Debating Shastriya Sangeet

A Tribute to Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar

2011-06-30T13:04:00.025+05:30

A Tribute to Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar

[This article was originally published in the "Dhrupad Archives" Blog]

Came across this old interview of Ustad Z. F. Dagar where he talks about his creation - The Dhrupad Kendra, Bhopal. It is truly wonderful how reasoned, trenchant and lively Ustad's observations are in all his public pronouncements.

Directorship of the Dhrupad Kendra was an opportunity and a challenge, and it was this man's utter unorthodoxy and willingness to break rules in an intelligent manner that allowed him to overcome adversity and very trying circumstances and do what none of his Gharana members would probably have done.... which is to develop new innovative and unorthodox ways of teaching under new circumstances, to spread the knowledge outside the confines of the Gharana and still keep as true to the tradition as possible.

Everything has its pros and cons and today I raise a toast to the genius of Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar and what he achieved in his life. Like all geniuses Chote Ustad and indeed all his brothers of the Dagar Gharana are complex, charismatic and truly lovable personalities. Despite their fierce mutual rivalries and the difficult circumstances after Indian independence, the descendants of Zakiruddin and Allabande Khan; – The Dagar Brothers – managed to keep the essence of their knowledge and art alive, often making great personal sacrifices and stoically enduring the disdain and neglect of a society that did not value a contemplative form that did not strive to entertain or please.

Meeting them was like coming across a slice of history, of suddenly walking into another age. Hearing myself speak today I realize that I have subconsiciouly imbibed after all these years of sitting in front of them trying to catch every word they utter - their rich Hindi Urdu Sanskrit blend - in the words of Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar "mili jhuli ganga jamni zabaan". I consider myself truly fortunate to have been able to know and observe my Gurus from fairly close. Looking back at all the ups and downs of my complex relations with them, I can only be filled with great awe, love and respect. How could I have been chosen to come into contact with something so old and so deep. Just my destiny or random chance I guess.

The Dagar Saptak (click on image for a hi-res copy)

After my recent appointment as director of the Dhrupad Kendra Bhopal, the position held by Ustad for many years during which he single handedly reworked the future of the tradition, my job over the next few years would be to strengthen the institution he founded and use it to further the interests of the Dhrupad tradition with fairness, objectivity, impartiality and above all with kindness and humility.

The rate of attrition of knowledge in Dhrupad in recent times has been exponential. Only 20 or 30 years ago a huge repertoire of compositions still remained with some known and many obscure Dhrupad singers, most of whom were struggling to keep singing and at the same time earn a livelihood. I recently tried to locate disciples or recordings of Dhrupad singer Bharatji Vyas (1923-1983) who lived in Baroda, and I came up on a blank wall. Nothing remains except a few recordings of rare compositions in rare ragas with the Sangeet Natak Academy.

Although I am a singer of the style of Dhrupad practised by Ustad and his brothers, I consider it my duty to also work for the preservation of all traditions of Dhrupad and hope that this job will help me in addressing this task as well. Much of the composed repertoire of Dhrupad was common to all the traditions. One hears different versions of the same composition being sung by singers of vastly different traditions.

There are many more names I need to look into: T. L. Rana, Gajanana Thakur, Hari Shankar Mishra, Radheshyam Dagur of Tikamgarh.... to see if they left behind a few recordings or taught a few students or notated at least some of the compositions in some handwritten manuscript gathering dust and mould or being devoured by termites somewhere.

Some handwritten manuscripts I have located are being zealously guarded by family members of departed musicians who expect to be paid considerable sums of money to part with them. Yet seeing the colossal amounts being mentioned in connection with corruption scandals I cannot blame them. What they expect in comparison for true gems of our heritage is absolute peanuts!

Most of that composed repertoire of Dhrupad - little fixed models of Ragas created by master Dhrupad singers of the past to encapsulate the various concepts of classical music and pass them on from generation to generation has now gone to the grave, because the state system failed to reach out to these people and support them and record for posterity the precious bits of knowledge they carried. The recently enlivened debate on corruption and the abuse of power and misuse of public institutions has yet to permeate into the realm of art, culture and heritage management but is sorely needed there. It will also come. Everyone is waiting for someone to stand up and bell the cat.

