Parampara Festival 13.3.1992

Held in Berlin in 1992, Parampara Festival brought together Indian teachers and their international students to showcase the global spread of Indian classical music. Vocalist Amelia Cuni’s live performance at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, released now for the first time, was perfectly emblematic of its aims.

Born in Milan but resident in Berlin, Cuni had spent over a decade in India studying the dhrupad singing style from masters including R Fahimuddin Dagar – and she was also well versed in the work of Western contemporary music by the likes of John Cage, Werner Durand and Terry Riley. Her performance at Parampara reveals an artist who is in command of the tradition while simultaneously making bold innovations. For her 30-minute rendition of the late night ‘Raag Bageshri’, she is accompanied by her own tambura playing and by the exquisitely curled responses of Gianni Ricchizzi on vichitra vina – a plucked zither played with a glass ball slide. ‘Devino Amor’ is her own composition, a setting of mystical 13th-century Franciscan texts praising divine love sung in the dhrupad tradition. For the final ‘Raag Shahana Kanada’, the duo are joined by Helmut Waibl negotiating 14-beat rhythmic patterns on the pakhawaj (drum). It’s all carried off with equal parts reverence and panache.