Shamsul Alam Belal

When the full-moon pours golden malts down to the earth, blazing the vast pasture and turning the full blossomed paddy fields into a large inflamed canopy, a petite young lady in full romantic mood smiles in unbounded pleasures beneath the beams of nature’s divine bounty. Stooping slightly, she looks at herself on the long mirror of nature with its frame shrouded in dews, despite she experiences the same with a violin that blooms her career in music. It is the same mirror, which has brought Ruposhi up to the attic on the night following the first day of Boishakh, the first month of Bengali New Year 1414, when she has offered a sweet smile at a packed audience in a private function before driving the chord on her violin strings to welcome Pahela Boishakh. It was a smile of shy recognition of a promise with confidence she has just offered to the serious and fine-dressed audience, whose eyes have been beaming out eternal zests to the nervous excitement exposing from her face on the anchor’s rostrum. Ruposhi’s reflection pleased the audience as she has been smiling more widely showing her silvery teeth and the small half-dimple that twinkles at the corner of her mouth. Her family members as well as fans often say that her mouth is just like a betel leaf but Ruposhi has never thought so about herself. None would want a small thin mouth when the nose is just a bit too prominent and the dark eyes so widely set. However, everything in the good person of Ruposhi, from hair to toe, is most artistically set and also her mind that evolves music all the moments gives an idea that the Almighty himself built her by His own hands.
   It was 11-00 pm on the night of Pahela Boishakh, when a big hall room was filled to its capacity for Ruposhi’s violin recital. At the appropriate time, she placed the back of the instrument pressed on her shoulder, made sure its strings perfectly tuned and started playing the initial notes of a particular raaga suited to the silence of summer night. The very first note she produced from the violin was so startlingly sweet that there were ripples of approval in the jam-packed audience of mostly music connoisseurs. She was clearly very pleased with the first response, offering them a divine smile that spoke of her gratefulness to those who must have realized what really she was playing. After two alaaps, Ruposhi was convinced that she was playing for a select audience. Soon she closed her eyes, half-darkened her sweet face by hair and started singing a self-composed modern song that proved herself also an epitome of vocal perfection. At once, a combination of perfectly produced notes came forth from the instrument in the most charming and varied succession. later, she started another raaga that transported everybody to the seashore, where wave follows wave ceaselessly and each one merges inexorably into the preceding one. In fact, she was slowly moving up the scale in a succession of notes, sometimes on the ascending and at times on the descending scale so artistically that it was impossible to understand where each alaap started or dissolved itself in its successor. Already a maestro, Ruposhi was so completely absorbed that the whole audience wondered whether she was conscious at that moment. Every pair of eyes was trained on her and the entire audience, held spellbound by the player, was swaying like a snake following the movement of a snake charmer’s flute. In the meantime, there was a half-shifted hubbub of whispering but soon the audience observed pin-drop silence when she again drove her chord on the instrument. In moments, a total silence made the audience seemingly anxious not to breathe even loudly, lest it should disturb the violin player.
   Nusrat Mumtaz Ruposhi was born in Dhaka in a renowned cultural family. Late Alpona Mumtaz, celebrated dancer, dance director and founder of the Kathakali Sangeet Bidyalaya, is her mother. At the age of six, Ruposhi joined her mother’s school and later participated in various performing arts. “I first felt music like sweet venom flowing into my blood when I was just four. When all around me were eating their lunch or dinner, I used to beat tabla upon the dining table. At that moment, I started realizing that I already borrowed music in my sense from my family,” she says. As a vocalist, she has performed in a pop music record called ‘Ties” and a Bengali music album known as “Mone Porhey” in 1995 and 1996. She has been playing drums since 1989 and still does so in her composition. In 1994, she began her training as a violinist under an Indian Government Scholarship and had her Bachelor of Performing Art and Masters of Performing Art in 1997 and 1999 from the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University, Baroda, India. She graduated with flying colours, securing the first position in own department and being ranked as the topmost graduate in four departments of performing arts. Besides, Ruposhi has specialised in North Indian raagas in “Gayaki Style” under the guidance of eminent classical violinist Sri Nilkanth Nahar Ganekar. She is the first Bangladeshi violinist to get Doctor of Philosophy ((Ph.D) in performing arts under the guidance of Prof. D K Bhonsle on “Forms and Styles of North Indian Classical Music in Bangladesh. As a member of the Bangladesh Cultural Delegation, she played solo in Iraq and Jordan in 1999. She has also been performing in various Indian cities since 1998 both as a solo performer and along with her Guru. In 2000, she presented a two-hour solo classical violin recital at the prestigious Durbar Hall in the presence of the King of Baroda. In 1998, she was selected to perform at the Pramanand Hall, Baroda on a function that identifies and certifies “Kalke Kalakar (promising artist of the future).” With great honour, Ruposhi received the certificate of Kalke Kalakar from India. In Bangladesh, Ruposhi’s debut solo classical violin recital was in 1998 at the National Museum auditorium and in 2005, she got the Nattya Shabha award in Bangladesh.
