THIRUVANATHAPURAM: When ‘Mridumalhar’, the ghazal album by Pandit Ramesh Narayan will have its release this Vishu, it will be the realisation of a long-cherished dream for the musician. The album, which has Ramesh’s first disciple Vijay Sursen as the shayer (poet), is going to be unique in that the lines have been written as per the rules of ghazal.
“We are not questioning anybody or any work. It is just that we are telling people how a ghazal should be,” say Ramesh and Vijay. Ramesh adds, “As I waited all these years, I happened to listen to many Malayalam ghazals, only to realise that they hardly adhered to the rules of ghazals which were evolved centuries ago. And when I got a fine writer in Vijay, I decided I should do it. This album is the result of two years of work.”
Vijay Sursen (it was Ramesh Narayan who gave him the surname Sursen), a native of Varkala, did his studies in Pune, except for his degree studies in Kollam. He has closely followed the evolution of ghazal and therefore took much pain to write the lines within the framework.
Talking about the rules, a ghazal has odd number of couplets. “Earlier it used to be five, nine and more. But when it became difficult for the poets to compose so many of them working within the rules, it was agreed upon to have an odd number of them” Vijay explains.
The first couplet is called ‘matla’. The end of both lines of a ‘matla’ should rhyme, rather they should have ‘radeef-qafiya’. ‘Radeef’ refers to the same word or phrase that is repeated at the end of the second line of every couplet, ‘qafiya’ refers to the rhyming pattern that is used just before the ‘radeef’ at the end of every couplet (An example from the album: ‘Nimishame Nilkkumo, ninne njaanonnu thottotte/Marayum porulariyan oru moham, maranam vannaal vanotte.)
‘Behar’ refers to the meter, or length, of a couplet and there are 19 of them. Another important component of a ghazal is the ‘maqta’, which means, the last couplet of a ghazal that contains the pen name of the poet (Eg: ‘Eriyum sooryanariyaamo/Ennandhakaram Sursen’).
The word ‘ghazal’ actually came from Arabic. It got popularised in Persian and gradually spread to other parts of the world. “These verses were written in Persian even during the period of Amir Khusro. It was some 400 years later that Urdu evolved and ghazals were written in that language. Now, you find ghazals in Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarathi, Malayalam, and, of late, they have come out in Tamil as well. Altogether, this poetic form has passed through some seven stages till the present date,” adds Vijay.
It was during one of these periods, that the ghazals which used to be simply recited before a group, became a performing art and sung in ‘mehfils’. As years passed by, some of the rules have been made flexible, some were ignored and some retained.
‘Mridumalhar’, which has seven songs (eight songs in all as a song is repeated), has a ‘nazm’ too. ‘Nazm’ stands for lines which do not conform to the rules of ghazal, the bunch conveys a single meaning, unlike the ghazals in which each couplet stands independent.
Vijay Sursen has many acclaimed works to his credit. He had written ‘Souramandal mein tim tim karte...’, a national integration song composed by Ramesh Narayan and directed by MT Vasudevan Nair and aired on Doordarshan in its good-old days. Vijay had also written the title song of the Malayalam film ‘Meghamalhar’ and of ‘Veetilekkulla Vazhi’ (along with Madhusoodanan Nair).
Ramesh Narayan and Sujatha has sung the ghazals of ‘Mridumalhar’. The work has been recorded at Iris Digital Studios, Kawdiar and mixing has been by James Anose. Other artists are Manoj and Ajai Thilak (keyboard programming), Ustad Dilshad Khan (sarangi), Anand Badamikar and Aditya Narayan Banerjee (tabla), Joshy and Vishnu Vijay (flute), Joy, Vinod and Savio (violins and violas), Prakash Uliyeri (harmonium), Jayan Malamari and Hari Krishna Moorthy (dholak) and Ramesh Kumar (sitar).
‘Mridumalhar’ will be released in Abu Dhabi on April 15, during a concert by Ramesh Narayan. The album will later have a release in Kerala and is being marketed here by Satyam Audios.
The album has a tagline which says that the couplets come with colours of the rainbow. “I am sure people will take it. I have presented samples in my concerts and have received overwhelming response,” Ramesh says.
athira@expressbuzz.com