Fariduddin Dagar - Sadra in Suha

All said and done a lot of knowledge has been lost in the last few decades and yet a lot still remains thanks to the efforts of individual Gurus like Ustad Z. F. Dagar and others who dared to take the initiative and do what they believed should be done in the vastly changed circumstances after independence when the entire class of highly cultivated and musically sophisticated royal patrons literally disappeared overnight. To quote one of my gurus (Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar) - "yeh sab to bas jhaadan hai. khazane to sab chale gaye. lekin yeh bhi kafi hai." - These are all just leftovers ... the real treasures are all gone.. but still this is enough.

In many systems redundancy makes it at least theoretically possible to reconstruct the whole from fragments. Lets hope that the same would be possible for Dhrupad.

Mohiuddin and Fariduddin Dagar - Jog

References:

1. Indurama Shrivastava, Dhrupada (Motilal Banarasidass, 1980)

Ustad Asad Ali Khan Beenkar

2011-06-24T15:25:00.018+05:30

Guest Post by Jon Barlow^[1]

Like so many music lovers in India and abroad I was saddened at the news of the demise of Ustad Asad Ali Khansaheb, the great Beenkar. I want to share these memories and thoughts about him.

My first recollection of Ustad Asad Ali Khan is from around 1972/73 when I saw him play in a small theatre in Calcutta. Khansaheb was at that time about 35 years of age but he was not well known in Calcutta and Beenkars, scarce for many years, had become a rarity in the musical world. He belonged to an hereditary musical family and, his father, Sadiq Ali Khansaheb had been one of the deeply respected musicians in the decades straddling independence, but was a remnant of the 'ancien regime' of Alwar and Rampur, that courtly musical culture that had receded into a semi mythic domain (A Google search will give details of the family). Beenkars, though given a reflexive acknowledgement, were not the darlings of the box-office and with the erosion of the older patronage times were tough.

Khansaheb was very slim and straight and had a look of slightly defensive pride and was firmly buttoned into a black sherwani, shiny with age and meticulous care. It was still the polite mode for musicians to wear white kurta-pyjama, maintain a modest demeanour and, in the cold of winter add a black sherwani or Kashmir shawl and I have the impression that Khansaheb kept to this dress throughout his life. As I got to know him better in the following years I realized his slightly haughty distance was a customary, if awkward, formality that served to shield an otherwise shy, simple and kindly man. His compact face and firm expression would suddenly give way to a luminous smile and his vices were confined to consuming small quantities of rich mughlai food and smoking 555s.

I found his Been playing fascinating to watch. The technique was powerful and demanding but he achieved a wonderful balance with long strong fingers, but perhaps the most remarkable thing was how he tuned his Been to his body, using his breath to expand against the tumbahs and regulating and inflecting his Sa the subsequent swaras Before his performance, as he circulated a little among the gunis and rasikas and patiently listened to several of the junior artistes, he appeared singular and a little lonely.

I don't remember what Raga he played that first time but once I had understood that the Been, when amplified through pretty crude PA systems, such as may still be found in many concert venues in India, presents acoustic problems that demand an extra element of participation from its listeners, I was impressed with the sense that I had just encountered some sort of revelation of what lay at the heart of the instrumental music of North India. It was partly a compelling fullness in the articulation of the swaras despite what might otherwise be characterised as a twangy sound; strong in the base and thin in the higher registers. With this instrument he played the Ragas with a pure simplicity, quite free of arbitrary flourishes, that allowed the subtlest inflections of swaras to be filled with the moving energy.

Later when I heard his Been un-amplified and was even able to put my ear to its gourds the incomparable richness of the sound became evident. It inspired me to make a Been and, although I had no expertise, it actually turned out to be OK and became part of a barter in which I got a Vicky 50cc moped, Manfred Junius took my Been and Peter Row acquired Manfred's Kanai Lal Been. It was also an element in my early friendship with Khansaheb. After that first concert I had gone to meet him to ask about the instrument and how to make it, taking measurements and peering at the jovari. Despite his profound initial scepticism he was chuffed that I had tried and we agreed that I should try to make a good instrument for him one day. Unfortunately this never happened, largely because I was never convinced that I had any way of improving on the traditional instrument and I procrastinated in the expectation that one day I would have a brain-wave or two on the subject.

