The sagar veena will be played for the first time in India, says Arunabha Deb. Stop by to find out whether it’s an improvement on the stringed instruments in the Hindustani classical tradition.
In a tradition where antiquity is possibly the highest-rated virtue, the sagar veena tells a tale of defiance. Its principal creator Raza Kazim, who is also a leading lawyer in Pakistan, felt that the stringed instruments used in Hindustani classical music did not adequately articulate the shrutis (micro-notes) – which inarguably form the essence of a raga. Not only did Kazim actually voice this outrageous thought, he built an instrument that would suit the ideal he had in mind.
His collaborator on this mission was Noor Zehra Kazim, his daughter, for whom the first sagar veena was made. Noor Zehra was trained in the sitar – but given her affinity for the alaap ang (the non-rhythmic aspect with which a recital usual begins), her father encouraged her to play the surbahar (a variant of the sitar with a heavier sound, particularly suited to playing alaap). It was eventually the surbahar that served as the first prototype for the sagar veena.
“Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan’s nephew came to our house one day with the vichitra veena
and I tried my hand at it. I could play it and liked the sound, so my father ordered a vichitra veena for me. But it would take a long time to come and he made a makeshift vichitra veena out of my surbahar so that I could practice in the interim. He removed all the frets from the surbahar and raised the strings with the help of an inch ruler. When I started to play it, it actually sounded much better than the vichitra veena,” Noor Zehra told us over the telephone from her residence in Lahore.
Kazim also saw the promise of his ideal instrument in the makeshift one he’d devised for his daughter. Aided by her, he started developing the instrument in the early 1970s. It took almost three decades of endless rejections and modifications for the sagar veena to acquire its present form. In its final avatar, it is an instrument in two parts – one for resonating and one for vibrating. The resonating part consists of two tumbas (round hollow structures made of gourd) and the vibrating part consists of a wood-stuffed aluminium frame that holds the 11 strings (nine playing strings and two drones). “The frame allows an extremely high degree of tension to the strings – more than in other stringed instruments,” Noor Zehra said.
The sagar veena covers a staggering five and a half octaves and it is possible to traverse an octave and a half with a single stroke – thus creating limitless possibilities of meends (glissandos). The high-tension strings allow vibrations that, according to Noor Zehra, allow the performer to explore the subtleties of micro-notes.
Noor Zehra is currently the only performer of the sagar veena and, as she told us, she had to unlearn a lot of her traditional taalim in the sitar and surbahar in order to play this new instrument. “In traditional taalim, a lot of importance is given to increasing the strength of the right hand [plucking hand] but there is no place for powerful striking in the sagar veena. It is mostly about controlling the other [non-plucking] hand in order to bring out the subtleties of the notes,” she said.
Noor Zehra also questions the traditional methods of teaching that have been employed for generations. “During my taalim, I was asked to play the same meend from ni to sa for three hours every day for three weeks [at a time]. After two years of such practice, I felt that I was going mad. And how was I possibly to play music if my whole being disintegrated?” she asked. She feels that the mechanical approach to riyaz needs serious reconsideration and suggests that efforts should be made to also build the musical sensitivity of a student. Again, this is a thought that the old maestros will be outraged by – but questioning traditional wisdom is clearly a trait that runs in the Kazim family.
Source : Time Out Delhi ISSUE 11 Friday, August 20, 2010
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