Raag Piloo | Madhuvanti Pal | Rudra Veena

Raag Piloo Rudra Veena: Madhuvanti Raag Piloo/Pilu. This is one of those recordings that came together in a rather unexpected way. Pilu is not a raga that exists in the contemporary Dhrupad repertoire that I have inherited and encountered around me. It belongs to an older musical world, and while working on it I found myself thinking about the old masters, the enormous repertoire they carried within them, and all the music that once moved from one generation to another but did not necessarily make its way into the repertoire we know today. There is something deeply moving about encountering one of these older strands of music again. For me, learning and playing a raga is never simply a matter of reproducing notes. There is always a sense of entering into a conversation with musicians who came before us — sometimes very clearly, sometimes through fragments, memories, traces and musical possibilities. This recording also comes from a rather strange and vulnerable moment in my own life. While the previous video was receiving so much love and affection from all of you, I was simultaneously going through a fairly severe flare-up of CPTSD. There were days when I probably should not have been playing at all. My body and mind were asking me to stop, to retreat, to be quiet. But I kept coming back to the Rudra Veena. I don’t always understand why music has this effect on me. Sometimes it is the thing that requires the most from me, and sometimes it is the only thing that allows me to remain myself. So I played. What you hear here is the result of that particular moment — not a perfectly planned performance, not something manufactured under ideal circumstances, but something that emerged because I simply could not stop myself from returning to the instrument. And perhaps that is also why I wanted to speak in this video rather than simply leave the music to speak for itself. Thank you for staying with me through all of this. Thank you for listening to these ragas, for returning to the videos, for writing to me, and for allowing this strange little corner of the internet to become a place where old music, new interpretations, imperfect days and very stubborn musicians can coexist. This is Raag Pilu on the Rudra Veena. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed finding my way into it. ___ Website: https://www.dhrupadveena.com/ Instagram:   / madhuvanti_rudraveena   Facebook:   / rudraveena.madhuvanti