Overview

Kumar Prasad Mukherji's elegy to a vanishing age of musical giants comprises many shared experiences between performer and audience, between recital and applause. It is his salute to a world receding into the shadows of history, peopled by ustads, pandits, the rich and the famous, the sacred and the profane. He traces the origins of their schools, from folk traditions to the courts of ancient emperors to the sound of the ankle-bells of dancing girls. He points to the time when notation crept into classical music, horrifying old masters accustomed to an art form that celebrated spontaneity and improvisation, but resulting in the preservation of ragas that would otherwise have been lost to time. While Mukherji's beloved 'Khansahebs', 'Panditjis' and 'Buwas' may have been inspired by the divine, his recounting from legends and from personal memory shows us those greats as intensely human creatures. They are driven by appetites not always noble and their intrigues and jealousies are universal. Humour, too, abounds in these pages, as do characters who will remain forever etched in the mind of the reader.

Full Product Details

9780143061991

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Company director, musician, organizer of prestigious music festivals, music critic, cricket fan, globetrotter and photographer - all in one - Kumar Prasad Mukherji has had an interesting life. His very first recital on All India Radio was on the national hook-up and his very first book in Bengali, written at the age of sixty-five, received the coveted Rabindranath Tagore Award. In his late seventies now, he leads a retired life teaching and writing on music and cricket.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available