In 1975 Asad Ali Khansaheb stayed with me in my apartment at Lake Market for about ten days during which time I was able to observe his playing and the instrument in some depth. During that time Fahimuddin Dagarsaheb often dropped by as they were old friends and had much in common musically. One memorable evening they played and sang a very extended and vilambit Khamaj, full of beautiful vistars that showed fresh pathways into the Raga.

In this context I recall Dr SK Saxena recounting an impromptu meeting in his Friends Colony apartment in Delhi in the late '50s early 60's, when Rahimuddin Dagar was requested by Sadiq Ali Khansaheb to listen to his son, the young Asad Ali, and comment on his playing. He began playing Bhimpalashi and after some time Dagarsaheb's mood came and he began to sing, becoming deeply immersed in the raga. Dr Saxena claims that the music was so powerful and profoundly beautiful that it became overwhelming and after some time he had to beg Dagarsaheb to stop. Sadiq Ali Khansaheb was in tears and exclaimed 'Arre! This is Been ang Beta . . this is how one should try to play!'. Although it was not spelt out as a formal arrangement I was led to believe that Asad Ali Khansaheb had benefitted from repeated musical contacts with Dagarsaheb and had absorbed fundamental ideas from him which changed his baaj, giving the Seniyah base of his family parampara a Dagar vocal quality in its presentation.

In 1978 our friend Brad Warren, who was learning sarode with him, took Asad Ali Khansaheb on an extensive tour of Australia for six weeks. He played lots of concerts and was in fantastic form. The performance in the Sydney University chapel was particularly memorable for me as I had dragged along uncles and aunts who, while avid classical music fans, were mildly indifferent to Indian music. After two hours of one raga (again Bhimpalashi and wonderfully played) they surfaced at the interval a little glassy-eyed but convinced that he was one of the greatest musicians they had ever heard. Nevertheless, they pleaded, two hours was enough for the time being.

Khansaheb was not one to happily compromise on form or content but he was a regular artist at AIR in Delhi where time constraints had to apply. The Office and studios at AIR, which had assumed many of the functions of the Gunijankhanas of the princely courts, were blessed zones in those days, before Mrs Gandhi's assassination and the brutish security regime that followed. The director for classical music through the time I used to visit was Sunil Bose, a thumri singer, whose office overflowed with musicians coming and going from work or just dropping by to share gossip and songs and consuming vast quantities of tea and cigarettes and if you were a music lover you were welcome. I was invited into the spaciously minimalist and relaxed studios to listen to someone or others recording session several times but the most memorable was in 1981. I met Khansaheb at AIR he called me into the studio and proceeded to play a brilliant Darbari Kanhra for 25 minutes followed, I think, by Desh.

I rarely saw him after that and never again had a chance to confer with him about Beens and music but he has remained prominent in my mind for all his qualities and because his vani stands clear as a realisation of the Veena-ang paradigm that has informed music in India for millennia. The fine point, the bindu, where breath and vani meet, humming like a bumble-bee, moving freely along the dandi from tumbah to tumbah, revealing in ahata naada the subtle and majestic dynamic of prana moving as musical thoughts and emotions.

Notes:

1. Jon Barlow has been involved with Indian art music for over forty years as a practitioner, instrument designer, and chronicler of his times. He is a pupil of the Sarode maestro Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra and the vocalist Ud. Aslam Khan of the Khurja-Agra-Jaipur Gharana. Many thanks, Jon, for writing this sensitive tribute in such short time. Thanks are due to Arnab Chakrabarty as well, for persuading him to contribute this piece and also for minor copy-editing. [back]

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - III

2009-09-22T00:24:00.011+05:30

[Continued from Part II]

AM: You are the principal of the Ramsharan Music College of Bishnupur, which is a very well-known institution. Can you tell us about this college?

