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| Sunday, 16 May 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Pradeep Ratnayake : Seeking a Sri Lankan identity by Kaminie Jayanthi Liyanage
The firm anchoring of sitarist Pradeep Ratnayake in local classical musical circles emerges as a decisive statement. His presence appears to give the local music scene a much needed change of direction, which in turn is an issue that calls for deep discussion. Chances are that his tryst with the sitar, begun at the astonishing age of five, could someday lift him close to the likes of India's most cherished renaissance poet and song writer Rabindranath Tagore, or Ravi Shankar who loosened the gravity of the classical sitar for the benefit of western audiences. So much so that Shankar's speciality of indo-jazz or modern sitar sounds, climaxed in the composition "full circle", and he won for himself a Grammy from enthused western music critics. For Pradeep could be said to already belong to the ilk of the "new age" musicians, such as Irshad Khan, the lead player of surbahar (bass sitar) of the younger Imdadkhani Etawa Gharana (school); or Shankar's west-based daughter Norah Jones, the winner of nearly a dozen Grammies; or, pianist Yanni, or even Kenny G., the popular saxophonist. They have merged the boundaries of gruelling sangeet sadhanas of the tapasyas of old, with the energetic and contemporary new currants of musical thought. "Yet, I am different from them, in that I try to create an original sitar sound, venturing beyond the defined territories of tradition, to emerge with an identity of Sri Lankan flavour," says Pradeep attempting to define his musical identity.
In his Indrakeelaya, the first local symphonic composition for sitar to be written and performed by the same artiste ("Ravi Shankar has done this before me"), he mixes the North Indian and South Indian classics, the western classics, jazz, folk tunes (jana gayana), choral and choir music, soprano voices, the sound of pirith and Om and add to these melodies the western element of harmony, a technique not followed by Indian exponents of Hindustani Ragas. And, where voices embellish the emotions of the symphony, there are no words at all, but the stacattoed rise and fall of the human voice, lifting and then bringing one down in a shattering crescendo. In his plucked strings, one hears the agony of the burning embers, the pain of the dying, and the struggle of new wings reaching for a foothold; the tumbling of the crumbling strongholds, the rebel of the new vassals, and the immutable silence of the great sentinels. The ethos are appropriate for a musical ushering, composed in 1989, as the launching symphony for the bomb-demolished Central Bank rising from the ashes. Performed with an entourage of 40 musicians and presented as a quartet of peace, conflict, lamentation and hope, Indrakeelaya signifies the multi-facted spirit of the enduring. Indrakeelya - the unshaken. Pradeep's efforts to create Sri Lankan flavoured sitar symphonies and chamber compositions for the listener hitherto more attuned to the worded song, parallels the efforts by Ravi Shankar to induce the western listener to appreciate Indian music. His innovative music has won the hearts of the local Indian audiences so much that he was the key performer at both the Indian Republic Day and the Rabindranath Tagore Day, celebrated locally in this year; a first for a Sri Lankan. "My challenge is to take my music to the Sri Lankan masses, fed and bred on songs," says this irrepressible composer who is brimming with ideas for the future. "In India, even rickshaw drivers are appreciative of traditional music recitals. Our audiences need more sensitising to music in that sense." He has an eye on cutting a disc for the international audiences and creating songs accompanied by sitar, in the manner of Kenny G., for his local fans. "In my opinion, Kasun Kalhara has the best voice among the young generation of singers and I would like him to sing for my disc of songs." Desirous of adapting Beethoven, Mozart and Bach to the sitar, Pradeep aspires to recreate a Sri Lankan audience oriented to the fine sensitivities of reflective listening to instrumental expression, which could transcend words and become an all consuming statement of emotions. Pradeep, now recognised for his concert series of Pradeepanjali, has played the sitar in Abu Dhbai. In Geneva, he was the soloist for the country's first sitar concerto, composed by Lalanath de Silva, in a joint performance by the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and the Bombay Chamber Orchestra, in Colombo and Bombay as part of the 50 year Independence celebrations of Sri Lanka and India. He also solo-ed in the same concerto this January with the Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra at "East West Music and Dance Encounter" conducted by the Bangalore School of Music. In the CD, Indrakeelaya, his variety of eastern blues, merging the sitar with piano and percussion, comes out with a sharply poignant melancholia. His second collection, in the form of chamber music, launched in the CD, Roots, featured the jazzy "A wine coloured moon" and such infusions of rock and blues to the conservative melodies can be a unique listening experience. Nirupam Sen, High Commissioner for India in Sri Lanka, in his speech made during the launching of Roots observed that, "In India, you have this idea of anahat nad - that is the heard but unstrung music - the music that is not struck, and then you have the ahat nad - the music that is struck, plucked from a string by the human hand and this really is the ultimate music out of which the universe is made. Because mathematics and music are perhaps nearer to the universe than words. That is why it is so difficult to make a speech after such glorious music. Because words cannot apprehend reality as much as mathematics can or music can. This is essentially the idea of a Greek mathematician - Pythagoras - music of the spheres. And this anahat nad is that music of the spheres." That was Sen's appreciation for a sitarist he predicted one day would be the Ravi Shankar of Sri Lanka. Pradeep did his degree at Shanti Niketana, learning under the Mai har gharana invented by Ustad Alaudin Khan guru kula in which Ravi Shankar too was versed in music. But unlike Indian musicians coming from generation to generation through a gharana, he broke away for "his freedom of habits of mind, the freedom of history, and held the banner of civilisation of the future," as had been quoted by Tagore. "If one limits oneself to a gharana, one's play and experimenting is limited. After coming back to Sri Lanka, I completed my master studies at Sri Jayawardenapura University where I lecture now." Breathing in the sitar innovations of Pradeep takes us back to what George Harrison of the Beatles expressed of Ravi Shankar after they fused guitar and sitar, "To me, he is the music - It just happens that he plays the sitar!" |
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