   Ruposhi,s first album on violin, Badhu Bidaya, released in December, 2003, includes two Indian classical raagas and a composition by herself, capturing the emotion of Bengali marriage ceremony in bidding farewell to the bride. She dedicated the album as a tribute to her aunt celebrated dancer and actress Rowshan Jamil, who inspired her to compose it. Her talent has extended far beyond placing herself only as a classical violinist as she loves to compose, direct and experiment music. Ruposhi’s composition ranges from pure classical to fusion that she liberally applies and blends touches of modern, folk or western music in her strong base. she fervently promotes classical music in violin in Bangladesh and also works to popularise it with creativity and fusion without losing the chord. Since 2004, Ruposhi has been presenting her fusion music on many occasions including stage and television. Her aim is to create a broader audience for classical music in violin and she particularly proves it in her teaching, performance, composition, direction and advocacy. She also believes that presenting fusion music based on strong classical base, side by side with classical music, can steer the interest of a much larger audience. Ruposhi is young, bright, extremely dedicated and full of energy. She has set the goals to establish herself as a quality classical violinist, music director and composer for dance and theme-based orchestration, and also to create a large number of future violinists in Bangladesh.
   An audience demands not only innate genius but also the highest degree of acquired skill. Ruposhi was born with the rhythm of music in her blood and acquired the skill in both vocal and instrumental music remarkably at her early age. The righteousness of her artistic training is evident in every note she plays, giving an idea that she is conscious of the standards meditated first and then kept continually in mind. In this way, it may be said that the stringency of contemporary praise and encouragement contributed to that exquisite poise of judgement, a mark of Ruposhi’s all works done so far. Her career in music finds some varieties in Alexander Pope’s poem:
   Be sure yourself and your own reach to know, How far your genius, taste, and learning go, Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.
   In her case, there is a strong sense in each note of Ruposhi’s musical composition, where there is no trace of ‘dullness’ anyhow. However, her chord on the strings of violin writes for a specialized audience, presenting something of a challenge for the music lovers who are just chained by the shackles of Horrible Songs (?). Her awareness of the audiences is important not solely, or even preponderantly, for obvious reasons, but because it forms an outstanding characteristics of her musical performance. All that she did so far, even in the early days of her life at home or with her mother and sister Dr. Shoma Mumtaz, there was a sense of something shared. The nature and strength of this implied relationship varies from one musical performance to the other. Here a real music lover will rediscover Ruposhi in Alexander Pope’s another poem:
   In some fair ev’ning, on your elbow laid, Your dream of triumphs in the rural shade, In pensive thought recall the fancied scene, See coordination rise on ev’ry green.
   Ruposhi presents a remarkable example being topical without ephemeral, and it is the duty of her fans to make something of an imaginative leap, which is easier to understand than to define. Much of the detailed contemporary reference in any of her violin recital may lose its immediacy, which the commoners cannot bring back. These music lovers often fail to recognize the background stored potentially into each note she plays by bringing forth the universality that has long been rich in the pathos and melodies of Greek, Spanish, Latin or Indian classical music. Only those who sense music in each breathe can come within the range of full effect when she drives the chord on her violin. But what is required is not primarily the ability to recognize echoes of her earlier performances-a valuable talent for those who have it. However, it is the knack of recognizing what the great musicians called ‘imitation’, the art of recreating in strictly contemporary form mingling the Western style with the Indian classical music. To speak in terms of a general ‘ethos’, however, is as one-sided as to stress too much the abstracts or general in Ruposhi. The ethos is there, like a sounding board to give resonance to what she says, “one is never far from the other dimension.’ It is still of actual life that Ruposhi always thinks, all her thought opens directly into her own style of musical composition. The highest pleasures her musical performance can give lies in the engrossed, unilateral recital of violin and that should never be a representation of the general nature, for a piece of music stands out as a mirror of life. And this finally speaks of a word about Ruposhi’ idea of originality of music that she values most.
