KARACHI: The word discerning is often used for admirers of classical music. But nothing could be more heartening when at the mere announcement of a raga-to-be-performed music lovers begin to nod in approval.

It happened on Saturday night when vocalist Akbar Ali in the middle of his concert, organised by the All Pakistan Music Conference at the PACC, said he was going to present raga jaijaiwanti and the audience gladly murmured their approval. They knew their raga well. And it’s a good sign.

Akbar, who is a much improved artist compared to what he was a couple of years back, started the show with raga jogeshwari. He was accompanied on stage by Ustad Bashir Khan (tabla), Khurshid (harmonium), Wajid (tanpura) and Gul (sarangi). Perhaps the reason that the singer chose to start off with jogeshwari was that it’s a nighttime raga.

His performance was decent. Akbar took some time warming up to the atmosphere, which is natural. Once he got into the groove, he gained in confidence. Especially in the latter part of the presentation, where he tried to paint the picture of the collective notes by singing the different patterns of the sargam complementing it with subtle harkatein, he was impressive.

However, he was a tad inattentive to the straight notes, not much though, which implies that he does the difficult things with relative ease and tends to pay less attention to simpler ones.

Next up was a thumri, ‘Tori tirchhi najaria’. It lifted the mood of both Akbar and the audience. The vocalist seemed to be enjoying what he was singing. He interspersed the thumri with Urdu verses, so that the message of the content could reach the maximum listeners. It did. The audience too enjoyed it.

Then Akbar Ali said he was going to perform raga jaijaiwanti. The announcement was received with gentle applause and quite a few nods. The artist lived up to expectation. He did fairly well, particularly his rendition of the komal ni and dha was first-rate. Unlike jogeshwari, he did not consume much time with jaijaiwanti and finished it at the right time.

After that he asked music buffs whether they wanted to hear a kaafi or another thumri. The majority spoke in favour of the former. Akbar sang the famous ‘Ranjha Ranjha kardi’ and did a good job.

The show was anchored by Khurram Sohail.

Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2015

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