Welcome


Welcome to the Indian Music Discussion Forum. This space can be used by all participants of the workshop to post their questions and share their thoughts with the group.

Shubha Mudgal

Shubha Mudgal

44 Comments

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji -I truly enjoyed the first session.Your depth of knowledge and passion for this genre of music is truly inspiring.In the days to come,I would love to understand other forms like thumris,kajris,dadras,particularly the types of thumris and how they are different and also,if possible,the difference between thumris and dadras.
    I forward forward eagerly to the rest of the workshop

  •    Reply

    Dear Sarita ji,

    We will definitely talk about thumri and dadra in tomorrow’s session. We are very happy to hear that you enjoyed the first session and thank you for being the first participant to use te blog. I have now posted the song text for the Chaiti we worked on in this evening’s session. Hope you have fun with it.

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji yesterdays session with you was very informative and inspiring and I am eagerly looking forward to today’s session.I have a very basic query.What is the connection between swara and shruti and their role in individual ragas.

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    It was a real pleasure and treat to start the workshop with you both last night. I enjoyed every moment and am so honoured and feel privileged to be part of this workshop with you . I have recently heard some compositions of Amir Khusro and would like you to throw some light on them if possible. Looking forward to another great session tonight!

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji and Aneeshji,

    Yesterday’s session was excellent – both the information shared and the manner in which it was. May I request you to talk to us about the Drupad & the dhammar and demonstrate the difference between the two? It would be great if we could have Aneeshji give us an overview of the various Taals and their typical deployment in various forms of hindustani music during the next few days. At the risk of repeating what you must hear so often, it is indeed a great privilege to seek your views and inputs.

  •    Reply

    DEAR Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    yesterdays session was very inspiring and I loved the way you taught the variations.I have worked on it in what ever way I could and am looking forward learning anything you teach.I have always been fond of thumris,kajris, chaitis and other forms of music.aneeshji explained the taals very accurately and the other information regarding music. I look forward to the rest of the session.

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    It was an overwhelming experience to hear you both talk and perform yesterday. Your love for music, depth of knowledge, clarity of expression and desire to keep various musical/performing art forms alive is inspirational. As others have requested, I look forward to learning more about thumris, kajris, dadra, etc and what differentiates these from each other and from a chhota khayal in drut. Looking forward to the remaining sessions…

  •    Reply
    vishakha Gandhi June 14, 2005 at 2:04 pm

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    Yesterday’s session was truly a treat. I thoroughly enjoyed it. you introduced the “chaiti” in a very interesting way,making it very easy to remember. I am looking forward to learn about Thumri’s,Dadra,kajri etc.Aneeshji’s explanation about the taal’s has made it easier to understand and follow it, i wish he can cover various taals with us.
    I am eagerly looking forward to today’s session and the rest of the workshop.

  •    Reply

    We will discuss this point when we discuss dhupad and khayal with the group. And we are very happy to hear that you are enjoying the sessions.

  •    Reply

    Meetali ji,
    Would you like to tell us which compositions you have heard? We will also touch upon Hazrat Amir Khusrau and his contribution to Indian music tonight.

  •    Reply

    Rama ji,
    Aneesh will definitely give you more details on taal in north Indian music, and yes, we will also speak about dhrupad and dhammar.

  •    Reply

    Meenalji,
    Thank you for your very encouraging response

  •    Reply

    Dear Vishakha ji,
    We both looking forward to being with all of you too.

  •    Reply

    Hi friends

    I am glad you all are enjoying the workshop. Gave your feedback to both Aneeshji and Shubha ji and here are the points:

    The workshop has participants with varying level/types of interests/ability and expectations, All are important to us and hence the conductors may want to accommodate all and so do bear with us if that is not in your line of interest.

    Pl give me your feedback as to how you want it done for next workshops. I can arrange for smaller focus groups.

    Meanwhile enjoy every minute with the maestros. Their music and thoughts will linger long after they have returned to their homes!!

    Do you want to continue meeting once aweek/month to keep the mutual interest going? sharing your thoughts on music/singing, presentation?

    Music is food for the soul..some ragas have such a soothing effect for me..Sahana is my favourite..kedargowla in Hindusthani I presume in Hindusthani music..must do an workshop on raga and ragini..well see you all later.

