Kaushiki Chakraborty has an excellent voice, but is she as good as many listeners are led to believe?

Today, a large proportion of listeners who go to performances marketed as Hindustani music believes that Kaushiki Chakraborty is one of the best classical singers of her generation. But, unfortunately, this is not the case.

There are at least two dozen singers roughly in her age group who are superior and deserve to be heard — more often. So it seems unfair that she is featured so often by prominent organisers to the exclusion of others. Most recently, she was featured along with the Carnatic singers Ranjani and Gayathri at an annual early morning concert on the first Sunday of the new year at the Gateway of India.

I was unable to attend this particular show, but I am in general sceptical of jugalbandis. First, in order for them to make artistic sense, each musician or set of musicians needs to have a good grasp over the other genre. Kaushiki may have learnt Carnatic music for some time from M Balamuralikrishna, but how serious is her engagement with the south Indian genre? As for Ranjani and Gayathri’s knowledge of Hindustani music, while they clearly love and respect the genre, they sometimes do not get the chalans of Hindustani raags right.

The Carnatic duo, who are sisters, have been performing for years in the coveted evening slot of the Chennai Music Academy’s annual December festival — reserved for the artistically best musicians. They have a very good command over a large of number of Carnatic raags, their raagdari has considerable depth and their laykari is sophisticated — anyone who has listened to them singing raagam-taanampallavi-s will appreciate the rhythmic complexities in their renditions and the tightrope-walking that they routinely pull off.