‘C-Tar’: Instrumental Mixing Jazz with Indian Classical Music

Purbayan Chatterjee posing with his ‘C-Tar’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Sitar player Purbayan Chatterjee’s YouTube channel description reads ‘Sitar Explorer’. In his latest single, two third, Released on 26 March, Purbayan explores a curious device – a ‘Sea-Tar’. This instrument looks like a transparent sitar made of plexi glass or methyl methacrylate. Its main components- E Tardan And sorghum – Made of buffalo horn and steel strings are silver plated. It is 1,070 mm long and comes without the traditional sitar’s hemispherical shape at the bottom and neck, making it possible to play while standing.

6 minute music video two third, Purbayan plays the ‘C-Tar’ and blends the styles of jazz and Indian classical music with artist Taufiq Qureshi on djembe, British-Austrian drummer Bernhard Shimpelsberger and Nakul Chugh on keyboards.

To visually enhance his performance, the maestro wanted to introduce a new element in addition to the usual changes in lighting, multimedia and scenery. “I thought of the plexi glass sitar about 10-11 years ago. I took the design to my Belgian friend Klaas Janssens, who learned sitar-making in Varanasi. He agreed to design it for me, That’s how it came into existence.

Purbayan states that the novelty of the instrument is the tonality that gives the effects processor much scope to generate ambient music. It produces, “moody types of tones as well as very racy and edgy overdrive tones. The acoustic sitar, on the other hand, is a very resonant instrument which it does not have. The C-tar does not have much resonance. The different sound produced To do this, all the effects and capabilities of the processor are revealed at their best,” explains Purbayan.

“If I were to perform with rock musicians, I could visually enhance the performance with this instrument. But, I am very choosy about using this instrument. I don’t use it for that. I I only use it in songs where it will add something to it,” says Purbayan. Over the years, he has played C-Tar for the soundtracks to the film pink for Shantanu Moitra , In non-Indian For Salim-Sulaiman and more recently in the Amazon Prime Video series Bandish Daku for its second season.

make two thirds

One day at Purbayan’s studio PAAMF (Purabayan Art and Artists Music Foundation) in Mumbai, the maestro was playing a line of two-thirds. “When Taufeeq Brother and others came, we kept the cameras rolling and started playing around the hook lines and the song just happened. It was done almost in stream of consciousness. We recorded and shot, it was ready for production.