Indian classical styles mix in musical conversation

The strumming of strings, a beat on the tabla. 

The music starts and flows like a conversation would between friends – the four musicians on stage look at each other, laugh, let one another’s sound come forward. 

Pt Tejendra Narayan Majumdar and Dr Ambi Subramaniam were in New Plymouth last weekend, performing as part of the annual WOMAD festival. Accompanying them were percussionists Tanmoy Bose and V V Ramana Murthy.  

The four performers on stage at WOMAD in New Plymouth. Image: Supplied/Trevor Villers

For this quartet of Indian musicians, only about 30 seconds of their two separate hour-long performances at WOMAD over March 15 to 17 were composed. The rest of the music flows together in a meeting of classical southern and northern Indian styles. 

“It’s a conversation,” Majumdar says of their musical style, “A musical conversation between instruments. The common factor is the melody pattern, the melody, the raga.”  

He explains that there is a fixed number of beats for the musicians which becomes the baseline for their improvisational set. 

The music itself is a meeting of two different styles: Hindustani or north Indian classical music and Carnatic or south Indian classical music. 

Majumdar and Tanmoy Bose come from a background of northern Indian music.  

The differences between northern and southern classical music styles are highly technical, Majumdar says, but the important thing for listeners – whether they’re musicians or not - is the effect of the music. 

“One who listens to that kind of music, he will get to understand. He doesn’t need to know the grammar and all the details.” 

Majumdar is a well-recognised and respected player of the sarod, a stringed musical instrument. He first learned how to play the mandolin from his grandfather and later trained under the likes of notable musicians and teachers Bahadur Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. 

Ambi Subramaniam at WOMAD. Image: Supplied/Trevor Villers

Ambi Subramaniam and V V Ramana Murthy bring a southern musical tradition to their performances. Subramaniam has made waves as a musician – he's been performing since he was six and has been called a “king of Indian classical violin”.  

Subramaniam says the musicians all listen to each other as they play, to build and create something new together. 

“Individually we sound a little different and will be coming from different places, what we create should sound cohesive,” Subramaniam says. 

“This kind of collaboration, the effect should be one plus one equals one,” Majumdar says. 

The four musicians all know each other but have very rarely performed as one act together. At the moment, however, they have been taking classical Indian music to the world – before arriving in New Plymouth, they performed at WOMADelaide.  

Tejendra Majumdar and Ambi Subramaniam, along with percussionists Tanmoy Bose and V V Ramana Murthy were supported by the Asia New Zealand Foundation to attend the WOMAD festival,

- Asia Media Centre