SWARMUDRA

                                                    

The Swarmudra is a journal, published by the Raza Foundation on classical music and classical dance. It holds quarterly academic programmes, touching upon the above subjects on regular basis. In this chain, a new link was a panel discussion on a recent publication, named Sangeet Aur  Sanskriti on Aug. 23,2014 in the India International Centre. The book, authored by Mukund Lath was published by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. The gathering (100) included celebrities of the field including journalists and art critics like Dr.Ashok Vajpayi, Manjari Sinha, Udayan Vajpeyi, Shanta sarabjit Singh and Prerna Shrimali. Despite not keeping well, the wheelchair bound Syed Haider Raza also took trouble to grace the occasion for some time. The arrangement was that in order to introduce the book, Dr. Ashok Vajpayi  would raise questions and the author, present on the dias would respond.

Talking about the author, Dr Vajpayi informed that Shri Mukund Lath, born in 1939 in Calcutta, a professional versatile musicion is the disciple of vocal music doyen Pt. Jasraj. Writer of several books, he was awarded with ‘Padmashri’ in 2010.  Dr Vajpaayi expressed that at least in last 50 years, no such authentic and exhaustive book has been written on classical music and dance. Moreover, it is a trend setter in Hindi prose-writing, he argued. Since there was no trend of history writing in Indian tradition like in China and Greece, the present book would prove a great help to all types of professionals in the field of this audio-visual media. He mentioned that the book contains 17 chapters which leave no branch untouched. Dr. Vajpeyi wanted to know about the origin of ‘aalap’, ‘ragas’, ‘that’s’ etc. Shri Lath admitted that there were no literary sources to throw light on these aspects which were not possible as well. Once it is learnt that the ‘Swaras’ and ‘ragas’ were born of Shiva and Brahma, there are no further details.

After that the panellists like Manjari Sinha, Udayan Vajpeyi, Prerna Shrimali and Yatindra Mishra went in depth of the music and tried to explain the rich contribution of the author through the said book. At the end, some persons from the audience also raised their questions mostly about the waning popularity of our Classical music and dances which were adequately replied by sh. Lath. AT the end, the organizers informed the gathering that a similar function would be staged at the same venue after three months.