Raag Madhuvanti Alap | Flute | Music of India | Shanish Kumar Gaywali | Purvi Festival 2023

Shanish Kumar Gyawali plays an Alap in Raag Madhuvanti on bansuri, recorded at the Purvi Festival 2023 in Motihari. Trained in the Banaras gharana under Shri Vinod Prasanna and Dr Prahalad Nath, Gyawali brings the tradition's vocal-inflected approach to the flute, each phrase shaped as a singer would shape it, not as a run of notes.

Madhuvanti belongs to the Todi thaat and is performed in the late afternoon. Its defining intervals, Komal Gandhar (g) and Teevra Madhyama (M#), create a harmonic tension that sits between romance and restraint. Re and Dha are omitted in the ascent, giving the raga an arrowhead structure that rises directly to Pancham, its Vadi. The descent fills in those missing swaras and opens out the raga's full emotional range.

At six minutes and forty-three seconds, the alap moves through Madhuvanti's characteristic phrases (g M# P, the slow glide from S' down through N D P) at a pace that lets the meends carry weight. Gyawali's bansuri sustains each interval long enough to hear the raga settle, then lifts again. The result is a performance that works within the grammar of the Banaras tradition without announcing itself.