  •    Reply

    dear shubhaji
    to say that this workshop has been a dream come true for me would not be doing justice to whatever i am feeling after sharing the same space as u. as for the holi session we have had with u today…. all i can say is that it is haunting me. i can’t get it out of my head. ur rendition was of course truly beautiful! thank u ever so much.amongst “mathurs” holi is a very important festival where everyone in the family sings. a lot of these holi’s r written by family members and tuned to popular numbers. this was also one of the reasons why i was so keen to learn it from u
    thank u once again
    monica

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji,
    The sites you suggested are extremely informative and interesting.Thank you.I also enjoyed the way you showed us yesterday how to develop the bandish ki thumri and chaiti further-you made it seem relatively simple!Now that we have had the good fortune to learn a chaiti,thumri and hori from you,I wonder if there is enough time to learn a chota khyal this evening.
    Once again,I feel privileged to be a part of your workshop.My heartfelt gratitude to you and Aneeshji for giving us your time.

  •    Reply

    Shubhaji,
    I truly enjoyed the hori you taught us yesterday .you have such a flowing melodious voice and the way you teach is simple and nice. I have no words to express and will definitely like to learn on one to one basis next time you come.

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji & Aneeshji

    Just the thought that today will be our last session is giving me withdrawal symptoms!!! Each day’s session has been stupendous and yet each better than the previous. Hearing you sing & play, singing with you, learning from you is an unparalleled experience and then listening to the indepth explanations from both of you is “sone pe suhaga”. I have always had a certain wariness of taal and listening to Aneeshji’s explanation makes it sound so much more “understandable” and manageable.

    If ever there is a possibility of learning more from you both – in any way, i would be honored to have the opportunity.

    Just a small request. Even if you don’t have the time to teach any gazal, it would be great if you could just talk about it, the way you have given us explanations on thumris and chaitis etc.

    Thank you ever so much

    Kiran

  •    Reply
    Administrator June 16, 2005 at 9:06 pm

    Dear Kiran,

    Thank you for letting us know that you enjoyed the workshop. I wish we could have spent some time talking about ghazal, but as you saw, there was just no time for anything more than the khayal bandish in Hameer in today’s session. Both of us are really fond of ghazals even though we have just a passable understanding of Urdu. Aneesh has composed some of Faiz Sahab’s ghazals and I have sung them despite the fact that ghazal gayaki is something that I did not get the chance to study for very long. You must of course have read Faiz Sahab’s work, but you must try and get your hands on a fantastic CD Rom on Faiz Sahab that was made some years ago in Pakistan. I think you will like it!

  •    Reply
    Administrator June 16, 2005 at 9:12 pm

    Dear Meenal ji,

    Thank you very much for your very warm and encouraging response. Your words are particularly encouraging since you have been getting taleem from someone as senior and experienced and wise as Smt Manik Bhide.

  •    Reply
    Administrator June 16, 2005 at 9:18 pm

    Dear Monica ji,

    I know that the “Mathur” community has wonderful collections of wedding songs too. It would be nice to document them and share them with the group along with translations etc. Would you think of doing something like that?

  •    Reply
    Gauri and Sarita June 17, 2005 at 1:01 am

    Shubhaji and Aneeshji,

    We have just posted the presentation document for Saturday to your underscorerecords e-mail Id,since it is too large a file to post on the blog.We will be grateful if you would give us your comments and suggestions so that we can make the necessary changes

  •    Reply

    Soudarya
    It has been a wonderful workshop thanks sooo much for organising this.It has been an experiance to cherish forever for me. I would love to attend others you might arrange in the future. Just a thought ,dont know if you have arranged it already but would like as a momento of the workshop to have a piece of paper signed by Shubhaji and Aneeshji just saying we did a workshop with them ,it will be a prized possesion for keepsake, ofcourse we would also like a group photo as well.Hope Shubhaji Aneeshji and everyone else is also ok with this.
    Meetali

  •    Reply

    Hi All in the “Hori Group”
    Rehearsal at 1pm in the school is cancelled and the rehearsal is at Meenal’s so please come to her place at 1pm instead. . Call Meenal at 62358314

  •    Reply
    vishakha Gandhi June 18, 2005 at 9:17 pm

    Dear Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    This past week has just been awsome!!!!!
    Tomorrow is going to be an absolute anticlimax.The past week and tonight’s presentation will be a memory i will forever cherish.I dont have words to express my Thanks for all the patience,time and encouragement that you have bestowed on us.
    I hope this was just the begining of many more good things to come.My heartfelt thanks once again.

