Raag Hansdhwani | Music of India | Indian Slide Guitar, Piano, Sitar & Tabla | Kala Festival 2023

Pandit Debasis Chakroborty (Indian Slide Guitar), Deepak Shah (Piano), Lovely Sharma (Sitar), and Durjay Bhaumik (Tabla) performed together at Music Without Boundaries, part of the Kala Festival 2023, held at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge on 17 August 2023. This four-way jugalbandi brought together instruments from distinct traditions, the Hawaiian-style slide guitar, a grand piano voiced through raga, a sitar from the Senia-Maihar lineage, and tabla, on a single stage.

Raag Hansdhwani belongs to the Bilawal Thaat and uses five notes, Sa, Re, Ga, Pa, Ni, omitting Ma and Dha. This pentatonic structure gives the raga a clean, open sound, free of the ambiguity that comes with the fourth and sixth degrees. Traditionally heard in the late evening, it carries a joyous and devotional character, and is often performed at the opening of concerts or ceremonies for its auspicious quality. The vadi is Sa and the samvadi Pa, a fifth that anchors the raga's bright, consonant geometry.

The performance moves through alap, where each instrument traces the raga's phrases at its own pace, before the ensemble draws together into faster passages and jhala. Chakroborty's slide guitar carries the melodic line with the gliding phrasing natural to the instrument; Shah's piano maps the raga's intervals across the keyboard without smoothing out its Hindustani character; Sharma's sitar holds the melodic centre; and Bhaumik's tabla grounds the rhythmic arc throughout. The result is a coherent ensemble reading of a raga whose simplicity of scale sets a high bar for clarity of expression.