Good morning friends.
As you were told,
this is a very rare concert.
We hardly get a time to play
morning ragas.
As North Indian classical music
has got a time theory,
each raga has got a specific
time of the day.
Early morning, afternoon, late night.
So it's nice to play a morning concert.
I'm going to play a morning raag,
which actually is played quite early,
but anyway the name
of the raag is Bairagi.
You see one common factor
with all the morning raagas
is that they convey a mood of meditative,
invocative mood, very serene.
And when we talk of the mood,
you can feel that when the
solo improvisation
which is called alaap is being played because
the whole idea of playing alaap
is to un fold the melody note by note
to create a sound picture of the raag.
And you can feel it during the alaap
portion especially.
Of course,
the mood remains the same
when tabla joins
but then it adds a different
dimension to that part.
So, af ter the alap,
I shall be playing three
compositions
in the same raag.
The first composition is set to matta taal.
This is a nine -beat rhythmic cycle,
a very uncommon rhythmic cycle,
followed by a composition in teen taal,
or 16 beats in medium tempo,
then ending with a faster composition,
which is set to ekta