Showing posts with label Surshringar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surshringar. Show all posts

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

More Sursringar - Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury (1901-1972) - Raga Gandhari



In 2014 we posted already two recordings by Ustad Allauddin Khan and Radhika Mohan Maitra, in which they play the rare Dhrupad instrument Sursringar. See here. There exist only very few recordings of this instrument. In 2013 we posted a LP which had on the second side a track played on the Surshringar. See here. Now we present another recording by the amateur musician Birendra Kishore Roy Choudhury. I received this recording many many years ago on a cassette from VN, a collector of Dhrupad recordings in UK. My friend KF digitalised the recording and made a nice cover for it. 

"Pt. Birendra Kishore Roy Choadhury (~1901-1972?) was from a family of wealthy zamindars (landowners) in East Bengal, what is now Bangladesh. The estate was called Gouripur, in the Mymensingh district. His father, Brajendra Kishore Roy Choudhury, was renowned as a patron of musicians. His son not only continued this tradition of patronage, but became the disciple of many of the great musicians of his time, including Mohammed Wazir Khan, the great Binkar of Rampur and the last descendant of Tansen's daughter Saraswati; Mohammed Ali Khan who was the second son of Basat Khan; Imdad Khan, founder of the lineage of sitar represented today by his grandson Vilayat Khan; Allauddin Khan, father of Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna Devi and guru to Ravi Shankar, and Hafiz Ali Khan, the great sarod maestro. Birendra Kishore Roy Choudhury was a master of the Dhrupad style, especially in instrumental music, and played the Bin, the Sursringar and the Seni Rabab." 
From: http://davidphilipson.com/pages/TansenBook.html


David Philipson shares on this link a very interesting small book "Indian Music and Tansen" by Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, which I made into a pdf file. See download link below. 

See here a Raga Barwa by him on Rudra Veena: https://www.mediafire.com/?stpc5rgt65o4i#09nezectr2f4o

Thursday, 27 March 2014

Sursringar - A Rare Instrument from India - Recordings by Ustad Allauddin Khan & Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra from AIR

Ustad Allauddin Khan playing the Sursringar

Sursringar is a very rare instrument from India used in the past as an instrument for Dhrupad style Alaps. It got forgotten and nearly extinguished in the second half of the 20th century. Nowadays there a number of younger artists, basicly Sarod palyers, who occasionally play this in strument, but almost always like a Sarod.
Here we present two older recordings by two great masters. Both have strong Dhrupad backgrounds, the first through his teacher, the Beenkar Ustad Wazir Khan of the Senia Gharana (direct descendant of Tansen), the second through one of his teachers, the Beenkar Ustad Dabir Khan, grandson and student of Wazir Khan. These recordings we found a while ago in the internet. Many thanks to the original uploaders: the first one I don't remember unfortunately, the second one being Abhimonyu Deb from Kolkata. A note about the pictures: normally the Sursringar is hold against the left shoulder, but because of Ustad Allauddin Khan being lefthanded he holds it to his right shoulder.

1. Ustad Allauddin Khan 
Raga Nat (31:02)
A recording from All India Radio

Download



Ustad Allauddin Khan playing the Seni or Dhrupad Rabab

2. Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra
Raga Jaunpuri (30:26)
A recording from All India Radio



Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra playing the Sarod

Sursringar

Another instrument that appeared in Hindustani music in the early years of the nineteenth century was the Sursringar, which was analogous to surbahar.
Sursringar is a modified version of the Seniya rabab. The instrument rabab had some limitations. Its gut strings and skin parchment upon the resonator make the slow passages of alapchari, impossible unlike the been. Moreover, due to the dampness in the monsoons, the sound of rabab used to deteriorate so much that the notes played on it could not even be discerned. In Sursringar, the skin parchment of the resonator had been replaced by a wooden sound board, the gut strings by those of steel and the wooden fingerboard was covered with a thin iron sheet. With these modifications Sursringar became a distinct improvement over the rabab with regard to the tonal quality and for the alapchari of dhrupad anga. These modifications, in the rabab were carried out by a descendant of Tansen's named Jaffar Khan.
Sursringar was well-suited for vilambit (slow) alap, and the techniques of both veena and rabab playing could be incorporated in it. The melodious effect of Sursringar was so overpowering that it could even outshine the veena in its vilambit alap. Thereafter, it became a tradition amongst the Rababiya gharana to play the Sursringar during the rainy season.
The instrument was well received in the world of music and became popular in a very short time in northern India.
Sursringar and surbahar, both these instruments were meant for playing the dhrupad anga alap in an elaborate manner. Sarod players used to play alap on the Sursringar before playing gat toda on sarod in the same manner as sitar players used to play on the surbahar before playing gat toda on the sitar. Therefore, it was customary to learn the Sursringar along with the sarod till the early years of the twentieth century. Gradually, when the sarod and sitar were modified and became well equipped with greater range of expressiveness, the popularity of the Sursringar and surbahar ebbed and these became obsolete in the latter half of the twentieth century.
from: http://www.india-instruments.de/instrumente/instrumentenlexikon/sursringar.html

