The Times of India News Service

PANAJI: Away from the bustle of the city, the International Centre Goa at Dona Paula, offers a peaceful atmosphere and a picturesque surrounding. Great for a party, but not for a musical concert, if acoustics is what one is referring to. Performing here were the `Nataraj XT', a trio of French performers.

What these three tried to do, was to infuse a dose of Indian classical music, with traces of the raga, and electronics. This was a new concept they had tried in their native France and successfully reached those sections which wanted something different.

The instruments they played explained better. There was Pierre Moitram, playing the sitar, Richard Bernet, the sarod and Kapi, juggling with computerised electronics.

While the three improvised, striking a combination of Indian traditional modalities and electronic textures, it was Moitram, who has studied with Prof. Pramod Kumar, a disciple of Ravi Shankar, that created the Indian classical style, with Bernet supplementing him on the sarod. Bernet is quite a veteran on the instrument, having attended the Ali Akbar Khan Music College in California, learnt with the group `Origine' and having played with the Lal Ganesh Trio.

But it was Kapi who was the most dominant with his synthesised electronic machine, taking into his stride a variety of tempos like the rock, pop, jazz, blues, ragga, reggae, etc., with a key ally on the sides in the form of the sound engineer Patrick Jauneaud.

Bernet, during a chat, wished to steer clear of any mention of playing raga music. ``This is not raga at all,'' he said, and went on to emphasise that they were no where near the real thing of this classical music interpretation. However, among the pieces they played were the `Bhairav', `Yaman', `Jan puri', all light music meant for dancing, he said.

The group was brought to Goa, courtesy the Alliance Francaise de Goa, in collaboration with International Centre Goa, Embassy of France in India and the Indian Airlines, after touring some important cities in the country.

Previous Article   Next Article