This weekend saw the start of the 11th edition of the National Centre for the Performing Arts’ (NCPA) and Citi India’s Aadi Anant: From Here to Eternity festival in Mumbai. The celebration, opened by renowned sitar player and Grammy-nominated artiste Shujaat Khan, who designs his performances around a rendition of the classical art form that he has grown up within, with Sufi and folk elements, will also host performances by Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna and his troupe, and Shantanu Moitra, Ani Choying, Kaushiki Chakrabarty and others in January. The festival, originally a travelling event, is limited only to Mumbai this year given pandemic restrictions, and is part of a larger programme run by Citi and the NCPA to celebrate the guru-shishya tradition, focused on a relationship of devotion, obedience and spirituality in the passing on of knowledge from the guru to the disciple. 

Dr Suvarnalata Rao, musicologist, trained sitar player and head of Indian music programming at the NCPA, speaks of a predominantly oral and aural tradition in Indian music that has come to us through the guru-shishya tradition, the emphasis being on performing and listening rather than writing down, thereby making this kind of mentorship vital and allowing for an unbroken transference of knowledge through centuries. Even within the Indian musical tradition’s stringent grammar, it has left the space open for interpretation, she says.