Sursringar: Making way for sarod ?

is the popularity of sarod responsible for elbowing out sursringar from circulation, asks richa bansal unlike most other instruments in hindustani classical tradition, sursringar, which falls in the category of stringed instruments, can be dated back to a specific time. it was devised, according to traditional accounts, by the great rabab player jafar khan in or around the year 1830. organologically, a cross between rabab and surbahar but with a distinct sound and string system, sursringar is fast declining in the modern age. sursringar consists of a large semi-spherical gourd sounding box covered with wood fitted to a hollowed tapering wooden stem. the stem has a steel plate attached to it with steel and brass wires stretched across the plate. in its present form sursringar has six main strings and three subsidiary strings. it is played with a stiff wire plectrum called 'java'. the traditional style or baaz of sursringar is extremely difficult and is slowly dying out. the instrument was mainly used for playing alaap in the complex dhrupad system. it has a marvellous tone and depth of sound and is held upright like a been or sitar during a performance. pyar khan, jafar khan and bahadur sen khan were some of the great exponents of sursringar. in bengal, ustad allauddin khan, kumar birendrakishor roychwdhury, shaukat ali khan and pandit radhika mohan maitra were the noted sursringar players. trained under ustad ali akbar khan and shri dhyanesh khan, anindya banerjee is virtually the only practising exponent of sursringar in its traditional style in india today. anindya banerjee, who is originally trained in sarod, "fell in love" with sursringar when he heard a recording of ustad allauddin khan playing the instrument sometime in the 1970's. it was much later in the 80's that he decided to revive it and his ensuing efforts since then deserve high praise. "i was the first to take this instrument abroad and use it in ballet music in the dhrupad festival in uk organized by amc in 1992," said banerjee. "i have also used it in the background music of some kolkata tv serials," he added. he has even taught music in canada in 1984 and is scheduled to leave for uk in coming november. invited to various other prestigious music festivals both in india and abroad, banerjee's cd's are expected to be released fairly soon by an american as well as a french company. banerjee feels that sursringar has declined primarily since ustad allauddin khan incorporated the different styles of rabab, sarod and sursringar into sarod alone. this made sarod so versatile that gradually sursringar and rabab lost their popularity. besides, he explains that the instrument, being very large in size, poses difficulty in transportation. the sitting style of sursringar is verasan is extremely difficult to learn. lastly, it is not an easily affordable instrument priced between rs 30-50,000. "while five years is the maximum time a student requires to learn sursringar it is much easier for a sarod student to learn it," feels banerjee drawing on his own experience. anindya banerjee owns a relatively new sursringar instrument made from tunkat with its tabli recently replaced with 200-year-old teakwood. "initially sursringar was made from teak but nowadays only tunkat is used," he said. "the main maker of sursringar in kolkata today is hemen and company with instruments ranging from rs 30,000 onwards," he added. essentially a connoisseur's delight,sadly enough, sursringar is now hardly played in front of mass audiences. however, banerjee feels that with proper instruction, it will be possible to play this instrument alongside sarod and sitar on the concert stage some day. strongly maintaining that classical music still has its select audience, even banerjee could not help but agree with the fact that the quality had deteriorated immensely over the past years. and sursringar is no exception to this rule.
from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/calcutta-times/Sursringar-Making-way-for-sarod-/articleshow/1375957068.cms

See also this note about Anindya Banerjee and a recording hopefully to get published one day:

Sunday, 7 July 2013

Damodarlal Kabra (Sarod) & Jyotish C. Choudhury (Surbahar & Surashringar) - Ragas - Sunrise and Sunset - LP published in US in 1968


Damodarlal Kabra, older brother of the famous slide guitar player Brij Bhushan Kabra, was a well-known Sarod player in the 1960s and 1970s. He was one of the early students of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
Jyotish C. Choudhury was a Surbahar and Surashringar (Surshringar) player from Benares.
Recorded in India by Deben Bhattacharya.

Side 1:
Damodarlal Kabra (Sarod) - Raga Natabhairava (20:36)


Side 2:
Jyotish C. Choudhury 
1. Surbahar - Raga Yaman-Kalyan (13:18)
2. Surashringar - Raga Bhimpalashri (7:05)