As a part of the (unofficially titled) Indian Music Series, University of California, Santa Cruz is welcoming Uday Bhawalkar to campus for a concert on Friday, April 12. The renowned vocalist will be performing Dhrupad music, one of the oldest musical genres in the Hindustani tradition.
Dard Neuman, an associate professor and Hasan Endowed Chair in Classical Indian Music at UC Santa Cruz, uses his position to bring South Asian artists to campus like Bhawalker. “At a high level the endowment was meant for preservation and propagation purposes,” says Neuman. His role consists of “inviting maestro musicians to teach and then to have performances.”
This Spring there will be two performances, including the upcoming one with Bhawalkar. He is part of the Dagar family who has been known for their involvement in music since the 1500s, and has their own genre of Dhrupad music named after them. Of the classical Hindustani traditions, Dhrupad is considered to have “a grammatical and theoretical base, so it’s considered a little bit more authoritative,” according to Neuman. It is also less common, and often doesn’t make it to western (European and American) audiences.
Bhawalkar is an internationally recognized vocalist. He is also a professor in the department of ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. His music is “an immersion into a cadence of life that we're increasingly less inhabiting,” says Neuman, also referring to it as an “aesthetic experience.”
Neuman describes this experience saying, “the ideal of dhrupad is to bring one into a state of ecstasy through a meditative calm.” He credits this experience largely to the slowness and elongation of Dhrupad music which is antithetical to most contemporary music and to our increasingly fast paced lives.
Bhawalker will be accompanied by Sukhad Manik Munde, who also comes from a long standing musical family. Though known as a tabla player, for his upcoming performance Munde will be playing the pakhawaj, a two sided drum.
“Through immersing oneself one hopefully continues to be curious to learn about and connect with other traditions, other peoples,” says Neuman. “This is the humanist spirit.”
More Information
Tickets available through Eventbrite
Friday April 12, 2024
7:30 PM
Music Center Recital Hall at UC Santa Cruz
Parking
Lot 126 is closest parking to the event
Parking is by permit, Park Mobile, of pay $5 cash/credit to the on-site attendant
More parking information here