SG: To begin with, let me tell you that it is the oldest institution of higher learning in India, and more than likely in all of Asia.^[24] This college is more than 125 years old. It was started by Anantalal Bandhopadhyay, who is the father of Gopeshwar Babu and inspired by Ramkrishna Singha Dev. The situation at present is that the college building, property and lands are in good working order, but it has never gotten any significant support or grants or recognition from the government. The government sent inspectors from Rabindra Bharati University to investigate the situation. The team from Rabindra Bharati reported back that it was absolutely of immediate importance that the college be elevated to a fine arts honors degree college. But nothing was done by the government subsequently. Our present chief minister is again interested in seeing what can be done. But nothing has happened yet. At present, the Bishnupur municipality looks after the college, and what little is required is accounted for by the municipality.^[25]

AM: What kind of recognition does the college award? Is there a degree that the student can receive after studying at the college?

SG: We award a diploma. A degree cannot be awarded by a non-university institution. The diploma recognizes a student’s achievement in the Bishnupur gayaki. It takes six years to finish work for this diploma.

AM: And what are qualifications of the teachers at this college?

SG: I personally hold an M.A. from Rabindra Bharati University. I had started my Ph.D. and had finished two years of work on it, but was unable to complete work. I just had too many students to teach at home. Of the remaining teaching staff, there are some who have been here for a very long time. Of the new staff, three have graduated from Rabindra Bharati. In total we have 16 staff members. Four are non-teaching staff, and twelve are teachers.

AM: Have any of your students joined the staff?

SG: At the music college? Yes. The three new staff that I mentioned, who have graduated Rabindra Bharati are my students. Two received the gold medal from Rabindra Bharati. They have learned for a long time from me, 16-18 years from me.

AM: At present, are the students who join the college interested in music as a profession or is it just something they learn as a hobby?

SG: In the past, people who graduated from the music college were qualified to teach in high schools. This was by law. But the rules have changed. Now without a degree from Rabindra Bharati University, the School Service Commission doesn’t allow a graduate to teach in high schools. So it is not possible to make a career out of this.^[26]

AM: But have there been any students who have graduated from the college and gone on to concert careers?

SG: Yes, there are many students like that. But they are not proficient enough to carry on a full career. This is after all a six year diploma. Six years is not enough time to become a proficient performer. Those who graduate from here must go on to Rabindra Bharati to become further proficient as performers, or to become qualified as teachers. In the old days, people worked hard and became proficient in their field. Nothing else was required. These days you need a degree. Of course competence is still required, but without the degree many things are not possible.

AM: A little while ago you described how you received talim in the guru-shishya parampara style. Is that how you teach your students as well?

SG: Yes, that is how I teach as well. However, I only take group classes. To keep this music alive, one has to not only teach and impart talim, but also give oneself the space to do riyaz. This is only possible if you teach in groups. See, in this music, if you don’t have talim and riyaz, it is difficult to teach or practice. The same note in Marwa, Puriya and Sohani is totally distinct. If you don’t have talim how will you show this? Asavari, Jaunpuri, Adana, Darbari Kanada all have nearly identical notes. So if you don’t have proper talim, how will you decipher the different chalans of these ragas? How will you teach these things when you have to teach? So getting the right kind of talim from a guru is very important. Each group class has 12-14 students. It is a large number of students, but I just take some extra care and time, and make sure the students understand what is being taught. I enjoy teaching this way, and it also gives me the time to do my riyaz as well.

AM: How do you differentiate between Asavari and Jaunpuri?

SG: First there are two types of Asavari: Komal Asavari or Komal Rishabh Asavari, and Shuddha Asavari. To differentiate between Shuddha Asavari and Jaunpuri, a big factor is the ascent from Re to Ma. In Jaunpuri this is a straight movement, whereas the climb to Ma in Asavari has a strong aas of Re. Also in Jaunpuri, the movements find a resting point in Pa, not in Ma. In Asavari, Ma is much stronger. Jaunpuri has an ascending Pa Dha Ni Sa, whereas Asavari does not use Ni in the ascent. Aside from these, there is also Komal Asavari and Komal Asavari Todi. These two are distinct. Asavari Todi uses Ma Pa Dha Ma, Re Ga Re Sa, where the Re Ga Re Sa has a very strong flavor of Todi.^[27]

AM: Does anyone sit with you when you do riyaz, for example senior students?

