From this obscure point of indeterminate origin, it evolved over thousands of years in temples and spiritual traditions throughout the Indian subcontinent. And many centuries ago, it moved from the temples into the palaces of the kings and queens of India, who were its most fervent and avid patrons. The stalwart kings of India have nurtured our music with tender care and have been its willing captives. In fact, musical training formed an indispensable item of royal education. Nowhere else in the world has royal patronage and encouragement to music probably been as continuous and rich as in India.
After India's independence, the loss of royal patronage threw the arts open to public mercy. Hindustani classical music, in its pure form, is fundamentally a complex study and therefore, cannot come within the reach of the uninitiated. As a result, serious music suffered. During the mid-seventies, ITC's top management envisioned that the Company (ironically, a tobacco company) could play a major role to preserve and propagate the rich Indian musical heritage.
ITC-SRA (ITC Sangeet Research Academy) was created in 1977 as an independent Trust. In creating ITC-SRA, ITC's farsighted endeavour was to establish a modern 'Gurukul' and revive the traditional 'Guru-Shishya Parampara'. Corporate patronage of music on this scale was unknown before. It's website holds a treasure, classical music that is unavailable elsewhere, recordings that are exclusive and rare to find. You may visit the site and hear all the music to your heart's fill but you are not supposed to download it. It uses Real media for streaming music and video, hence files are playable only if you have Real Player installed in your system.
But for obstinate people like many of us, there is a way to download music from ITC-SRA too. First of all you must have a downloader installed. I use Flashget (I recommend Flashget Classic version 1.73), but Orbit downloader and for that matter any downloader that supports rtsp (Real Time Streaming Protocol) will do. Once the downloader is installed, open it and visit the ITC-SRA site (or click here). Click on the Raga Online option (see image) or straightaway click here :
Choose your desired artist from the dropdown menu :
A list of songs available on the site will appear :
Right click the small speaker icons and save the file by choosing 'Save Target As...'. But hold on, this is not the actual music file but just a playlist and could be as small as just 1 Kb (e.g. bhimsenjoshi_bhairavi.ram for the encircled song). Open the file in any text editor (notepad will do) and you will be able to see it's content, a single line with commands for your Real Player :
rtsp://202.138.97.7:554/~itc/audio/kirana/bhimsenjoshi_bhairavi.rm ?cloakport=80,554,7070
Copy the highlighted part (leave the ? and the part after it). Paste the link in the downloader's URL window (if the URL snatcher is on, it will paste the URL automatically). This is what it looks like in Flashget :
Click OK and your file will begin to download :
The files are Real Media files with a .rm extension and can be played with Real Player or any other player that supports this format.
You may convert .rm files into .mp3 if you wish. I use Super for most of my converting jobs.
Listen to two songs from the above list, downloaded in similar fashion, converted to mp3 files, uploaded and posted here for your listening pleasure ( now, who says I am not doing the hard work...and making your lives easier ?? ) :
Bhimsen Joshi - Bhairavi (Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada) : (Download)
Bhimsen Joshi - Khamaj Thumri (Jadu Bhareli) : (Download)
Comments are welcome.
Enjoy !!
