The best rendition till date unlike the more popular singer of the Order who has made a mockery of music. The latter one ought to learn the ABC of music from renditions such as these, but, alas, in a country where mediocrity must inevitably rule the roost, the good is ever substituted by the desperate decadence that goes by the name of music. Would it were that these latter aberrations in the name of artistes were to train their ears first for lifetimes before attempting to please the audience in some future incarnation with their unwholesome presentation that is made to go by popular decadent consent by the name of music ! However, that is not to be in a country that has lost its ancient moorings in the art of discernment of that which is delectable from that which is decadent and one must endure the inharmonious strains of what is being passed off as music to the horror of the ears that must endure the pathetic rendition of the otherwise sublime composition of the Swami Vivekananda.
In a like manner at the Mayer Bari {Mother's House], Baghbazar, a sublime rendition used to be and, perhaps, still is, of the song, 'Prakriting paramaang abhayaang varadaang', at the vesper hour, which has been horrendously distorted in tune at Belur Math and is sung so during the vesper service, an alteration which has made of a skylark flight of inspiration through limpid spaces into a morose nocturnal gravitating mass that is materially earth-bound and can only dampen the spirit instead of uplifting it.
These then are the musical tendencies of the times, the handiwork of the legatees of the Swami Vivekananda whose music used to send God into trance. Indeed, men like me are condemned to listen to these routinised rough renditions of what had originally promised to be the sublime savouries of the soul.
Written by Sugata Bose
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