Shruti Sargam Sangit Mahavidyalaya

Shruti Sargam Sangit Mahavidyalaya
Shop Number 7 2nd floor, Satyam Complex, 1, near Navin Hospital, Pocket I, Block I, Sector Alpha II, Greater Noida, Brahmpur Rajraula Urf Nawada, Uttar Pradesh 201308, India
https://musicclassesnoida.com/
Shruti Sargam Sangit Mahavidyalaya stands as one of the most respected foundations for Hindustani classical and light-music training in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Founded in 1993 by Pt. Ramesh Chandra Shukla, a second-generation vocalist of the Gwalior and Agra gharanas, the institution began in a single room above the Shri Krishna Bhajan Hall in Chowk, Lucknow. Thirty years later it occupies three floors of a newly restored Nawabi-era haveli in the same locality, equipped with seven acoustically treated chambers, a 120-seat black-box chamber-theatre, a dedicated tabla-repair workshop, and a digital archive whose glass door is engraved with the saptak: Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni.

Affiliated to the Bhatkhande Sangit Vidyapeeth, the Mahavidyalaya offers structured courses from Prarambhik (pre-diploma) to Sangeet Praveen (post-graduate). Students—currently 412 across vocal, sitar, tabla and Kathak streams—must attend ‘shruti-dhyan’ at 6:45 a.m., a ten-minute collective drone tuning that is said to lock the mind on the tonic for the rest of the day. Classes then progress through alankar patterns, bandish memorisation, layakari exercises, and weekly ‘baithak’ listening sessions where pupils transcribe historic 78-rpm recordings of Abdul Karim Khan and Begum Akhtar onto staff-plus-swaralipi sheets. Faculty of 18 permanent gurus plus visiting elders maintain the guru–shishya tie: each student touches the teacher’s feet at the first lesson after planting a jasmine sapling in the central courtyard, a ritual named ‘Shruti Vriksha’ that has yielded 53 flowering bushes to date.

The Mahavidyalaya’s annual calendar anchors on two flagship events. The winter Sangeet Samavesha, held in late December, converts the red-stone courtyard into a candle-lit open-air stage; Ustad Wasifuddin Dagar, Shubha Mudgal, and recently Kaushiki Chakraborty have performed without microphones so that students learn to gauge projection in natural acoustics. Mid-April brings the Vasant Bandish Utsav, where scholars premiere newly composed khayals and tappas set to rare jatis such as Sawani and Champak; each premiere is prefaced by a fifteen-minute lecture-demonstration using the institution’s twin Tanpuras (one teak, one mahogany) strung in D♭ and E♭ to illustrate the effect of varying tonic levels on mood.

Outreach defines its second identity. Every Sunday morning, second-year trainees board a converted tempo equipped with harmoniums and tanpuras to hold hour-long raga-awareness classes at nearby municipal girls’ schools; the programme, Shruti Darpan, currently reaches 1,300 children. A micro-grant scheme named Svarantar funds the manufacturing of fiber-glass tablas priced for village learners, while the archives digitise century-old mizrab designs under a collaboration with IIT-BHU.

Despite this expansion, the Mahavidyalaya guards a rare intimacy. The founder still begins every morning by tuning the rosewood tanpura that belonged to his guru; at dusk, lights are dimmed so that only the faint glow of diyas reflects off the polished teak rafters, echoing the refrain taught to every newcomer: “Shruti is the river beneath the song; quiet enough, and you will always hear it.”

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