Hindustani delight

Mumbai Mirror, Bombay, Thursday January 31, 2013, Page 36

Pandit Jal K Balaporia has passed away. With his going we have lost one of the few dedicated practitioners of the Gwalior gayaki in the city; and, after Pt Feroz Dastur’s death four years ago, the remaining Parsi vocalist of Hindustani music in the country. Pt Balaporia was only six when his father, Kaikhushroo, began teaching him raga-based songs. At 14, he joined the class that Sitaram Eknath Pandit of the Gwalior gharana had started in his home town, Billimoria. Even when he moved to Surat and later to Mumbai, he found gurus from the gharana to guide him.
If one were to characterise in a word, the effect that Pt Balaporia’s music had on his listeners, that word would have to be delight. The delight lay in his chaste diction, whether he was singing in Braj, Sanskrit, Marathi or Persian, in praise of Shiva, Rama or Allah. It lay in the warm rapport he built with his audience. It lay in his delight in all three aspects of music — poetry, swara and tala. Some of the talas that his bandishes were set to, like deepchandi, ada chautal, zhaptal, zhumra, sawari and pashtu, rarely showed up on other concert platforms. What we heard there were mostly trital and the excessively slow ektal. The latter, in Pt Balaporia’s opinion led to slackness in the construction of the khayal.

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Courtesy : Dara Acidwalla