Most times, a Raga arrives at your doorstep by way of a beautiful bandish. Jagannathbua Purohit’s lovely composition ‘Bhavan Bhanwara Goonjat Saaanjh’ is full of ambience. Like a pleasant evening stroll in a garden, it lingers on in the mind. The sthayi lays out the essence of the raga in a nutshell–Kedar with a SmP in the ascent, M-PD-P prayoga a la Shyam Kalyan.
Teental: * Jagannathbuwa Purohit ‘Gunidas’
भवन भंवरा गूंजत सांझ, (भवन) शुभ घडी शुभ दिन आज
सगुन भयो है मोहे ‘प्राणपिया’ की, ‘गुणीदास’ तोहे अब धीरज कानाही
Yashwant-bua’s version hews to this, in a simple and straightforward manner. I adopted this happily: Kedar with a twist by way of an aarohi teenvra ma. Easy, right? Upon closer inspection of the renditions out there, notably Manik Varma and Lalith Rao, I saw that the Agra folks especially brought in stronger shades of Shyam Kalyan via SRm and GMRS. This was especially evident in the Vilambit ‘Ye sab jhooTho’ by Vilayat Hussain Khan Saheb. As for myself, I do bring in an occasional Srm in the context of Sm-, and a few other poorvanga artifacts on Shyam Kalyan, but try to keep it well apart from Shyam Kedar, for instance.
So much for Raga-smithy. In the end, this Raga, like all Kedar variants, hinges on the stellar beauty of Kedar. This art photograph of last month’s moon by friend H.N.Shankar, with the moon like a diya/deepak seemed like an apt companion for this short home recording.