Pandit V.G. Jog
I came across the music of Pandit V.G. Jog through my father who had several LPs of his in our
rather humble family record collection. Jog, along with Bhimsen Joshi and Pannalal
Ghosh were the holy trinity of Indian classical music growing up. In fact,
they were the only three Hindustani classical musicians I knew, and over the
years I fell under the sway of their playing and singing.
Vishnu Govind Jog,
or simply V.G., was the man who more than any other made the Western violin a
beloved and natural sounding member of the Hindustani musical orchestra. A Marathi by birth, Jog lived most of his life in Calcutta that great eastern metropolis
of culture and art. His pedigree is
burnished with some brief periods of study with the greatest of all modern
Indian music pedagogues, Allaudin Khan, but
the bulk of his training as a violinist came from V. Shastry and Dr. S.N.
Ratanjarkar. He received his Master’s degree
in music from Lucknow where he remained for some time as an instructor himself.
Groomed
in the Gwalior, Agra and Bakhle styles, Pandit
Jog's virtuosity, mastery of ragas
and an uncanny realisation of space and time in the construction and knowledge
of rhythm are his hallmarks. At a very young age, he rubbed shoulders with all
time greats at the Bhatkhande College of Music, Lucknow, in the 1930s—the first
great attempt at institutionalizing traditional music instruction. (Wikipedia)
Panditji travelled
extensively around the world and performed in some of the great concert halls
in the US and Europe including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. In the late 1990’s he developed Parkinson’s
disease which made it increasingly difficult for him to play his beloved
violin. He passed away in Calcutta in
2004 after attaining almost all the high civilian honors of his country and
those in the South Asian region.
This is a cassette I
purchased in his home city of Calcutta many years ago and is one of my favorite.
His treatment, especially, of Raga Kirwani, is spectacular. He does, truly,
manage to make waves of ecstasy on both these selections.
Track Listing:
01 Raga Shyam Kalyan
02 Raga Kirwani
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