‘MUSIC FESTIVALS PROVIDE EXPOSURE TO ARTISTS’
Indian classical singer Shubha Mudgal believes music festivals provide artists with avenues, and audience with more genres
How can music or any artistic expression be termed impure? The arts are dynamic, and constantly changing and adapting.
SHUBHA MUDGAL SINGER
Music festivals create more listeners and provide access to new artists with different repertoires, feels Indian classical musician and Thumri singer Shubha Mudgal. The Padma Shri awardee recently performed to a full house at Sahitya Kala Parishad’s Thumri festival in the Capital. The three-day festival saw Mudgal present the musical styles of Bol Banao Thumri and Dadra.
“It is very heartening for an artist to sing not just to a packed auditorium but also have listeners seated in the auditorium lobby, listening to a live feed from the stage,” the 59-year-old said. Mudgal, who has also been associated with cultural fests as a curator, adds that she feels music festivals help popularise music. “In general, I feel festivals provide sustained exposure to the arts annually, create more listeners, and provide access to new artists with different kinds of repertoire,” she says.
Mudgal has been a student and exponent of Thumri — a blend of Indian classical music and folk narratives — for almost four decades now. As a child in Allahabad, she began her training in music not as a student of vocal music, but as a student of the dance form Kathak, which is also “inextricably linked with the art of Thumri”.
“It is from Kathak that I transitioned towards studying vocal music. The very first Thumri I ever learnt was taught to me by my guru Pandit Ramashreya Jha ‘Ramrang’,” she says, adding that she started her Friday performance with a Thumri composition taught by her guru.
The Ab Ke Saawan singer ended this performance with a Dadra learnt from another guru of hers — the eminent Thumri singer and guru Naina Devi. And it was her gurus who ingrained in her the importance of an interdisciplinary approach — where literature and poetry were given as much importance — towards studying music.
Mudgal adds that she does not subscribe to the “usual notions of purity” when it comes to the arts. “How can music or any artistic expression be termed impure? The arts are dynamic, and constantly changing and adapting,” she says.