INDE : DHRUPAD DE DARBHANGA/ INDIA : DHRUPAD OF DARBHANGA

Alap I – Abadha pura nagari ke raja sri Ramacandra (Dhrupad) – Alap II – Eri daiya aba na ja Braja men (Dhamar) – Tala sura ke bheda janata (Sul) – Alap III – Dekho sakhi Vrndabana men Mohana rasa racayo (Dhrupad) – Sri Gopala Nanda lala ho tuma darasa ko behala (Dhamar).

Enregistrement réalisé en mars 1982 par Gottfried Düren et Peter Pannke à Vrindaban. Texte de présentation réalisé par Peter Pannke.

Collection AIMP LXIII.

Dhrupad – the oldest surviving vocal art of North India – has gone through a period of revival during the last two decades, thanks to the strength of its own tradition and the emergence of a new generation of young artists, but also owing to the efforts of Western scholars and musicians. They were started by Alain Daniélou who was, after all, the first Westerner who approached Indian music in the Indian tradition of combining practical with theoretical studies.

Dhrupad appeared to him as the most noteworthy musical form of North India, and his invitation to the elder Dagar Brothers to Berlin in 1964 and the consequent publications of their recordings triggered a wave of interest in dhrupad which increased during the 1970s and 1980s, exercising an appeal not only to ethnomusicologists, but also to contemporary Western composers and musicians.

Alain Daniélou had considered dhrupad as almost extinct, surviving only in the tradition of the Dagar family. This was, actually, not quite true. Because no Western scholar had ever acquainted himself with the very lively dhrupad tradition which had existed for the last two hundred years in Darbhanga in the North-Eastem state of Bihar, close to the Nepalese border, this remarkably rich tradition remained practically unknown outside of Bihar.

In 1971, Shri Amarnathji, himself a pakhawaj player and Mahant – head priest – of the Shankat Mochan temple in Benares, revived the ancient tradition of Dhrupad Melas or festivals on a national Indian level, followed by Shri Shrivatsa Goswami, the academic director of the Shri Chaitanya Prema Samsthana in Vrindaban in 1980. Since then, the scope of the surviving dhrupad traditions has become much better known.