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This commanding performance — recorded at the Saptak Music Festival in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on 5 January 2006 — is a rewarding and affecting listen which curiously manages to combine a masterfully discreet sense of urgency and direction with poise.

It begins with a short vocal invocation to Lords Ganesh and Shiva — a traditional practice at the beginning of Pakhawaj solo drum performances — which seems to work as the unfolding concert begins to take shape beautifully.

The lehara is played by a majestically swirling and reverent Serangi and Harmonium. This looped melodic theme flows hypnotically throughout the performance and is at once both beautifully enigmatic and subtly arresting. It not only maintains the twelve beat cycle within which Ravishankar Upadhyay moves so expertly but also instils an immediately fine sense of longing hard to describe in words.

From here, the rhythms of Ravishankar Upadhyay play off of this with breath-taking effects. A number of twisty rhythmic themes and variations develop through various compositional forms, some ancient and some more modern to astound and amaze. The fiery Parans, or fixed compositions — some of which are hundreds of years old — of tracks five through eight are especially explosive and bewilder in their lucid sense of movement and purpose.

The shortness of the tracks only furthers the feeling of immediacy throughout the record. Smaller pieces begin to melt into one another towards the end as Ravishankar Upadhyay’s authority on the Pakhawaj remains clear. He frequently manages to coax out of this drum the most fantastically clear and pressing rhythms while at the same time creating tones so rich that this should no doubt serve as testament to both his reputation and tradition.

Sense World Music