Aakash Mittal (born 1985) is an American composer and saxophonist who has won wide acclaim for his work in both areas. He spent his formative years in school bands in Texas and Colorado, and attended the University of Colorado at Boulder before moving to New York City, where he began to establish what has become an innovative and active career. Mittal has performed as a saxophonist and bandleader with several groups, including his own quartet and quintet, around the USA and abroad, often infusing elements of Hindustani music into his playing. He retained this approach as he began composing for wind bands in 2017. Mittal is also an educator who retains a private studio and teaches at several institutions in Brooklyn, where he now lives with his wife and son. He has been widely discussed on the internet, including at his own website, the Kaufman Music Center, the Metropolis Ensemble, the Denver Post, CU Boulder, a great video interview series with the New York State Band Directors Association, Audeze, Fully Altered Media, BKReader, Bomb Magazine, and the Wind Repertory Project.

Mittal wrote Three Songs of Bengal in 2019 for a large consortium of bands led by Jeff Ball, Jasmine Britt, and Sondra Braeutigam at the Grand Street Campus High Schools in Brooklyn, NY. Its three short movements each mount a sophisticated exploration of a different aspect of Hindustani music at a grade 1-2 level. There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s listen first:

Three Songs of Bengal shows up on J. W. Pepper, Murphy Music Press, and the Wind Repertory Project. You can look at the score on Mittal’s website. Most importantly, Mittal goes deep with his program notes (to which I’ve added links):

For the majority of 2013 to 2015, I lived in Kolkata, India with a performing arts fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). My project was to study Hindustani evening and night ragas with the goal of composing a suite of nocturnes at the intersection of jazz and raga music. The process of this work involved hours of lessons with Prattyush Banerjee, performances with the tabla virtuoso Tanmoy Bose, and regular practice on my saxophone, all the while gathering sounds, stories, and experiences in West Bengal. Though my initial plan was to immerse myself in Hindustani music, which is considered to be North India’s classical music, I fell in love with the repertoire of Bengal itself. When I attended concerts, the program was often peppered with the poets, playwrights, and composers of Bengal’s rich cultural landscape. I discovered that each of these artists had their own relationship to Hindustani music, their own way of upholding tradition and driving innovation. My experiences of performing with singers and musicians from the Baul tradition were some of the most memorable of my time in Bengal. Their drumming and song forms have a visceral quality, a way of opening up the mind and heart through their vibrations.

During one of my long practice sessions in Kolkata, I took a break to visit the chai stand at the end of my street. These chai breaks had become as routine as my practicing. On this particular day an elderly man saw my American body language and started a conversation. “What is your name?” he asked. His face was creased with many years and his consonants were softened by the absence of most of his teeth. “My name is Aakash Mittal,” I replied, a small clay cup of chai now in hand. “Oh! Your name is Aakash!” he stammered. “You know that means sky,” he exclaimed with a wave of his hand, as if he was opening a curtain to reveal the sky above us. I nodded with a smile. “Oh! Is it okay if I sing a Tagore song with your name in it?” “Sure,” I replied, curious and unsure of what I was about to be drawn into. The old man launched into the song and to my amazement the rest of the people who had stopped to get chai joined in. I found myself within a chorus of ten to twelve people from different walks of life all sharing a moment of singing together. I was in awe. Day laborers, businessmen, and commuters not only shared the same repertoire but a love of singing. It was an experience of shared cultural memory and celebration. A sonic moment that revealed the power music has to bring people together and unite them, even if for a brief time.

Three Songs of Bengal is a work that serves a number of intersecting purposes. Most simply, it is a follow up piece to my first composition for wind ensemble titled Samay Raga. Three Songs explores similar territory albeit from a different angle. The music utilizes dyad harmonies derived from raga phrases without the constraint of adhering strictly to the raga structure that takes place in Samay Raga. At times, Three Songs dips into western harmonic function while remaining thoroughly outside of traditional chord progressions. Rhythmically the piece incorporates rhythmic cadences, called ti-hai, and continues to explore the sounds of ritual drumming utilized in Samay Raga. One area Three Songs diverges from Samay Raga is its use of the Hindustani rhythmic cycle teen taal and the incorporation of South Asian instruments such as the tabla and ek tara.

This work is a celebration of the music of Bengal, specifically highlighting the lives and music of three great Bengali composers: Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and the Baul tradition. Creating Three Songs of Bengal has been a way for me to further explore and learn about Bengali repertoire following my study abroad. There are many scholarly works, recordings by virtuosos, and creative interpretations of this music already in existence. I hope this arrangement contributes to that larger body of work and brings new listeners to Bengali music.

It is my intention that Three Songs of Bengal will contribute to diversifying the repertoire performed by school institutions. Specifically, I hope the piece will aid the work of anti-racism through music. In January of 2019, while attending the Chamber Music America conference in New York City, the keynote speaker and best selling author, Ta-Nehisi Coates stated, “Our world often regards the world of art, the world of myth, and the world of symbol as ancillary [to policy]…but I think art is what actually bounds the world of policy. By which I mean, it outlines the borders of what is possible and what is not. I think art is the world of the imagination and if you don’t have the imagination you can’t ever get to the policy in the first place.” With this viewpoint in mind, I aim for Three Songs of Bengal to reimagine the music of three composers, and reimagine the society we live in as one that values South Asian names, stories, music, histories and thoughts. Through this work, I wish to highlight the plurality of South Asian cultures and open the door for students, teachers, and audiences to further explore South Asian music and pedagogy.

Now some context. Before we press on, it is useful to understand what a raag or raga is. These are somewhat analogous to scales or modes in Western music, although each raga has not only a specific set of pitches, but also rules for how these may be combined or sequenced. There are at least hundreds of different ragas. Anuja Kamat explains them thoroughly and clearly:

Back to Three Songs, the first movement, “Anondo Dhara Bohiche” is based on the song “Anondo Dhara Bohiche Buhbone” by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a central figure in many aspects of Bengali culture. Here is a later 20th century rendition:

The text, found here in original and English translation, speaks of finding joy everywhere in the world. Mittal sets it (as in the original) in raga Malkauns, which sounds like a pentatonic scale to Western ears. It is demonstrated here:

The second movement, “Joy Bigolito Karuna Rupani Gange,” is an ode to the River Ganges originally penned by Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), known as the “rebel poet” of Bengal. This version of the song was recorded during Nazrul’s lifetime:

Mittal gives the lyrics in two different versions in the score. Here is the English translation (from the original Bengali) by Abhijit Chattopadhyay:

Hail Ganges o liquefied mercy,
Hail of despoiler of guilt, sanctifier or the fallen,
ever pure with saints and sage around you.

You lost your own self in joy by touching the feet of Lord Vishnu,
Became a dissolved stream of eternal love;
Mother, you took away the sins of Heaven Hell and Earth,
And purified it in your sacred body.

This movement is in raga Bhairav, which is like a major scale with lowered 2nd and 6th steps. Take a listen:

The third movement is “Aakash Ta Kapchilo Ken,” a Baul song that sings of Islamic devotion. Here is a popular folky version by Golam Fakir:

And another pop-inflected version from prolific Bangladeshi recording artist Momtaz Begum:

Finally, here is an excerpt of documentary about the Baul tradition: