Passionate about Dhrupad

With soap all over his body, Kamlesh Tiwari suddenly heard musical notes of a classical rendition of Raga Dhrupad on the radio set. Pakhawaj was one of the instruments in the background. A mesmerised, Kamlesh, barely clothed, was drawn to the radio set. He stood by the radio the whole time the song played, oblivious to the fuss his unscheduled departure from the bathroom had created outside!

With soap all over his body, Kamlesh Tiwari suddenly heard musical notes of a classical rendition of Raga Dhrupad on the radio set. Pakhawaj was one of the instruments in the background. A mesmerised, Kamlesh, barely clothed, was drawn to the radio set. He stood by the radio the whole time the song played, oblivious to the fuss his unscheduled departure from the bathroom had created outside!

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That was when he was 17.

Today, Tiwari, a disciple of the famous Dagar Gharana, under the tutelage of Ustad Jiyafriuddin Dagar, has collected numerous awards across the globe and is widely recognized as an accomplished classical singer.

During his recent visit to the city, HT WE caught up with the famous singer who hails from Amokhar in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh and who took his initial lessons in singing from the famous dhrupad vocalist Ramakant Umakant Gundecha for eight years.

“It’s a pity that Lucknow that was once known as a centre of music hardly has any takers for dhrupad. Even Bhatkhande University doesn’t provide specific training in it. I want to do something about it,” he says.

Tiwari’s passion for Dhrupad singing is such that he wishes to impart training in it to anyone who wants to learn. During his short visit to the city he found a city girl, Aparna Bishtt, willing to learn.

In three days, the girl was ready to deliver a devotional classical song on a prominent religious channel.

Ask him why he is so fond of dhrupad singing in particular and why the raga is not catching popular attention, and he is ready with an answer.

“In today’s fast paced lifestyle, hardly anyone has time and patience. Dhrupad singing requires a lot of patience based as it is in the guru-shishya parampara.

One has to give at least 10 years to it to be able to learn the nuances of this Raga. And, this unfortunately is something that not many are able to do now,” he says.

As for his fascination with the Raga, he says that Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of classical music in India and traces its origins to the chanting of Vedic hymns and mantras.

“Though a highly developed classical art with a complex and elaborate grammar and aesthetics, it is also primarily a form of worship, in which offerings are made to the divine through sound or nada. Fundamental to Dhrupad singing is the practice of Nada Yoga, in which, through various yogic practices, the singer develops the inner resonance of the body, and can make the sound resonate and flow freely through the entire region from navel to head. In Dhrupad of the Dagar tradition the notes are not treated as fixed points, but as fluid entities with infinite microtonal shades,” he says.

Despite a decline in its popularity over the last two centuries, Dhrupad is still considered to be the purest of all classical forms, and its treatment of ragas is still taken to be the iideal one. The music is deeply spiritual and meditative.

A citation given by North American Association of Dhrupad, scholarship by Ministry of HRD, another one by MP Government’s Department of Culture are among the several that Tiwari has bagged during his now over 20 years of classical singing.

Tiwari gave an example of his mellifluos voice while talking to HT WE. Describing how Krishna saved the Govardhan mountain and the people from Indra’s wrath, he began in the traditional manner with the alap, a slow and elaborate development of the raga using free flowing melodic patterns, and then elaborated using the syllables of mantric phrases like ‘Hari narayan om, a-re-ne-na, noom’ etc.

The phrases of the Dhrupad alap were slow and contemplative in the beginning, but the tempo increased in stages, and the faster passages gradually became playful and vigorous.

He then sung a piece praising God Shiva, the destroyer, responsible for change not only in the form of death and destruction but in positive sense of shedding old habits.

‘Shiv, who relishes in devouring time is the beginning (aadi), middle (madh) and end (ant)’.

The master would be receiving yet another award--Sangeet Shiromani--at a function in Mumbai on May 23.

“Wah Ustad!!”