   “When you say that my performance is good, then I feel like jumping from the mountain top to a village plain where thousands of people are calling me to play my violin long into the night,” says Ruposhi sitting at ease by extending her two legs twisted and driving her ten fingers into dark straight hair. Her mastery on violin exemplifies her deep interest in texts, resulting in the works of musical drama as a whole. Although the expressiveness is strong, her pieces often take on the material and technical qualities of the texts. She utilises a distanced, analytical eye to build a form and timbre, which corresponds to the text, creating a constructive relation to the notes rather than concentrating on a message or atmospheric painting. An important element of her music is cultivation of material, the piece being short, making it somewhat of a calling card for the composer and technical orientation. The string quartet also takes her into a dualistic world, where expansive and bubbling power is held in check, and rhythms both spur and brake the course of the piece. It is again evident in Ruposhi that she prefers to work with the architectural aspects of music rather than its lyrical or propagandistic elements. “Our culture is famous for being a formidable quilt of popular forms, as well as a body of evidence supporting the fact that history can go backwards and also sideways. Working in a continent that was brought up in anarchy, brutality and pain turns common people into mythological figures, trapped in un-evolving essence, in tragic destiny; this makes creation and comment extremely difficult or pointless, for most of our traditions, for some odd reason, seem unchangeable. Through music and humour, we rid our lives of that passive helplessness; we sing and dance, flinging ephemeral fandangos to the passing winds,” Ruposhi says.
   She does really know who is she, having tonnes of thoughts going through her head but some times just one. “Although I do stupid things like still an adolescent girl, I place myself in situations on the contrary. I am smart and I like learning, but it often reaches a point where I don’t understand what I learn. I don’t like limitations even when I don’t plan to reach the limit. I want my road to be open, free and full of possibilities. I want to be open and interesting. I want to do all kinds of things, from cooking to home making as I don’t like sitting lazily at home. I want to discover music from each sphere of life and also allow others like me to re-discover Ruposhi in each of my musical performances. I wish for experience in things not done. I love all sorts of things and you can prove it by waking me up for anything cute. I like long drive to enjoy my leisure time in an open space just throwing my eyes to the vast sky. Yes, like many others, I also dislike falsehood but like praise and admiration as I am also a human being.” To be true and precise by all counts, Ruposhi is such a pupil, who points one great lesson which every violinist should follow. In spite of being none too economical in using her Ustad’s voice, she has developed a great reserve of strength, a natural reservoir of power and expression, and showed wonderful ability in building up an area to its natural climax.
   There is a general idea that the purely mechanical exercise prepares and makes less difficult any particular passage or passages. Ruposhi does not believe this, since every advanced violinist discovers, sooner or later, that the technical passages in a new work have new difficulties of their own. Violin is a subtle instrument, and the greater works written for it do not offer a mere repetition of technical formulas. The change of a tone, or of the vibrato in even a familiar passage, introduces a new difficulty. Therefore, she does not think it advisable for the mature artist or advanced student to give much time to the purely mechanical exercise. Nor does she hold greatly by etudes. They are good to lay a foundation, to supply the elementary ground for the higher virtuoso technique. “It is possible on the piano, perhaps, to develop finish, but not on the violin. To get the final polish of brilliancy on the strings, the player must rely on his or her imagination and artistic vision,” she says. Truth, rather than mere beauty, and its perfected expression in playing is Ruposhi’s idea of violin mastery. The dynamics must be worked out; even the details of lyric expression must be worked out technically, while the artistic vision is developed out of the artist’s own inspiration, and this reflex of the analysis of the composer’s thought and mood. And, above all, to do justice to violin playing in its highest and noblest aspects, the artistic sense of truth must not concede anything to the difficulties of the higher positions, which can be overcome by the proper training in endurance.

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