COMPOSERS: Pandit Vg Jog
LABELS: Navras
PERFORMER: Pandit Vg Jog, with Ustad Zakir Hussain (tabla)
CATALOGUE NO: NRCD 0076
However ancient the sources of South Asian music, the art is a living, changing thing. The style of performance has adapted to radio and recording, for instance, by performers bowing to constraints of time.
New instruments are constantly appearing on the scene – guitar and saxophone are the most recent arrivals, but not so long ago it was the violin. South Indian performers embraced the violin readily, but the traditions of the north were slower in bending.
Pandit VG Jog, however, is one of the best-known pioneers of the instrument. His 75th birthday is celebrated by a CD taken from London performances in 1981.
The violin’s strength is that it can capture vocal inflections more closely than plucked strings, and with greater dynamic range than the sarangi. Don’t be deceived by the intensely lyrical start of the main raga. You can already hear an impulsive streak, and the excitement soon builds up.