Search - Amelia Cuni :: Morning Meditation

Don't Believe the Hype

01/04/2002

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Great singing voice and vocal technique don't matter. Only raga does.Every time a European or American musician sits down on the North Indian concert mat, many European and American listeners are beside themselves with hyperbole. Even if the poor soul is only a beginning or intermediate student (everyone gives concerts nowadays), the outrageous praise invariably runs along the lines of "has completely captured the soul of the young Ali Akbar Khan on the sarod", "has now also taken up the sitar like a native" or "easily as good as any Indian master". The Indian classical music tradition goes back many hundreds, arguably thousands of years; child prodigies have been known to undergo 20 years of gruelling training under the best of masters - but of course, any ponytail jazz muso from Jersey, after six months of lessons under some grand-student of Ravi Shankar, will outdo them with no contest as a matter of natural fact.In this climate, just about any review of such an artist can be accused of racism. Exaggerated praise can be a symptom of a white-supremacy mindset; dismissal is also a tricky business because it is after all not unthinkable that some of these white persons have had to fight uphill battle against culturally conservative Indians, caste-conscious Hindus, who have judged them wholly unfairly on skin color or nationality.But no balanced review of Amelia Cuni's dhrupad performance on this record could rate it among the best. It is a gimmicky alap, including huge but artless meends that span more than an octave without touching any particular swara on their way. The nomtom is bound to be technically difficult for women but I think her problems here are of a different nature altogether. She does it at multiple speeds but fails to make the parts come together to a coherent whole. And even in the straightest melodic lines her ragadari is not much to my liking. In that department she will probably never attain mastery, unless she devotes her whole life to it. (That's just how stiff the competition is today with giants like the Dagar brothers, Amir Khan, Abdul Karim Khan, Mallikarjun Mansur, Kishori, Kesarbai and Mogubai surviving in hundreds of recordings.)Cuni's admirers hold her up as the best female dhrupad singer, the best foreign dhrupad singer, and sometimes as the best young dhrupad singer in existence! But as the serious listener will discover, she can not be compared at all to top level singers like the Gundecha brothers or Uday Bhawalkar. Criticised though these chaps have been (and THEY are up against some stiff competition - imagine being compared against old Dagar brothers records!) they are well above the level demonstrated on this album and this fact is evident on the level of handling individual notes and swaras, of shaping the notes. This will not be impossible for a foreigner to learn but it does take time. Long time. Much practice. Amelia is far from worthless, she shows promise, she has put in long and sincere practice and attained respectable results, just not the the level of master singer.Even on the female side there IS a superior, I'm talking about dear old Ashoka Dhar; few had heard her before her guru passed away last year and she finally agreed to record a CD (Makar Records). She is an old lady, well past her prime and technically she has nothing to set against Cuni's youthful vocalising, but for all the flaws in her voice her ragadari is top notch, venerable old-school Dagarvani stuff, and in the dhrupad part we hear the greatest of differences. Each note of the melody, the soft meends and modulations of volume, is so carefully shaped with such natural ease that Cuni by comparison sounds almost like a machine, or indeed just like a foreign student who has not yet assimilated all the features of the very best.What I wish all dilettante reviewers would get into their head is that the praise heaped on Cuni is an insult not only to Ashoka Dhar but to Cuni as well, since Cuni would be the first to throw herself on the ground to touch Ashoka's lotus feet.Interestingly, the Indian audience on this CD is appreciative. In places they vah things like octave jumps in alap or even the odd octave-and-a-half meend. I think the audience is crazy. :) Much has been made of Amelia's training in both Dagar and Mallick style - common today in khyal but unheard of in dhrupad - but I think this is not really evident in her singing. An interesting feature is a kind of frilly trill or warble that sounds a bit unique - I'm not at all against it, I wonder if this element in this form can be traced to the Mallick style because it doesn't sound entirely Dagar.All in all, the album is not without merit. I remember the days when you could count the available dhrupad recordings on your fingers. Today there have been dozens and dozens of releases, so music lovers no longer have to throw themselves over each and every new CD, but I still think each disc that comes out is interesting because usually the compositions on it have not been recorded before. I do not recommend against ordering this album, but please don't expect a master performance. It's closer to the bottom end of the dhrupad CD spectrum than it is to the top of the heap. Don't believe the hype."