Jogkauns by Jasdeep Singh Degun

You’re listening to the first Indian classical recording by Jasdeep Singh Degun.

Standing in his front room in Leeds and rifling through his enviable collection of vintage vinyl by the twentieth century masters of the Imdad-Khani gharana, the North Indian school of sitar music in which he’s trained, Degun is anticipating the arrival of his own LP.

Lately he’s been giving a lot of thought to the history of the sitar on record. It’s informed the many sensitive negotiations between ancient and contemporary that he’s had to make in the creation of this release. Indian classical music, after all, is a long form, improvised tradition, resistant to being captured in a studio and pressed onto vinyl. Its ornamented melodies and complex rhythms unfold spontaneously, often over hours, during ephemeral, unrepeatable performances. It demands a very different approach from the writing, tight arrangements and rehearsals with which musicians in the western tradition prepare for a session.

Slipping a mid-century album by Vilayat Khan onto the turntable, Degun considers the fact that the ustad’s first recordings were made in the 1930s, for gramophones that could only play back a maximum of three minutes’ music at 78 rpm. This brutal collision of centuries-old tradition with the march of technology forced a radical response on the musician’s part, accepting that his performance would be “just a snapshot, and packing so much onto those very brief sides”.

Introduced in the 1940s, the microgroove record that remains in production today can take about 20 minutes’ music per side. This allows Degun to properly develop his themes and motifs, but maintains pressure on him to structure the arc of his improvisation in the moment. He must sustain the quality and inventiveness of his playing at an incredibly high level, too, as ‘comping’ of different takes won’t work in this setting. Any edits would tell immediately as breaks in the music’s tidal flow.

On Degun’s multi-award-winning 2022 debut album Anomaly, adventurous compositions brought his sitar alongside bass, drums, pianos and string sections. He remembers having “lots of fun” with his Sky Academy mentor Nitin Sawhney and the dozens of musicians involved, writing, arranging and finding his way around the mixing desk. “This record is so different”, he says. In parallel with his work in opera, orchestral and contemporary music, “it’s very important for me to come back to pure Indian classical music, which is the foundation of everything for me. And it is fun in a musical sense, as I can be free in a way that I’m not anywhere else.

“But,” he smiles, “there’s no hiding place”.

After months of touring that culminated in an appearance at the 2024 Darbar Festival, he came to the famous Wood Room at Real World Studios with a regular accompanist on tabla, Harkiret Bahra. “Playing at Darbar was such a milestone for me”, Degun remembers. “It was something I’d wanted to do since I was a kid, so I was excited to go into the studio soon afterwards and document that period in my life.

“Harkiret is a very sensitive player, he really listens, he’s supportive, and Real World is such a good place. If you're going record a sitar record and be chilled, it's the place to go. You can take a walk around the millpond in between sessions. And there's so much legacy”, he says, pulling out a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan record that was also recorded there.

On these recordings Degun has also collaborated closely with engineer James Turner, building on the studio knowledge he picked up on the Anomaly sessions. Here was a happy meeting of technology and tradition, as the finished record attests: Real World’s arsenal of microphones capture nuances of the sitar’s immense and magical resonances that might not have been heard in Vilayat Khan’s era: the attack of the metal fingerpick (mizrab) on the thin metal strings; the buzzing of the strings on the shallow bridges that splinter each note into spectrums of shimmering overtones; the resonance of the instrument’s hollow gourd body; the sympathetic strings that run beneath the brass frets of the sitar and sound, untouched, in response to the notes being picked; the drone strings that root the music in its key and are either strummed along with or alternated with the strings that play the melody; and the interaction of all of this with the stone and wood of the old mill.

Degun appreciated the advice of his teacher, Ustad Dharambir Singh, to think of the session as a moment in time. The tradition of master and disciple (guru-shishya-parampara) is still the basis of Indian classical music, and Dharambir – himself a pupil of Vilayat Khan – has taught and guided Degun since he began to learn the sitar at the age of 15. “He is incredibly knowledgeable, and he shows me how big the music is. It’s humbling because you can just go on and on, it’s limitless. You practice, practice, practice, but when you’re playing a concert – or going for a take – you have to be completely open to whatever happens and not try to impose something rigid or prefabricated. You're not adding to the tradition, you're just dipping in to its vastness.”

What you’re holding is a moment in time – one that you can revisit, finding ways ever deeper into the infinitely layered sonic world of this miraculous instrument, its history and its virtuosic young player.

At the foundation of the Indian classical tradition are the many raags, or melodic frameworks, that date as far back as the 8th or 9th century. The word comes from the Sanskrit for ‘colouring’ or ‘dyeing’, and each has its own atmosphere and attributes. Degun has based the structure of this record on an Indian classical concert, with the entirety of the music played within a single raag. He chose Raag Jogkauns, a relatively new raag dating from the last century. “It’s an evening raag”, he explains. “I’ve always liked it. Being a composite of Raag Jog and Raag Malkauns, it offers so many colours, although it’s distinctly its own”.
 
Side A

Alaap Jor Jhalla
Degun describes the opening section, alaap, as “a very slow unfolding of the raag”. Short phrases introduce the listener both to the atmosphere of the raag and the variety of tonalities of the sitar. Space is left for notes to resonate and decay, and we hear the sympathetic strings emerge from behind them as they die away. The lyrical string bends that mimic the melisma of a human voice are characteristic of the gayaki ang tradition developed by Vilayat Khan, which Degun is trained in. Underpinning the entire recording and filling out the sound further is the sustained drone of the tanpura, its four strings tuned to the root note (D) and its fifth (A).

Next, jor is defined by the introduction of a “pulse” on the drone strings (chikari), alternating with more developed melodies and connecting phrases. In the last five minutes of the side, jor transitions into jhalla, marked by another increase in tempo as the drone strings are struck in dense patterns.

Side B

Vilambit
Degun is joined by Harkiret Bahra on tabla, playing a slow 16-beat rhythmic cycle (teentaal). The impressive detail of the recording draws us further in, capturing the distinctive character of the drums in full as the goatskin heads are struck by Bahra’s fingertips, the skin begins to resonate deeply then pitches up rapidly as it’s tightened by pressure from the palm of the left hand.
After the fixed melody of the composition has been established, the sitar moves on to an extended improvisation, with the two players working closely off one another within the preordained frameworks of the raag and taal, and moving instinctively together through the changes in dynamics.

Drut
This concluding section is the fastest, displaying the exhilarating rapport of Degun and Bahra and traversing the full range of the sitar and the player’s expertise. A new composition is introduced and gives way to some gripping high-speed improvisation, with rapid melodic runs (taans) surprising the ear. Around halfway, Degun fires off some spectacular choot taans (choot meaning run or escape), sliding up the frets to the tonic note over and over. The sitar then becomes the rhythmic driver with a return to jhalla. This is followed with a virtuosic tihayee, the closing cadence that is played three times.