Kathmandu:

You may agree or you may not, but perhaps the denizens of the Capital must be one of that group of people with a very high patience level. The crowd waited and waited at the Bhaktapur Durbar Square for the Sarangi Sangeet to begin on the evening of June 9. The scheduled time of 6:30 pm came and the hands of the clock slowly started to creep past the half hour mark...

One could see the organisers frantically running around trying to make the (last minute?) necessary preparations, while a number of local children playing around tried many’s patience. The crowd whiled away the time with idle chit-chat, stifling a yawn here and there.

However, when the sarangi maestros — Hari Nepali, Shyam Nepali from Nepal, and Ghulam Waris from India — finally took to the stage around one-and-half-hours behind schedule, the crowd was justly rewarded for its patience.

It was an evening of pure bliss, an evening when everyone understood the language of music spoken by the maestros’ sarangis.

Though the hiccups of the evening were not over (the sound system played up, the lights went off), the performance gained momentum with the second instrumental presentation Sarangi ko Vedana (Sarangi’s plight) by Hari Nepali.

The real fun started in his third performance, a Newari number Maya re Ratna that had the audience clapping and asking for more.

“I am very happy to get this opportunity to perform before the people of Bhaktapur,” said Waris, who had donned a Dhaka-topi for his performance. According to the organisers, he is from the Sainia Gharana that began in the sixteenth century Rampur with Tansen. Ambika Prasad Mishra assisted him on tabla.

The musicians played more of folk tunes though they did not ignore the classical and fusion. “In our musical tour, we have tried to play more according to the local taste. So we played more Newari folk tunes,” shared Shyam Nepali.

The best part of the programme was the combined performance of the three artistes, which included the ever-hit Chyangba hoi Chyangba. The audience’s excitement was vivid in the way they got up to dance and screamed for more.

Yes, the agony of initial wait was duly recompensed in the end.

The event was organised by Kaal Bhairav Events and Management in association with the Embassy of India and BP Koirala India-Nepal Foundation.