Fusion music: Polish, Pakistani musicians fiddle away the night

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan National Council of the Arts hosted an audience brimming with diplomats, dignitaries and music enthusiasts at a musical evening arranged by Polish embassy on Saturday.

Musicians from Poland and Pakistan came together in a pleasantly unexpected collaboration in a stride towards enhancing socio-cultural understanding.

Maria Pomianowska, a music professor at the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland, and her student, Marta Solek Mylnarska, made a powerful appearance on stage, playing unique instruments that, Pomianowska said, were her own creation.

After an exhaustive study of the sarangi — a bowed, short-necked string instrument exclusive to the subcontinent — during her scholarship in India, Pomianowska was encouraged to revive extinct instruments and melodies that were once part of Poland’s rich history.

Pomianowska played the bilgoray suka, a type of fiddle that no longer exists in Poland but was popular during the 16th century, as evidenced by a watercolour painting of the specimen, which the artist used as a reference in the reconstruction of the instrument. Mylnarska accompanied her haunting melodies with the plock fiddle, also reconstructed by Pomianowksa herself and popularised among her students in an effort to reintroduce the extinct instrument to the next generation of Polish musicians.

The duo played three emotive melodies, riveting the audience with Pomianowska’s transcendental vocals. Tabla-maestro Ustad Ajmal Khan accompanied the last melody as a segue into the eastern classical part of the show, where the anguish of Dr Taimur Khan’s sarangi and the boldness of renowned vocalist Azam Khan came together to resonate the mysticism of the East through the notes of the raga Jaijaiwanti.

With a little over two days to rehearse, the Pakistani and Polish musicians sat down for a much-awaited fusion piece. The tabla remained the pulse of the performance as Pomianowska played lead with bursts of inspired vocals, followed with commanding alaaps by Ustad Azam Khan while Khan’s sarangi solos enriched the sound waves travelling in the auditorium.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Heritage and Integration, the Institute for the preservation of art and culture, Lok Virsa and the Polish embassy.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2012.