SG: No, no. In fact, when I do riyaz, I don’t let even a percussionist sit with me. My riyaz is just for me. At that time, no one else is allowed to sit with me.

AM: Finally, what do you think is the future of the gharana? Will it grow and become strong again, or will it recede?

SG: All through my childhood and well into my adulthood, I saw the Bishnupur Gharana decline. But at present, whether it is teaching increasing numbers of students, performing in front of growing audiences, working with people outside of the milieu to promote the standing of the gharana, I see a surge in interest and enthusiasm. And this is exactly what we were looking for. As people outside the gharana take more interest, the enthusiasm amongst students of music to learn this gharana’s music will grow. They’ll also get more opportunities to sing and show their competence and command over the medium. So to me it seems that the gharana’s dark days are behind it, and that its future is quite bright.

Notes:

24. This statement requires proper research and vetting before it can be acknowledged to be true. It is sufficient to say the college is very old, by any standards. [back]

25. Again, SG would not describe it thus, but one couldn’t help but feel that some bureaucrats in Kolkata were preventing the college from being elevated sufficiently to be commensurate with its status as a landmark institution of India. [back]

26. Here is further evidence of the bureaucratic machinery. It appears as if external sources have taken decisions to favor Rabindra Bharati over a non-Kolkata based institution like Ramsharan Music College. [back]

27. The intent of the question was to get SG to say a few things about the music that might prove to be distinct from normal ragadari. And such proved to be the case! The description of Shuddh Asavari as having a strong aas of Re on Ma, and of the raga having a defined nyaas on Ma was quite illuminating. Finally, the Bhatkhande favored version of a differing ascent between Jaunpuri and Asavari (m P d S’ as opposed to m P d n S’) didn’t need to be the defining difference between the two. He followed up with a few lines, sung to illustrate, and the differences stood out clearly. Also, the clear and egregious misrepresentation of Komal Rishabh Asavari Todi as nothing but Komal Rishabh Asavari by certain members of the Kirana Gharana, was dispelled efficiently with a few hummed lines of Asavari Todi. The very distinct r g r S, a la Todi clearly set the raga apart from Komal Rishabh Asavari, and placed it squarely in the “Hanumat Todi” side of the Thaat. [back]

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - II

2009-09-21T00:24:00.007+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

AM: Can you tell me more about the compositions that make up the Bandish repertoire of the Bishnupur Gharana? What is their origin? Were they mostly written by Bishnupur musicians?

SG: No, no, not at all. The Bishnupur Gharana is really an offshoot of the Seni Gharana. It is differentiated stylistically because after Tansen’s descendent Bahadur Khan, the founder of our gharana, came to Bishnupur, he imparted his knowledge to Gadadhar Chakrabarty, and he in turn taught Ramshankar Bhattacharya, and in the process the Seni style changed into something distinctive and quite able to stand on its own. But the majority of the compositions are attributable to Tansen, Baiju Bavara, Bahadur Khan’s son, etc.^[11]

AM: But a little while ago, you mentioned that the Bishnupur Gharana is characterized by Bhakti ras. Then, where did these texts come from? It seems unlikely that Bahadur Khansaheb would write these compositions.

SG: No, some of these came from Gopeshwar Bandhopadhyay, Surendranath Bandhopadhyay, Ramprasanna Bandhopadhyay and others. But there are many compositions of Tansen’s and Baiju Bavara’s as well.^[12]

AM: If I remember correctly, the Bishnupur Gharana had another line of musicians that included the vocalist Gyanendra Prasad Goswami.

