Kumar Gandharva exemplifies the unity of form, meaning and being
Thirty years ago, on January 12, 1992, it seemed that the pulsating rhythms of the universe had gone silent forever. On this date, Kumar Gandharva drew his last breath. We are yet to fathom the full measure of this loss or take full stock of his legacy. One of the upsides of living in our age is the unprecedented availability of the recorded archive. When we were students in college it was hard to access more than a few stock recordings. Anyone who had access to rare or private recordings became our best friend. His Kabir recordings (the one oeuvre Kumarji was sent to this earth for) were, of course, freely available and widely known. But getting our hands on other cassettes was pure gold.
Remembering Mahatma Gandhi: उड जायेगा हंस अकेला / जग दर्शन का मेला ।।
But now, thanks to
newly released archives, his corpus comes into full view. The full range of his
nirguna bhajans, Marathi natya sangeet, even his incredibly playful
compositions on ordinary life and the seasons, all can be heard in relation to
each other. In other artistes, this over availability can be a liability: You
have to sift through, to get to the peaks. In Kumarji ’s case, it has the
opposite effect: Almost each recording seems like a discovery of a new summit,
a different way of capturing a haunting incandescence, and weaving his whole
being, and ours, in a melodic current….
Pratap
Bhanu Mehta - Weaponising faith: The Gyanvapi Mosque-Kashi Vishwanath dispute
Pratap
Bhanu Mehta: Serial authoritarianism picks out targets and tires out challenges
Pratap
Bhanu Mehta: Ram’s political triumph // Purushottam Agrawal: Being Hindu in a
Hindu Rashtra
Purushottam Agrawal - Nehru's Spectacularly
Indian Vision and the Wrath of the RSS
Kabir’s
search for solitude resembles our search for privacy in totalitarian times
Brian
Eno: Spinning Away / Gulzar: आहिस्ता चल ज़िन्दगी / Eliza
Shaddad: Waters
Celeste
- Hear My Voice: from The Trial of the Chicago 7
Haroon:
Ibtada-e-Ishq hai rota hai kya / Aage Aaage dekhiye hota hai kya
‘It
feels good’: Kashmir folk singer’s rise from dusty street to music star
Everything
That Happens Will Happen Today
