Born in 1966, Uday Bhawalkar studied Dhrupad for more than 12 years, following the traditional method of transmission from guru to disciple (guru-shishya parampara), under the supervision of Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, and in 1987 was awarded the Dagar Swarna Padak prize by the legendary Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar Sahab of Senior Dagar Brothers -- all three of them members of the Dagar Family who have been passing on this music tradition since the 15th century. In addition to performing at the most prestigious classical Indian music festivals since a young age, Uday Bhawalkar has collaborated internationally with artists from different music traditions, amongst whom the choreographer Astad Deboo and the Ensemble Modern of contemporary music. He has also contributed to the soundtrack of films such as Cloud Door by Mani Kaul, Mr & Mrs Iyer by Aparna Sen, Anahat by Amol Palekar, and more. AngelicA invited Uday Bhawalkar to perform in Bologna twice, in 2008 and 2019. Despite a decades-long career his production has been poorly documented on records, and it is now enriched by Raga Yaman, on which he is accompanied by Manik Munde on the pakhavaj (a two-headed horizontal drum) and by Aniruddha Joshi and Chintan Upadhyay on tanpuras. The recording is not of one of his concerts in Bologna (during which he performed the same raga), but of a rendition of the same piece considered particularly significant, which had been privately pressed on CD by Bhawalkar only for personal use in 2006. Raga Yaman is a raga, based on a heptatonic scale, considered one of the most important and fundamental of the Hindustani tradition. It is often the first to be taught to students, but it also offers great opportunities of improvisation, and it is a raga that has been recorded by historic artists such as Ustad Vilayat Khan, Pandit Pran Nath (in the Yaman Kalyan variant), and Uday's master himself Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, on one of his CDs from 1991 in which one of the two accompanist on the tanpura was Uday himself.
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