SG: Well, the truth is that Gyanendra Prasad Goswami was not that involved with classical music. He did not sing Dhrupad, Dhamar and Khayal as much, and therefore is somewhat removed from the gharana. His uncle, Radhika Prasad Goswami was a classical musician of Bishnupur Gharana. But Gyanendra Prasad Goswami, although he had studied everything, was better known for Ragashray Bangla Gaan.^[13] He had an incredibly beautiful voice that together with his command of Ragashray Bangla Gaan created a somewhat different stream of music from the classical Bishnupur Gharana. Further Gyanendra Prasad had taken talim from Ustad Faiyaz Khan, and as a result had veered somewhat towards the Agra Gharana.^[14]

AM: Is the Ragashray Gaan tradition continuing in your gharana?

SG: Well, actually, the gharana tilts more towards the classical side. There is more emphasis put on Dhrupad and Khayal.^[15]

AM: In many gharanas, there is no real differentiation between Dhrupad and Dhamar. The Dhamar is sung like a Dhrupad, just in a cycle of 14 beats. What is the position of the Bishnupur Gharana on the differentiation between Dhrupad and Dhamar?

SG: Dhrupad and Dhamar are completely separate genres. Khayal and Thumri are not the same, are they? Similarly Dhrupad and Dhamar are not the same. Dhamar is sung after Dhrupad, to appeal to the heart of the common listener, just like Thumri is sung as a light piece after Khayal. Dhamar is called “Hori Gaan”, a song sung to represent the color play of Radha and Krishna. On the other hand, we think of classical Dhrupad as being sung in praise of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. There are certainly Dhrupad compositions that are dedicated to Radha and Krishna, or to some historical figure, a king or an important person. But those aren’t considered classical Dhrupad compositions. The truly classical ones are in praise of one of the Hindu trinity.^[16]

AM: Do you do Bolbant in Dhamar?

SG: We not only do bolbant in Dhamar, it is often found to a greater degree in Dhamar than in Dhrupad. We also often do not sing all four parts in Dhamar. It is limited to two, to appeal more to the common listener. In my opinion, one can say that Dhamar is a Dhrupad ‘ang’ song, but not a Dhrupad. Dhamar is the ‘laghu’ of Dhrupad. Dhamar has a lower status than Dhrupad, and is meant to follow up after the heavy dhrupad to lighten the mind and mood. At least this is what I feel.^[17]

AM: I am a little confused about the history of your gharana. In a number of sources the beginning of the gharana is attributed to Ustad Bahadur Khan. But in a number of other sources, the beginning of the gharana is dated to the 12th or 13th century.^[18]

SG: No, such an early date would be inaccurate. Before Bahadur Khan came to Bishnupur, there was indeed music here. But it was in the form of kirtan, musical storytelling, and folk music. Classical music was not present. The enthusiasm that King Raghunath Singha II showed for classical music must have had an origin somewhere in the music of the region. But it was only after he brought Bahadur Khan to Bishnupur that classical music took hold. Further, it is only after the transmission of musical knowledge to Gadadhar Chakrabarty and Ramshankar Bhattacharya that a coherent and distinctive style of musical presentation formed and became known as the Bishnupur Gharana. Therefore, the Bishnupur Gharana can only be spoken of after the time of Ustad Bahadur Khan. You see, at that time, there was no communication with classical musicians. There was no way for them to visit and perform their music in Bishnupur on a regular basis. As a result, no classical music culture formed. It was for this reason that King Raghunath Singha II brought Bahadur Khan to Bishnupur and had him settle here and teach here. As a result a culture of classical music began to develop that finally found full expression in the music of Ramshankar Bhattacharya. For this reason, in the Bishnupur Gharana, Ramshankar Bhattacharya is referred to as Sangeet Guru. And in turn, he trained a generation of great musicians: Anantalal Bandhopadhyay, Kshetramohan Goswami, Jaddu Bhatta, and others.^[19]

AM: In many gharanas you see a slight differentiation in style between artists. For example in the Atrauli-Jaipur Gharana, the approach taken by Mallikarjun Mansur is distinct from the approach taken by Kishori Amonkar. Do you see differentiation of this sort in Bishnupur Gharana as well?

