THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: “Rhythm is essential to music. In fact, it is the very essence of it. No music is possible without it,” said Sunayana Ghosh, as she unpacked her tabla for a practise session. One of the few woman tablists in the country, the Kolkata-based artist was in Kochi to perform at an event organised by BEAME (Bank Employees Arts Movement Ernakulam) on April 29 along with Poly Varghese, a virtuoso with the mohanaveena.
Born into a musical family (her mother Rita is an accomplished vocalist and her grandfather Shankar Ghosh a tablist himself), music was undoubtedly in her genes. But nothing prepared the family to witness the young Sunayana’s prowess with the tabla, that she began training at age six under the tutelage of Samar Mitra, and later under her own grandfather.
At a time when tabla was considered exclusively the domain of men, the decision to initiate Sunayna into tabla raised quite a few eyebrows. “In the Bengali society of the time, women were generally restricted to vocal and classical dance. But my mother was determined to defy convention,” she said.
Sunayna, however, proved her detractors wrong when the Indian Council for Cultural Relations chose her as one in 10 musicians to represnet the country in a tour of Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg, Berlin, Armenia, Turkey and the Netherlands. “Things are loosening up now,” she says, “With people becoming more broad-minded, more girls are taking up the tabla.”
Despite hailing from a less-musically inclined background, the Thrissur-based Poly Varghese developed a natural affinity towards classical music, an oddity among a generation that grooved to film music. His interest in classical music led him to train in the mridangam and later on perform for the All India Radio.
A televised concert of Pandit Vishwamohan Bhatt was to change his life forever. The day he saw the programme, which he reckons must have been 25 or 30 years ago (he admits he is not very good with remembering dates), he was determined to seek out the person and seek his tutelage. After travelling throughout the Northern states, he finally ran into his future mentor in Rajasthan, and began training with him in the mohanaveena, an instrument which Bhatt had himself devised.
After several years of training, he finally hit it out as a soloist and started performing at venues within the country and abroad. At present, he is one of the few virtuosos with the mohanaveena.
Varghese, who also performed at an event by Renai Medicity to raise awareness on Music Therapy in healing cancer, believes music is a deeply spiritual exercise, and that it is best performed spontaneously. He also believes that music is a universal language and that cultural differences are at best superficial. “In all cultures, music is created by a conscious arrangement of sounds, and differentiations like carnatic and hindusthani, western classical and folk, are all creations of man’s egotism,” Varghese said.
Our reporter Nikhil Jayakrishnan talks to Poly Varghese and Sunayana Ghosh about their achivements