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DHRUPAD
Meend Masterclass in Amsterdam
Sayeeduddin Dagar’s beautiful musical interpretation of the flow of Ganga and Yamuna, 1999
Wim De Winter has been uploading some gems on YouTube from his collection of Sayeeduddin Dagar’s recordings. Some of them go back over two decades. I heard this five-minute recording just a couple of weeks ago, and I was awestruck by its simplicity and beauty.
Sayeeduddin Dagar demonstrates a composition (without the Pakhawaj) by Swami Haridas in Surdasi Malhar. The composition's lyrics are about the two giant rivers of the Indian subcontinent — Ganga and Yamuna. These two have tremendous historical and mythological significance.
The composition is an ode and a request to the river Ganga to flow slowly and steadily, like the river Yamuna. The core idea behind this demonstration is to interpret the lyrics in a way that mimics the flow of both these rivers in musical notes.
Dhrupad has many tools and techniques to offer when it comes to mimicking the sounds of nature, such as gamaks for thunder and lightning, silence to mark gaps between times and spaces, and meend to mimic the act of rising or falling and creating waveforms. Because this composition talks about rivers, meend is the most appropriate tool to represent it musically.
