Sangeet

Sudeshna Bhattacharya, who has been a lecturer in International Management and also teaches Indian classical music at the Norwegian Academy of Music, studied the sarod with Amjad Ali Khan, one of its leading exponents. Although traditionally women were not encouraged to study music, let alone take up a string instrument considered solely male territory, all this changed during the 20th century. Even so, while vocalists and sitar players abound, it is still relatively rare to find a female sarod player. Here she plays ‘Raga Rageshree’, an intensely romantic evening raga. Beginning with a brief alap, which comes across as rather hurried, she goes on to competently perform the raga in mid-to-fast tempos accompanied on tabla by Tanmoy Bose, who is best known for being Ravi Shankar's regular percussionist.

The highlight of this recording appears on the third track, which features Bhattacharya playing ‘Khambaj’ (a different spelling of the well-known ‘Raga Khamaj’) on the rarely-heard mohan veena, which is a modified sarod created in the 1940s by a Radhika Mohan Maitra and not to be confused with the modified Hawaiian guitar of the same name as played by the famous Vishwa Mohan Bhatt.