This week, Italian label Black Sweat Records released a Vinyl Limited Edition gem – an archival recording: an evening Raga in the Dhrupad tradition from 1968 featuring Zia Mohiuddin Dagar on the complicated Rudra Veena and vocalist Zia Fariduddin Dagar. Raag Malkauns – Ragini Miyan Ki Todi was originally released on CD by Country and Eastern (CE02), now sold out. A triple vinyl release, these recordings were made in Bombay in 1968 by Bengt Berger (Bitter Funeral Beer Band) during a stay with Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Rudra Veena as a solo concert instrument.
The Dagar family are the keepers of the oldest of the North Indian (Hindustani) classical traditions, Dhrupad. All the vocalists were accompanied by the Rudra Veena, which Zia Mohiuddin Dagar adapted (enlarging the gourd and hollow neck) to add bass and resonance and to allow longer sustained notes. He was also primarily responsible for the revival of the Rudra Veena as a solo concert instrument.
The album is also available digitally via Bandcamp. For those unfamiliar with the term Alap, the Wiki definition describes it as the opening section of a typical North Indian classical performance. It is a form of melodic improvisation that introduces and develops a raga. I prefer this explanation on the back of a 1968 release by ‘The Younger Dagar Brothers’:
It employs neither language nor rhythm. It can yet be remarkably effective. The chief effect worked up by Alap, if properly rendered, are those of leisureliness, repose, dignity and sublimity. Everything here depends upon how the roles are rendered individually and upon how they are traversed. In the course of an Alap, an individual note may appear as a fount of luminosity, a mere dainty dot, or as a vibrant speck of life. And the way of passing on from one note to another can, of course, vary infinitely, depending upon what precise kind of linear imagery is employed – a deep, downward curve, or glide which just meanders up and down the scale. Laya is here present, not as differentiated into beats, but as the flow of time harnessed subjectively by the singer for the production of effects. Laya in Alap is duration as subserving the interests of beauty.
From release notes:
His [Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar] home in the suburb of Chembur was, at the time, the magical haunt of a plethora of fantastic musicians, including Ritwik Sanyal and K. Sridhar, who took part in the session. In perfect and stern Duphrad vocal style, these two Raga lead us to different atmospheres and perceptions: Malkauns is the contemplative state of the evening, of the abandonment of the senses before the breaking of the silence in the night; Miyan Ki Todi is the first breath of the morning, the gentle awakening of the limbs before a puja. The two Dagar brothers, Mohiuddin on the Rudra and Fariduddin on the chant, complement each other, becoming ocean and fire, stillness and storm, in an intimate and tight dialogue of exploration and expressive subtlety, in which the purity of an Indian summer becomes the highest symbol of beauty and freedom of spirit.
Also of note: