Music is generally a male-dominated profession worldwide, but this remarkable album, released in 1989 by JVC as part of its World Sound series, is an example of a woman master musician in the Carnatic tradition of South India, Raajeswati Padmanabhan (1939-2008), performing on the veena, said in the brief English portion of the liners to be the oldest (other sources suggest among the oldest) of instruments in the sub-continent.
A large plucked string instrument with the large curved resonator on the right side of the performer and the tuning box at the left. The notes point out that, of the seven strings, four are above the frets, while the other are open and serve to provide drones as well as the indicate the bears of the tala, rhythm, utilized in a piece.
The liners also offer that "the main attraction of the veena is the meditative atmosphere which its sound evokes" because of ongoing droning, the use of microtones and "subtle melodic inflections." It adds that "listeners experience moments of ecstasy when the highly individual and unique sound of the veena is handled by a master of improvisation within the format of a raga."
The masterful playing is expressed through four pieces, with the first being a brief, by Indian standards, six-minute one, and the second twice as long. The fuller experience of the raga is found, however, in the last two pieces, with running times of 23 and 24 minutes. While Padmanabhan performs on the featured instrument, her daughter Shreevidhya Chandramouli provides a drone but also duets with her mother, while Tanjore Upendran plays the mridangam drum. Given the horrible surge in COVID-19 cases in India, there is an especially poignant context listening to this amazing music now.
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