Marwa

Netherlands-based Marianne Svašek is a dhrupad singer and sarangi player. In following her chosen vocation she has certainly ticked all the boxes, training with the legendary Dagar family as well as Uday Bhawalkar. In choosing dhrupad she did not take an easy route; it is notoriously rigorous in its approach to raga, and the raga chosen here, ‘Raga Marwa’, is one full of subtlety. The alap that makes up this full album is long, logical and elegant, as is befitting the genre, beautifully sung with impeccable intonation. If I have one caveat, it is that however important it may be, there is more to dhrupad than just the alap. The album is perhaps one-dimensional, and a full performance would traditionally include the singing of the devotional text (the ‘dhrupad’ itself) followed by improvisations on the composition. Given her thoughtful and structured performance, it would have been nice to hear what she would have done with a further section. That said, this is a performance that is well worth listening to, and an added bonus are the liner notes by Joep Bor, a famous scholar in the field.