another subcontinent's first audio feature will soon be online on our home page. once it is live this thread will be opened for discussion.

Beautiful. The music does take you to another place.

out of curiosity: has anyone had any trouble streaming these files?

Lovely. She transported me. So, can one buy her music somewhere? (No trouble streaming the music.)

I was writing this post as I was listening to Sarmila's songs so it may seem a bit rambling and disorganized. I haven't tried to explain the various Bengali musical genre I'm discussing for the reader unfamiliar with them. If explanation is needed, I think I'd just go hide in a corner and let someone more competent like gautam-da, mahmud-da or bong pick up the pieces .

First off, I'd always be delighted at the prospect of listening to someone who trained under Suchitra Mitra and Krishna Chattopadhyay. I think they are both incredible singers, and Sarmila Bose represents their musical heritage very well (even though she doesn't sing any Atulprasadi, Dwijendrageeti or Rajanikanta's songs here, which are Krishna Chattopadhyay's forte).

The only thing that I would like to object to, ever so mildly, is the assertion that she is undertaking the task of reviving the 'kirtan' genre. While I would agree that in recent times, there haven't been any kirtan greats like Radharani Debi or Chhabi Bandhopadhyay, yet I would argue that the genre is not so moribund that it requires a 'revival'. Certainly among the Vaishnav communities in Bengal, the tradition of kirtan is very vibrant, even though it may not be commercially recorded. There are regular kirtan concerts in rural Bengal too, even though there may not be too many kirtaniyas who are Calcutta-based.

Having said this, I must say that her kirtan recording of Chandidas's padavali is very good, and is truly in the kirtaniya tradition.

Now I'm normally very enthuastic about any innovation or fusion of musical genres in Bengali music. I've bravely and at great peril defended jibonmukhi and Bengali rock music against attack by my aunts (even though I may not enjoy a lot of it). I think what Sarmila is trying to do here seems conceptually a great idea. After all, both the kirtan and qawwali traditions represent non-mainstream religious expression, with syncretic influences and a core of repetitive chants that create spiritual epiphany. And yet it seems to me that combined in one song, they did not blend effortlessly, but remained sort of emulsion-like, each existing independently of the other. It seems to me that it would be better it we just take the kirtan form and infuse it with qawwali influences to creat a new kirtan style. What comes it mind is the Kazi Nazrul Islam's Bengali ghazal or Tagore's use of Scottish folk tunes in his music.

But besides all this nitpicking I would really like to thank Sarmila Bose for some great music and hope we have more such features on AS.

The files played without any problems. I have to hand it to AS for having such a variety in the feature offerings -- it truly is shaping to be a journal for South Asian arts.

I am as unmusical as they come. Besides, not knowing any non-South Indian languages, Hindi itself sounds exotic; Bengali/Sanskrit sounds even more so.

I like the first song and the last song in particular. The singer has a very nice voice.

I found a translation in Google for parts of the first song:

http://www.worldprayers.org/frameit.cgi?/a...he_protect.html

The above site looks interesting too. According to it, the first song is about 3500 years old.
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Living away from home and being one who doesn't attend any religious ceremonies , these are the kind of things I miss in my life.

VC

This post has been edited by VC1: Feb 23 2005, 06:15 PM

Thank you for letting us experience sarmila bose. i really like the last piece - the fusion.
the concept was great as was the presentation.
but I was surprised when i read about her training in music. while there were parts she did well, it seemed to me as though she was not quite in control of her voice, which is quite whispery to start with, and then she seemed to get out of breath and in places she was quite off-key!
maybe it is a style i am not quite used to.

Hi Swati,

Having been among those who chose which songs of Sarmila's to post on AS, I should mention that there were many from Atul Prasad Sen that, for one reason or another, we ended up not choosing.

We wanted to try a few and see what the response was, and we chose songs to represent the different stuff she was doing, so chose a couple traditional and a couple not.

Hi Champa,

Don't know if some of what you noticed as issues with the singing are actually issues with the recording quality and the compression quality (of digital audio). We had to keep the music files small enough that folks could download them without it being a strain on our server.

Poorvi

i thought the audio was all right. her voice is lilting. but it did not seem trained to me because she had difficulty with breath control which makes her go off-key. it is quite striking when she switches from the sanskrit to the urdu.

champa,

i agree that happens in that song--right at the moment of transition (we wanted to use that track, however, as an example of the kind of fusion sarmila sometimes performs). however, i didn't hear any out of breath-ness in any of the other tracks.

arnab

I have been listening to Nam-Gan a lot, so much in fact that the words start playing in my mind's ear at different times.

This really is a nice song.

I wish I knew the words or that someone would post the words. I am having particular difficulty with one word in the refrain:

Shree Krishnu, Govindu, Hare Murare, vinatho (?) Narayanu Vasudevo
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Are Hindu songs usually sung in Urdu?

VC

This post has been edited by VC1: Mar 13 2005, 05:34 AM