Pandit Shivkumar Sharma

Setting shloka to tune

A conversation with Pandit Shivkumar Sharma is just like listening to his Santoor. Both evoke a sense of peace and deep relaxation. No wonder then, that when the Divine Life Society spoke to him about an album on the Upanishads, they were convinced that only he could do justice to the concept.

For Navras Records, who released the album, the choice of a legendary musician as composer was sheer music to their ears. And for the maestro who has already lent his magic touch to a variety of musical genres, this was one more new frontier. Another opportunity to test those phenomenal skills. “The moment the Divine Life Society spoke to me about this, I knew that this was something quite different from what I had done earlier. As you must be aware, before this one, there have been no albums on the Upanishads. And I felt that the concept itself was close to my heart. Something of my taste,” he says in his clear, soft tones.

For the uninitiated, the album is a compilation of selected original shloka from the Upanishads, followed by their interpretation in English by Swami Chidananda of the Divine Life Society. The shloka and their interpretations are interspersed by the lilting notes of the Santoor giving them their appropriate ambience.

The instrument which Pandit Shivkumar Sharma has been playing for nearly half-a-century takes on a new role when it punctuates the Swami’s interpretation. In fact, more than punctuating, it is used to enhance the essence of the message of the Upanishads. “In today’s world, value systems are rapidly declining. Although we generally tend to believe that this malady exists only in the field of politics, the unfortunate fact is that it exists in almost every sphere of life,” Sharma laments. “As a result of this, there is no peace of mind. And this is precisely where the message of the Upanishads becomes relevant. It is an universal message, not limited to any particular religion or country,” he elucidates.

The message is universal, but for this album, the music that carried it had to be Hindustani classical. And combining the two was the challenge that Sharma agreed to take on, fully aware of the creative solutions that had to be found to strike the right balance between the universal and the desi. “Although I have been composing for a long time, and have composed for various different themes, including films, this was really difficult,” Sharma admits. “Since the ancient Sanskrit shloka are found to be extremely difficult to understand by many people, I had to try and convey their meanings through music,” he says.

Instead of using the traditional style of recitation, the shloka in this album are composed in different tunes, sung by a group of singers. And though the purists might wince at the attempt to add a fresh musical touch to ancient, traditional shloka, Sharma has stayed as close to tradition as possible while keeping the lay listener in mind. That explains the use of different raga for different shloka. “For instance,” says Sharma, “there is one shloka which urges the viewer to awaken and arise. Now, to convey the essence of these words through music, I have used raga Shankara. You see, it would have been very easy to stick to the traditional form of Sanskrit recitation. But in that case, my own contribution would have been nil,” he shrugs.

However, composing the music according to the shloka’s meaning was not the only problem. Their pronounciation was of crucial importance too, as even a slight stress on a vowel could change the entire meaning of the shloka. In traditional recitation, it is easier to pronounce the words, says Sharma. But the difficulty arises when the words have to be sustained in melody. In order to avoid any mistakes, he had to take the help of a Sanskrit scholar.

But that was not the end of the problem. Every shloka had to be followed by its English interpretation. So the music ad to switch roles too. From conveying the meaning of the Sanskrit words of wisdom, it had to now stay in the background and create the right ambience for their interpretation. A task which obviously required great skill, years of experience and a lot of hard work. In short, a challenge that could be taken up only by an artist of Pandit Shivkumar Sharma’s calibre. And while he appears to be satisfied with the outcome, Sharma is already tuning his Santoor for a hectic season of concerts all over the globe, at the same time looking for another challenging opportunity to compose.