-globalbihari bureau
In the following video, sitar-maestro Pandit Arupratan Mukherjee plays Raga Mouni for World Peace and Harmony.
“May God give us strength to fight against CoVID-19,” he says. What else than music can be a great stress-buster. It is soothing; it relaxes.
Pandit Arupratan Mukerjee, who was born and brought up in Patna, belongs to the next generation musicians donning the mantle of ‘Senia-Mahiyar Gharana’ and is a well known name among the connoisseurs of traditional Indian Classical Music. The ‘Senia-Mahiyar Gharana’ boasts of its legacy from the school of Miya Tansen ; the famous court musician of Emperor Akbar. Some very illustrious products of this gharana include Baba Alauddin Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar. He has graciously agreed to contribute more music to our readers during this lockdown period.
Raga Mouni was created by Pandit Arupratan’s guru Pandit Jotin Bhattacharya in the name of his spiritual guru Mouni Baba of Ujjain. “Guru ji ko koi bhav aaya hoga to bana diya. Hum log ko itni himmat nahi thi sikhate samay sawal karne ka. Isliye isse jayada kuch pata nahi. Sirf raag ko sikha, bas”. (Guruji must have got some feelings and so he must have created this raga. As his disciples, we never had courage to ask him questions. We just learnt the raga and don’t know anything more about it,” he says. No one though will dispute that this composition is absolutely soothing to the ears.
