In February-March 2020 GemArts and Durham University’s Musicon Concert Series jointly promoted a three day festival, ‘Indian Spring Colours’. We enjoyed superb performances by Apoorva Gokhale, Seema and Vishwanath Shirodkar (Swar-Taal Samvaad), Chiranjeeb Chakraborty and Kirpal Singh Panesar. All of the concerts were recorded, and this item is part of a pair of clips that have been edited and shared for GemArts’ Online Masala Festival 2020.



This performance from ‘Indian Spring Colours’, Apoorva Gokhale performs ‘Ranga bhari’, by the legendary 16th-century poet and Krishna devotee, Meerabai. This poem describes the joy of playing holi, the spring festival of colours, with Krishna. As is fitting for a bhajan, the presentation is focused on the bringing out meaning of the text – in this case, particularly its joyful and devotional expression. In Apoorva’s exquisite presentation repetitions of each text line tend to be subtle variations on a theme, melodically speaking, while new lines each throw a new musical colour into the air, each delivered with great delicacy and precision. She is superbly accompanied by the outstanding team of Seema and Vishwanath Shirodkar on harmonium and tabla respectively).

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