Every year, classical music lovers swarm to Mumbai’s National Centre for Performing Arts for the Bandish festival, a three-day event that honours India’s legendary composers with the country’s most acclaimed classical maestros performing their works in the signature styles prescribed by their respective gharanas (musical lineage).
Starting 12 July, this festival presents live Indian classical music at its best and is a beautiful way to experience poetic verse and complex rhythm.
A “bandish” loosely translates as a fixed composition of notes. The singer uses this as a musical backbone to render the original composition into a qawwali, khayal or thumri (styles of singing). Unlike Western classical music, there are no written notations and the singer relies on orally handed down renditions, so no one can predict how the “cover” version will play out.