “I request you to forget about the two raags and simply enjoy the performance.” And, indeed, the beauty was in the unity of the two raags.
Individually, both artistes are custodians of such rich traditions that one could blindly trust them to carry the audience through such a difficult arrangement. The difficulty was in the fact that both of them had to listen to each other but not too much to get deep into each other’s raags and forget their own.
Deshpande carefully developed the melody of Nat Bhairav sprinkling immensely charming microtonal nuances along the way. And Abhyankar ably picked up the layered notes of Madhuvanti from where she left off. The give and take between the two was so smooth that the audience was compelled to put their hands together each time the duo completed each other’s lines.
What stood out was the manner in which both artistes rendered the aakar at breakneck speed without letting even one note go astray. Each aakar prayog competed with the previous one to be complex, yet with fantastic clarity.
It was not just a vocal jugalbandi but a jugalbandi of the instrumentalists too. So Milind Kulkarni and Tanmay Deochake’s harmonium play was fascinating followed by a rhythmic jugalbandi between Ajinkya Joshi and Rohit Mujumdar (tabla).
The second combination of raags for the evening was Abhogi and Kalavati. Deshpande developed Abhogi and Abhyankar picked up Kalavati from her fourth note — ‘ma’. Again, the opening alaap, while highlighting each raga’s individuality simultaneously focused on the connection Abhogi shared with Kalavati or vice-versa. Both artistes delved deep into the low notes and scaled the highest notes with utmost ease. The fast-paced ‘Ras barasat tore ghar’ in the same raag combination, composed by Deshpande was impressive.
They ended the evening with a Mira bhajan, ‘Main toh saware ki rang rachi’ composed by Abhyankar. Packed with bhakti and love, this bhajan was heartwarming.
