SEMF 2013 Festivalprogram (pdf) - Sveriges Radio

Fredag 7 juni
Friday 7 June
Lördag 8 juni
Saturday 8 June
Söndag 9 juni
Sunday 9 June
with Indian music. ”What we today term world music would hardly
be possible without Ravi Shankar”, Anders Q Björkman wrote in
the Swedish daily newspaper SvD shortly after his death. Shankar
re ceived the Swedish Polar Prize in 1998, and was awarded a posthumous
Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in February
2013. With this evening’s concert, SEMF wishes to celebrate Shankar’s
work, and also highlight the Indian classical tradition as part of the
world’s early music heritage.
The origins of Indian classical music can be found in the Vedas,
Hinduism’s oldest scriptures. The music is built on ragas, developed
from liturgical songs and chants. A raga is a melodic framework, a
combination of notes with specific rules around ascent and descent,
and defines the shape of the music. Equally important, each raga
lends itself to a certain mood, bringing with it a certain emotional
content or colour. Rhythmically, the performance is also based on
talas, rhythm cycles that specify the number of beats in each bar,
how the beats are emphasised, and how bars are grouped together.
The music is monophonic in nature and based around a single
melody line, played over a fixed drone. Unlike its Western counterpart,
Indian classical music uses just intonation tuning rather than
an equal temperament tuning system. The sound also differs from
Western classical major/minor tonality because the scales are built
on micro-intervals, which means that an octave is divided into many
more parts than the twelve semitones found for instance on a piano.
Elaborate and expressive, Indian classical music places great
em phasis on improvisation. It is spontaneous, created and performed
in the here and now, and dependent on the season, the
current atmo sphere, the artists’ mood, and the audience present.
Con sequently, the programme for tonight cannot be announced
in advance. Like ly ragas to be per formed are Yaman, Bageshri,
Charukeshi, or Rageshri. The talas will be Rupak (seven beats),
Teentaal (sixteen beats) or Ektaal (twelve beats). The raga is
de veloped through several movements. The first, the alap, is a
slow, serene, rhythmi cally free movement, pre senting the raga,
expressing its mood and conveying its emotion. The second
move ment, the jor alap, introduces the element of a rhythmic pulse,
and has a tempo, but no rhythm cycle. The final un accompanied movement
is the jor jhalla, an up-tempo movement making ex tensive
use of the sitar’s top strings. After these initial three movements,
the accompanying percussion instrument is introduced. The following
accom panied movements are exposed through compositions
called gats, set to various talas. The musicians start in a slow tempo,
gradual ly building up to medium and fast gats. We will encounter
two ragas, each played for around forty minutes.
– Welcome to a concert guaranteed to be unique!
FROM TEXTS BY SEEMA GULATI AND USTAD SHAHID PARVEZ KHAN
Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, sitar
Atulkumar Upadhye, violin
Mukesh Jadhav, tabla
Jari Palmeri, tanpura
För Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan är musiken inte en disciplin, utan
livet självt. Han härstammar från sex generationer av sitar spelare
och är en av de ledande företrädarna för Etawah Gharana, en
musik alisk tradition eller ”familj” hängiven detta det mest kända
av de indiska instrumenten. Han utbildades av sin far och guru,
Ustad Aziz Khan. Vid tre års ålder tränades han först i den klassiska
vokalmusik som utgör grunden för ”gayaki ang”, en typ av
sitar spel som överför den mänskliga röstens känslo mässiga direkthet
och klangnyans till instrumentet. Khan började uppträda
offent ligt redan vid åtta års ålder. Uthållighet och hårt arbete har
lett till en extraordinär teknisk skicklighet och Khan är idag allmänt
erkänd som en av de främsta sitarspelarna i världen. Han
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