SG: Let me address a broader question. Take Mallikarjun Mansur as an example. He had a very distinctive style. But after him very few if any have followed his way of singing. There has been a total change in Hindustani music across India after Amir Khansaheb. Khayal music, in the time of Faiyaz Khansaheb was sung in a Dhrupad ang, and didn’t sound at all like the Khayal that is heard across India today. The Agra Gharana today has come to an end. You’ll find no one singing that old style of music. After Amir Khansaheb, the very nature of Ragadari has changed. The way we hear ragas—and why just us, all of India for that matter—take the case of Bhimsen Joshi who is a great admirer of Amir Khansaheb’s music and once even approached Khansaheb about learning from him—it is all different today.^[20] See, progress and development are ever present. Each human being interprets change based on his/her musical thinking, timbre of the voice, emotional expression, and musical training. As a result no two musicians will sound the same. It is impossible to hold things in a static state. Because of the changes that are happening to our environment, even the way human beings look is changing. So why won’t the music change? Changes in attitudes and societal expectations, what is considered aesthetic, how audiences receive music inevitably impact the music of musicians. So what we can say is that there is an emerging new style of music. And there are deviations from this style by each musician to some extent that take into account his/her experience. Now coming to the Bishnupur Gharana, if you listen to Satyakinkar Bandhopadhyay, you will find a distinct style. If you listen to Ramesh Bandhopadhyay, you will find a different style. Ramesh Babu’s is more moderate in nature, just as his nature was moderate. I have not heard many of the old time musicians of the gharana, although I have heard Gopeshwar Babu. I must say that the approach taken by his descendants was rather more moderate than Gopeshwar Babu’s. And there is good reason. As time passes, progress happens and thinking changes. These younger musicians had access to Gopeshwar Babu’s innovations at a young age, and could build on his thinking. But despite the differences, we are all trying to understand and follow the main aesthetic of the gharana in the best way we each can. If I were to describe my own approach, you see, I sing both Khayal and Dhrupad. So when I do Alap, my approach is informed by both. There are so many musicians today who sing Alap that might be technically very difficult, but fails to bring the raga alive. I don’t think of Alap as just a tool for showing the raga swaroop. It is a form of song, just like the other genres. The only thing is that it is anibaddha. Therefore, it should not be a dry exercise. It should enliven the mind and make the listener happy and satisfied. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the only form of song that allows us to express our inner feelings in the medium of the raga fully is Alap. It is that important!

AM: You have made clear that the Bishnupur Gharana has a very clear relationship with the Seni Gharana. Are there other gharanas of Dhrupad to which the Bishnupur Gharana is related?

SG: It seems like there is some sort of a relationship with Bettiah Gharana. There are some shared characteristics between the two gharanas musically, so it would seem to me that there must have been some sort of a relationship. But I really don’t know for sure. I don’t think there is much of a relationship with other Dhrupad gharanas.

AM: What relationship did Rabindranath have to the Bishnupur Gharana? I had heard that he had studied with Jaddu Bhatta.

SG: Yes, in a manner of speaking he did. But very importantly we should examine Rabindranath’s connection to Gopeshwar Bandhopadhyay. Although Gopeshwar Babu was much younger, Rabindranath respected him very much. Gopeshwar Babu provided the musical notation for many of Rabindranath’s songs, and through him Rabindranath modeled many of his songs on Dhrupads from the gharana. Rabindranath himself said that he didn’t learn from Jaddu Bhatta in the traditional manner. He never had that opportunity. But he would stand by the window and listen to Jaddu Bhatta as he sang in their house. The Tagore household always had musicians and music in the house. And when Jaddu Bhatta visited, Rabindranath was always at the ready to listen and be influenced by the music.

AM: Do you consider Rabindranath to be an artist of the Bishnupur Gharana?

SG: Rabindranath wasn’t a musician or artist of the gharana. But he took songs and music from the gharana. Certainly the text of some of his Bengali compositions would hew closely to some traditional compositions of the gharana. But we cannot say he is from the Bishnupur Gharana. One can say that he was deeply influenced by the gharana certainly. Rabindranath said that he didn’t like the Ustadi of the other gharanas. He very much appreciated the Bhakti ras that was part of the Bishnupur approach to music. And further, since he was a poet and writer and his main concern was literature, he needed a musical framework that respected the depth of the literary content. From this perspective Bishnupur Gharana was ideal.

