Delhi festival revisits Hindustani music history through archive images

A black-and-white photograph and its accompanying recording took audiences at Delhi’s Vishnu Digambar Jayanti festival through five decades of Hindustani classical performance.

Photographer Avinash Pasricha curated the audio-visual presentation from the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya archives, bringing together images and recordings made between 1944 and 1994. The programme opened with photographs and recordings of D.V. Paluskar, son of Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, whose birth anniversary the annual festival commemorates.

The archive showed how the concert experience changed: musicians in achkans and topis, informal stage arrangements, listeners seated on the floor and, at times, on stage. Performances often continued past midnight. It also included Carnatic musicians such as flautist T.R. Mahalingam, known as Mali, and vocalist M. Balamuralikrishna.

For listener Partho Datta, the images recalled a crowded concert by Pt. Kumar Gandharva: “Shubha Mudgal was playing the tamboora behind him.” Arushi and Sawani Mudgal represented the third generation of the Maudgalya-Mudgal family associated with the festival.