The inspiration behind writing this blogpost or may I say extending the previous blogpost about Bhoop, is Raag Deskar that got totally forgotten in previous blogpost. I also realize that the combination of Bhoop and Deskar / Deshkar require an independent post.
Raag Deskar is a pentatonic raag with same notes as Bhoop but with different chalan. The vaadi and samvaadi swar, the dominant and semi-dominant note respectively, of these two raags are also interchanged and so is the tempos at which they sound better. Gandhaar(Ga) is dominant in Bhoop while Dhaivat (Dha) is dominant in Deskar. I often compare this duo of raags with the duo of Puriya and Sohoni, that share same notes but interchange Vaadi and Samvaadi swar.
One more raag that shares the same set of notes but has different chalan (gait) is called Jait or Jait Kalyan. This raag sounds very similar to Shuddha Kalyan (roughly a combination of Bhoop in ascending and Kalyan in descending). Shuddha Kalyan is a giant of a raag and is favorite of many stalwarts, has been popular with many centuries. Being a combination of two BIG raags (Bhoop and Yaman Kalyan) it has huge expanse.
GaanSaraswati Kishori Amonkar dwelt upon Shuddha-Kalyan for almost last 10 years of life. The beauty of this raag is that it has Bhoop that sounds like Yaman (Kalyan), hence gives good food for thought among intellectuals and veteran classical performers alike.
Coming back to the Deskar-Bhoop duo, to me these two raags provide a huge canvas for classical as well as light classical and popular music compositions. Marathi bhaavgeet, Marathi Natya geet and even Hindi popular songs have used these two together in many compositions. Sudhir Phadke's well-known Hindi compositions based on Bhoop-Deskar is "Jyoti Kalash chalake" and the starting song of Marathi Geet Ramayan "Swaye Shri Ram prabhu aikati, Kush-Lav Ramayan Gaati"
There are many popular songs in Deshkar-Bhoop combination including the "Maze jeevan gaane" of Pu La Deshpande, sung by Pt Jitendra Abhisheki.
In my opinion the perfect time of Bhoop is twilight just after the Sun set and the perfect time for Deskar is just before the Dawn, before the sun rise. (The time after sunrise at Dawn is taken by my favorite Vibhas!)