  •    Reply

    dear shubhaji and aneeshji
    it feels strange to wake up and remember that this evening we shall not be meeting. the last week has been one that i will treasure all my life not just because of the knowledge both of u have imparted to us but also because all of us have had the good fortune to have met two such wonderful people.i pray and hope that in the future i have the ‘saubhagya’ of meeting up with u again and learning some more. at the risk of sounding repetitive— once again a BIG THANK YOU !!!
    monica

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji and Aneeshji,
    My hearfelt gratitude for a great week, the best that i have had in singapore so far. It has opened up a whole new and wonderful world of music for me. Hope to attend another such workshop by you in the near future.
    Mayura

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji & Aneeshji
    You had mentioned about some kind of distance learning opportunity. I would love to be part of that if you ever start such a thing.
    In the meanwhile, i wanted to send you the group picture taken on the rehearsal day (it has really turned out nice – but i should not flatter myself, i wasn’t the photographer after all 😉 ) but i don’t know how to upload it or send it to you. Can you let me know? Then you can upload it to the blog and everyone can see it.
    I am totally inspired to study classical and folk music even more seriously than i was doing earlier and will definitely keep in touch. Yes, I have read Faiz sahab’s gazals (in fact i have a nice collection of faiz and ghalib books) and i would love to hear your and aneeshji’s rendition of Faiz’s ghazals.
    May God bless you and Aneeshji forever with the ability to spread music and the love for it in this world. We need more people like you in India, in Singapore and in this world.
    Lots of love and respect
    Kiran

  •    Reply

    Hi girls
    Those of you who are interested in the full recording of the 4 days of the workshop on CD’s please send me email to my personal email address kirangrover@hotmail.com (not in this blog) and i will let you know how we can make it happen.
    Kiran

  •    Reply

    Dear Kiran,

    Thank you so much for all your good wishes and for your enthusiastic response to the workshop. I would like to add your email ID to our mailing list since we send out newsletters quite regularly. Do let me know if I may do so.

    And could you send me the picture on my email ID which is shubha1@vsnl.com and I will upload the picture on the blog is others would like to see it too.

    Regards

    Shubha

  •    Reply

    Dear Mayura,

    Many thanks for blogging. We will certainly let you know if we decide to do another workshop in Singapore. And in the meantime, we will add your email ID to our mailing list too.

    Regards

    Shubha

  •    Reply

    Dear Monica,

    Great to hear from you. We are back in Mumbai now and off tomorrow ot do another workshop in Varanasi. Btw, you didn’t respond to my suggestion regarding the wedding songs. Do let me know what you think of the idea.

    Regards

    Shubha

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji and Aneeshji
    Am still reeling under the shock of the dream I have lived through!!. It was the most amazing experiance for me . I have learnt a lot in the short week spent with you wish that I could have the opportunity of being a regular student of yours. I am particularly fond of thumris and folk songs, although my first love is ghazals. I do sing a lots of folk and ghazals but much as i love thumris do not have the adequate knowlegde i feel or the expertise to sing a thumri, wish i could develop this further. If and when you have another workshop here i would definately love to be a part of it.
    Am writing you a few lines which i feel you will appreciate, these were sung by a singer(Ram Babu) who sang at our place in Kanpur when i was a child and my father taped it, he sang this in the middle of the song “Bahut din beete piya nahi aaye” I think the play on the words holi, and barsaat is fantastic.

    Aali ab ant basant ka hai
    Aur birahan ke ghar naath nahi
    Holi Ho li, holi ho li barsaat bhayi
    Barsaat bhayi, bar(var) saath nahi!

    Have you heard it before? Will love to keep in touch. Wish to give you my personal email as well…..pankajmeetali@hotmail.com. However much i try to say thanks to you both can never be enough but still THANKYOU!!! hope to keep this contact with you.
    Meetali

  •    Reply

    dear shubhaji
    my deepest apologies for not having replied to ur query. i will certainly send u some of the songs that have been penned by my mother for various ceremonies of weddings in the family. the only reason i had not done so till now was because after returning from work (which is generally by 3 p.m) i used to be teaching and then rushing to be with u in the workshop. in the next couple of days i am takking ‘chutti’ and will then send u the lyrics. if u do decide to put them to music i would be delited and honoured to hear them.thank u once again for writing to me. in fact today i am at a loss wondering what to do. last evening i sat down to hear the recordings of some of the work that we did with u and felt really really nostalgic. to repeat again i hope i am once again granted the good fortune of doing another workshop with the two of you.. please do keep me on ur mailing list
    monica

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji and Aneeshji,

    I am (as many others are) suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms now that the workshop is over.This has actually been my first indepth exposure into the thumri/dadra genre of music-I had a limited knowledge base before this and honestly,not enough motivation to learn more.The five days we spent with you (and how I wished they’d never end!)opened up a completely new world for me and now,I am hungry for any information or reading material I could get on these musical forms.I have been through the information on your website already and will be happy to be directed now or later, towards any other sources you believe are worth checking out.Once again,I am at a loss for words to convey my deep gratitude to you for investing so much time in us and for giving us a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience.

