Haraparavati In Seraikella Chhau

Seminar On Indian Music & The West - Main Feature

Indian music now has a global presence in two ways. One, many musicians from India go abroad to give concerts. Two, reflecting another dimension and a farreaching phenomenon, foreigners, in increasingly larger numbers, are taking to Indian music seriously as students and, in some cases, as teachers as well. In their earliest encounters with Indian music,  foreigners, mainly Europeans, found little of value in it. Moreover, comparative musicology, which swept the scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was, for most part, based on the Darwinian premise that such studies would lead to an evolutionary classification of different systems of music, in terms of their sophistication. European music, it was believed, would naturally be at the top of the scheme. Today there are foreign students of Indian music, finding in it a perfect combination of traditional moorings and individual improvisation, expressing gratitude and affection for India for having given the gift of sangeet to the world.

Main Feature - Requiem For A Royal Legacy - Chhau

My harvest of New Year greeting cards that year, 1992, included one that made me sit up. Over and above wishing joy, this delivered a scrawled insertion: When are you inviting us for vigorous rehearsals? With regards and love— Padmashri Rajkumari Suddhendra and both-leg handicapped son Vijay Kirti Singh Deo. Then, in the middle of March, I received a communication from Rajkumar Suddhendra: Are you not visiting Seraikella next month to see me dance before I stop altogether? And in the first week of April I had a panicky phone call from the Rajkumars cousin Braj Bhanu Singh Deo in Seraikella: There has been another nasty scuffle between us in the palace yesterday. I do not think we will have any festival or dance in the palace this year. The reference was to Chaitra Parva, the four-day Spring Festival in Seraikella, that found the entire populace hyped up as at no other time in the 12 months.