Kriteka Iyer’s Bhimpalas stood out

A good student who can, with diligence, blossom into a competent musician

Kriteka Iyer, who performed recently at Rasika Ranjani Sabha in Chennai, was brought up in Ahmedabad and is among the few singers from Tamil Nadu to pursue Hindustani classical music. Trained under Ustad Waseem Ahmed Khan and the doyenne Girija Devi — both scholars at ITC-SRA, Kolkata — Kriteka has a sweet voice which, with time and experience, will perhaps gain power and depth, making her music more full-bodied. Her concert was complete in repertoire — with khayals, thumri and bhajan. Since it was a 75-minute concert, it seemed to rush from one piece to the other, without giving a complete experience of any one aspect. But the rendition of raga Bhimpalas, the mainstay of the concert, was an exception to this. Kriteka rendered three bandishes in Bhimpalas, one in vilambit and the other two in drut. She chose the famous bandish ‘Ab to der bhai’, immortalised by legendary musicians across gharanas. My mind harked back to the reflective contours of Pt. Pratap Narayan recording of 1998. Kriteka took us through the raga stage by stage, and once in a while a phrase or a bhaav reminded us of Girija Devi.