The Valley Recalls:
A Live Thematic Duet in Two Volumes
In 1967 they created the "Call of the Valley", the first thematic recording in Indian classical music, also its greatest hit to-date. It was about a boy and a girl who belong to the Kashmir Valley--a romantic musical interlude set in the serenity and beauty that pervaded in these Himalayan valleys. It began with the music evoking the gentleness of the pre-dawn hours, the first rays setting the mountain peaks aglow, and the valley gradually filling with light, the heat of the noon and the cool of the evening, and the waters of the Kashmiri lake dancing with the stars.
Almost thirty years later, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia have revisited their valley of yesteryear. They recognize the change in the last thirty years that has overtaken their nostalgic vale, and the wider world over. The innocence is lost, the peace and harmony between peoples has disappeared. The world has become a global village in search of that innocence, that spiritual and emotional peace of mind and harmony, across cultural boundaries.
"The Valley Recalls", although a sequel, shifts its setting from the Kashmir valley to a more universal focus. They are aiming at proffering a musical therapy that soothes the mind and creates a sense of inner calmness. It aims to evoke a sense of much needed PEACE, LOVE AND HARMONY (Volume I NCRD 0066), through the musical idiom, through the medium of a musical heritage that is as ancient and spiritual as the Vedas, which were first scripted in the Indus Valley, not far from these vales.
In the original "Call of the Valley" one listens through their music the story of the temple scene when the two lovers go to the temple and pray. That peace of mind is based on Raga Bhoopali. In the sequel, we hear the same RAGA BHOOPALI (VOLUME II NCRD 0067), based on he same old composition, but played in the present context and played more elaborately, giving it a fuller treatment, while linking the two titles.
Thirty years hence the world may have changed, but the message remains the same and the musical medium these two maestros has taken on a more spiritual dimension. Their musical sophistication has grown with age as their appreciation of the spiritual dimension in life. Their vast amount of traversing the country and the world over has enlightened their music genius to a greater appreciation of the human complexities and its needs in the present day context, where the pace and stresses of life demand a greater relief from it all toward an inner search for peace, happiness and harmony. "The Valley Recalls" is this pilgrimage in the quest of inner peace of mind. It also touches the mind's many different senses of human emotions and experience that probably cannot be better expressed or felt.
By News India (U.S.A.)
©COPYRIGHT 1997 Shivkumar Sharma Associates