  •    Reply

    Dear Meetali,

    That’s a beautiful verse. I don’t know if you have a recording of Ram Babu singing it but if you do, and if you would like to share it with the group, send it to me as an mp3 and I can try and see if it can be placed on a server for everyone to access and download and listen to. Or perhaps, you could sing it for us and we can upload that for everyone, what do you think?

    Have you read th Holi written by Nazeer Akbarabadi?
    It is stunning too. Try and see if you can get it somewhere. I think you will like it.

    Regards

  •    Reply

    After the sleep deprived, adrenalin pumping week of the music workshop , all of us are feeling slightly orphaned . I am now in India and telling everyone i meet about my once-in-a-lifetime experience .And of course, everywhere i go, I am constantly humming the songs that we learnt.Once i reach my parental home in Dehradun ,the actual singing will start as I give them a complete debriefing . I am carrying all the audio,video and written evidence !!
    To paraphrase slightly the song from ‘The Sound of Music ”
    ‘Perhaps I had a wicked childhood,
    Perhaps I had a miserable youth ,
    But somewhere in my youth or childhood,
    I must have done something good!’
    When I look back on the past week ,I can only marvel at this phenomenal piece of good fortune that enabled me to interact with you and Aneesh ji at such close quarters .I have always been a fan of your style of rendering music but now after having experienced your warmth ,sincerity and humility I can honestly say that I have been touched by ‘divinity’.
    Aap dono ko mer shat shat pranam .

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji
    Glad you liked the verse. I do have a recording of the song but it is on cassette and I have no idea how to upload it,guess it must be first converted to cd. Am going away on holiday tomorow for a month will come back and see what i can do. Yes I do have Nazeer Akbarabadi’s “Jab phagun rang jhamakte hon,tab dekh baharen holii ki” It is beautiful,have had it for a while but never picked it up to sing…probably should! Hope you are having a good time in Varanasi.Warm regards
    Meetali

  •    Reply

    dear shubhaji
    have sent u a mail on ur personal email id. pl do let me know if u have recd it.am feeling very very envious of ur varanasi workshop students.right now they r enjoying the good fortune of learning from the two of you.
    warm ragards
    monica

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji,

    They say, “you can never stop learning” but why do I feel like
    I have ? Its probably because a storm just went by and suddenly
    the city’s quiet. Too quiet. A storm of the world’s best vocal
    talent and consistently brilliant percussion.

    Also I would like to make a confession to you. “I learnt
    more than you taught” I not only learnt authentic forms
    of music but also observed and learnt the importance
    of eloquent oratory and presentation.

    So all in all it was an experience of a lifetime. So thankyou once again for the most extraordinary 5 days of my life. Having said
    that, I wish to learn more from you and would be thankful if you
    could let me know how or where I could get in touch with you when
    I come to Mumbai. Thankyou.

    Regards,

    Meenal

  •    Reply

    Dear Shubhaji,
    You dont know me since we haven’t met, but I am one of the unfortunate ones who was on holiday when you visited Singapore… Words cannot express my disappointment when I heard that I missed the opportunity of meeting you and attending your music workshop.I truly believe that you sing from and for the soul..I,too,am a a student of classical music and though I started late, I enjoy every minute of it. I hope and trust that you will visit us again soon, as promised.
    Kind regards,
    Rita Bhatia

  •    Reply

    Dear Gauri,

    I’m awfully sorry I haven’t been able to write to you earlier but many many thanks for your very generous compliments and message. I hope your family enjoyed the chaiti and hori and other compositions. Now of course, it is kajri and jhoola time and I have found some really beautiful verses by Bhartendu Babu which I am composing. Inshallah, we will be share them with you at some point of time. Do stay in touch and have a great holiday.

    Regards from both of us.

    Shubha and Aneesh

  •    Reply

    Dear Rita ji,

    I look forward to meeting you in the near future either when you are in India or when we visit Singapore next.

    Regards

  •    Reply

    Dear Meenal ji,

    Thank you ever so much for your very generous words of appreciation. We look forward to staying in touch with you and you are always welcome to get in touch with us when you are in Mumbai.

    Warm regards

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