Amit Chaudhuri to perform khayal in the rare Kunwar Shyam gharana style in Bengaluru this week

The khayal, derived from the Arabic word for imagination, has long captured the minds and hearts of listeners – transporting them to experience rich emotional landscapes and the beauty of the summer, monsoon, spring and winter. Writer-musician Amit Chaudhuri is set to take Bengalureans along on this journey of imagination and immersion in khayal music this Thursday at the Bangalore International Centre.

Amit is a prolific writer, poet, literary critic and music composer whose novel A New World won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2002. He has been recording khayals since the early ‘90s and has performed all over the world. His upcoming performance, titled Music, Movement and the Monsoons, will introduce the audience to compositions of the rare Kunwar Shyam Gharana.

“It’s a rare gharana with few exponents. I want to give people a sense of the particular style and repertoire of the gharana which is somewhat different from the dominant styles that we hear today like the Agra, Gwalior, Kirana, Patiala and Jaipur Atrauli gharanas. There is a difference in the approach to tonality of the note. A lot of very complex layakari (variation in the divisions of the beat) is built into some of the compositions themselves,” he explains.

The gharana is known for its virtuoso composer Laxmanprasad Jaipurwale who created unique compositions that Amit plans to perform. He says, “He was a virtuoso performer who did not demonstrate his virtuosity for its own sake. Instead, the intricacy and the complexity of his compositions exemplify a very delicate aesthetic at every stage.”

With Bengaluru recently having witnessed extremely rainy bouts, Amit also has a few malhars — hindustani ragas that pay homage to the rains, composed by the founder of the gharana, Kunwar Shyam, tucked into his repertoire. “We have all sorts of malhars and bandishes that Kunwar Shyam has left behind which have beautiful, sometimes erotic lyrics. There is a little more elaboration than you expect from a khayal bandish in terms of the words and rich imagery,” he says.

Having performed and delivered a lecture in Bengaluru following the release of his book Finding the Raga, which received the James Tait Black Prize, the United Kingdom’s oldest literary award, Amit is excited to return. “I have done a talk and performance about khayal previously in the city and I remember the audience being very open-minded,” he says.

(Written by Mahima Nagaraju)