Raag Lalit | Solo Rudra Veena | Jyoti Hegde | Music of India

#darbarfestival | Many still see the rudra veena as the king of Indian instruments. Though rare today, it is linked with a certain universal purity, close to the essence of Indian classical.
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Jyoti Hegde is among the world’s leading rudra veena players. Sitar was her first love, and she studied the instrument under Bindhu Madhav Pathak, starting training at the comparatively late age of 12. But on hearing her guru play the veena she became instantly drawn to its slow, low tones, and asked to learn.

Her guru refused, telling her that women could not play it. After some persistence he offered to give her a trial lesson, but deliberately set her up on an old, difficult to play veena in the hope that she would be dissuaded. But she took to it with talent and determination, practicing hard enough that Bindhu soon asked her father to buy her a better quality instrument. But even from there the path to mastery was not straightforward - her mother urged her to give up, protesting that the veena’s playing position could damage the uterus.

Jyoti was undeterred (and now has a 29-year old son), going on to learn more of dhrupad’s patient grammar from Indudhar Nirodi and esteemed master Asad Ali Khan. Her acclaimed style largely adheres to Asad’s Khandarbani Gharana, but is also influenced by her continuing expertise in the sitar. She sees her music a form of nāda yoga, based on the ancient Sanskrit premise that all creation consists of nāda, or sound vibrations. Listen to more of Jyoti here:
-Lalit |    • Raag Lalit | Solo Rudra Veena | Jyoti Hegd...  
-Interview |    • Learning India’s king instrument as a woma...  

Lalit is an oddly-shaped raga intended for performance around the time of sunrise. Its modern form takes the notes SrGmMdNS, with shuddha Ma as the vadi [king note]. Note the absence of Pa, and the adjacent use of both tivra and shuddha Ma in descent - a rare, perhaps even unique feature (twin-swara ragas typically permit one version of the note in ascent and the other in descent). This leads some to say that the tivra Ma functions as a kind of komal Pa in practice - something supposedly forbidden in Hindustani classical (although the concept is mentioned in ancient texts such as the Natya Shastra). Different traditions may use either a komal or a shuddha Dha, and others hold that it is in fact a microtone somewhere between these two tones. It is similar to Carnatic Raga Lalitha, suggesting a common source. Hear more of Lalit here:
-Jyoti Hegde (rudra veena) |    • Raag Lalit | Solo Rudra Veena | Jyoti Hegd...  
-Budhaditya Mukherjee (sitar) |    • Sitar on Fire | Raag Lalit (Part 2) | Pand...  
-Rajendra Prasanna (bansuri) |    • Enchanting Raag Lalit | Pandit Rajendra & ...  
-Indrani Mukherjee (khayal) |    • Mesmerising Raag Lalit | Indrani Mukherjee...  

Recorded at Darbar in 2014, on location in India:
-Jyoti Hegde (rudra veena)

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