Amjad, Aman hold audience spellbound

PATNA: Sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan along with his son Aman Ali Bangash held the audience spellbound for about three hours with their spectacular performance at Patna Women’s College on Saturday evening.
The function was organised under the auspices of the Patna chapter of Spic Macay.
The maestro began his recital at 6.30 pm with Raag Shree, which is the most suitable raag for evening.He was accompanied by Sandeep Das of Patna on tabla and Fateh Singh Gangwani of Rajasthan on pakhawaj.
Aman, who was performing here for the first time, was there to assist his father on his own sarod.
Caring for the varied tastes of the audience, Khan presented Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan “Vaishnava jana ko tene kahiye, peer parayee jane re� on sarod, followed by playing of Lok Dhun, which drew tremendous applause.
He then played the famous Bengali poem of Rabindra Nath Tagore, “Ekla chalo re� on his instrument with great ease. He ended his recital with a bandish of Khamaj.
As the function started an hour behind the schedule, the audience were getting impatient.
But they did not express it as they were very much interested in watching the performance of Khan.
When it was announced from the dais in the beginning that of the two brothers Aman and Ayaan, only Aman had come, it caused disappointment among some of the listeners who had seen the duo as anchors in a TV programme.
The audience listened to Khan and Aman with rapt attention as their fingers moved on sarod strings so fast that they appeared to be almost part of the strings. In order to bring the tabla and pakhawaj players on the right track Khan had to sing in the beginning.
Recalling the days when he used to come to Patna and other places in Bihar every year during Durga Puja, Khan said for the last 30 years he had not been invited by the people of the state. But this time when Maya Shankar of Patna Women’s College invited him, he agreed to come.
“How to invite a person is an art. Sometimes you are invited in such a way that you do not like to go,� he observed.
Khan said, “For me, music is God. Instrumental music has no words. It is like heart beating, which is in tune. We deal in sounds and not in words. You need not understand anything. You can simply experience the sound,� adding, “The world of words is different. Through words a leader wins an election or loses it. Besides, it is said that language creates barriers.�
Aman assured the people that he would come to Patna with his brother next time, adding that his brother could not come this time due to his busy concert schedule.