Shri Ramjee Mishra, a renowned vocalist, born in the family of traditional musicians of genres Dhrupad, Dhamar and Khayal, was invited to conduct a 3 day workshop for the advanced courses of Kathak Kendra, New Delhi. It was held from 29th February to 2nd March 2024.
The workshop started off with basic practices of identifying places of “Sur”. That further led to the mellow path of ‘Aaroh Avroh’ and soon the students were running smooth sprints of the same.
The sessions of warm up brought colours into the compositions that were taught to the students throughout the workshop. A beautiful Dhamaar composition (a traditional format composition in the time cycle of 14 beats) in raag Yaman, of lyrics “Ae Ri Dhap Baajan Laage” was taught to the students.
They were further taught a ‘Dadra’ composition (a traditional format of singing in the time cycle of 6 beats) that took the students to the mood of the approaching festival of colours, ‘Holi’, as the lyrics said “Holi Khelata Nand Laal Braj Mein”. This composition was in raag Mishra Kaafi. The final composition that was taught to the students was a Tilang in raag Tilak Kamod, which was “Tore Naina Jaadu Bhare”.
With this overall session of Vocal singing workshop, where they learnt some minute handles of singing The students very diligently observed and absorbed Pt Ramjee Mishra ji’s techniques of Upaj, that is, the little spontaneous playfulness with different Ragas, and the way he enlightened the students about the smooth transition, of going from the lines of a “Sthaai” to an “Antara” of a composition, with the change in weightage of the sound. They also got closer to their own
Abhinay aspect, as singing out loud of such beautiful and traditional lyrics, makes a student think more before treading on the path of Abhinaya.
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