India’s classical music is closer in spirit to jazz than its Western concert hall counterpart. Just ask Laxman Krishnarao Pandit what he’s going to perform at his upcoming Milwaukee concert. “I will decide only on that day,” he says. “It’s a performance art which is presented then and there. We can’t say beforehand.”
Pandit is an octave-spanning vocalist of the Gwalior school in northern India, considered the oldest con tinuous classical tradition on the subcontinent. But although Gwalior dates from the 1500s, scarcely a long afternoon in the multi-millennial history of India, it incorporates modes of even greater antiqui ty. Who can say when the seeds were planted for the ragas Pandit will sing on Saturday? And who can say how he will sing them? “We stick to the melody, but the freedom is there to create your own style within the frame work,” he explains. “The framework is there, but you can do within it whatever you like.” Singing in the Gwalior manner is a family tradition. Pandit’s grandfather, a Sanskrit schol ar, was first to take up the ancient ragas. “They required Sanskrit poems to sing,” he says of the Gwalior school. “My grandfather came in contact with this music and learned to sing. This is how the tradition came to my house.”
Pandit absorbed the sound of ragas from the moment he could hear. “The music is not forced,” he says, explaining he was under no pressure to follow his father’s path. “My family was all interested in music.”
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Pandit is on the music faculty of the University of Delhi and has performed around the world. His July Milwaukee sojourn, which included teaching a class at UW- Milwaukee and singing at Pewaukee’s Hindu Temple, is part of his first American tour. Accompanying him at his UWM concert will be a tabla player, Manpreet Bedi, whom he encountered for the first time at last week’s Hindu Temple perform ance, and a harmonium player, Laxmiprasad Thaker, whom he’s never met. The arrangement is closer to a jazz master picking up the melody with ace sidemen than a Western maestro standing before a well-drilled orchestra.
L.K. Pandit will perform 7 p.m., July 26, at UWM’s Peck School of the Arts Recital Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd.