AM: As you have said many times, the Dhrupad and Dhamar genres of Bishnupur are full of Bhakti ras. So, was this music performed in the temples or in the darbars?

SG: They were most definitely performed in the temples! If you come to Bishnupur you will see that the kings and rulers of the land were extremely powerful. But even then, they did not build a royal palace.^[21] Instead they put their wealth into the building of temples. Here you will find uncountable numbers of stone temples, each decorated with terracotta sculptures depicting music and musical activity. One of the major landmarks of the city is Ras Mancha, a temple of 108 doors, where music and the playing of ras holi were an integral part of the temple life.

AM: And what about music at the royal court?

SG: Since there was no royal palace, the king held his court in front of the temple of Ma Mrinmayee.^[22] There is a very old Banyan tree in front of this temple, which has a stone courtyard around its base. The king would sit in this courtyard and hold his court. That’s how strong their belief in Vaishnavism was! For them there were two main responsibilities. One was to maintain their Vaishnav faith. And the other was to maintain the culture of classical music in the kingdom. They seldom indulged themselves in the manner of other royal families.

AM: Today, where is Dhrupad performed in Bishnupur?

SG: There are a number of yearly concerts that are held purely for Dhrupad. There is an annual Dhrupad conference during the time of the Dol Festival. Musicians from Kolkata and elsewhere come to Bishnupur for this conference. We have a very good auditorium in town named after Jaddu Bhatta where this conference is held. In the last few years, we have had performances by Ritwik Sanyal, Falguni Mitra, Fahimuddin Dagarsaheb, Bahauddin Dagar, to name a few. I too participate in this conference. The whole conference is sponsored by the Central Government. Dr. Sanyal did an excellent workshop on Dhrupad. He expressed the opinion that Alap is an ang of Dhrupad. But I prefer to think of Dhrupad and Alap as separate types of music. This difference came up in the question-answer session after the workshop. But it was on the whole a very well-done workshop. These types of programs are often held in Bishnupur.^[23]

AM: Is there still music in the temples?

SG: No, the governmental department that looks after the temples has forbidden music in the temples. We are not allowed to sing within 100 meters of any temple. This is to protect the structural integrity of the temples. At Ras Mancha, there used to be a lot of music making and playing of colors during the festival of Dol. But not so anymore! Now we do our music next to Ras Mancha, outside of the required perimeter.

[Continued in Part III]

Notes:

11. There is a basic disconnect here between the idea that the gharana is deeply rooted in Vaishnav philosophy, and the idea that the majority of its compositions come from non-Vaishnav sources. This is the contradiction I was trying to get at with the subsequent question. [back]

12. My sense of the situation is that while a number of Vaishnav texts were contributed by gharana musicians, much of the legitimacy of the gharana derives from its possession of compositions by Tansen, Baiju Bavara and their contemporaries. It would be interesting to see how many compositions of these individuals have been syncretized into a Vaishnav mold to suit the philosophy of the gharana. [back]

13. Ragashray Gaan are Bengali songs set in ragas. [back]

14. The distancing from Gyanendra Prasad Goswami is quite interesting. Clearly Gyanendra Prasad was not classical enough to warrant inclusion (at least to the same degree) as someone like Gopeshwar Bandhopadhyay, in the gharana. Further, the fact that he took talim from Faiyaz Khan is seen as a polluting influence on his Bishnupur credentials. [back]

15. This is interesting because SG has described the Bishnupur Gharana as a collection of various song types: Alap, Dhrupad, Khayal and Instrumental music. However, Bengali songs, even based in classical music are considered to be non-classical. Hence the need for a complete, comprehensive gharana appears to be limited to song types that are considered very strictly classical. [back]

16. SG establishes increasingly higher standards of classicism in describing the repertoire. Dhrupads in praise of the trinity alone are considered truly classical. The remainder falls into another class of somewhat less classical songs. And in SG’s opinion, therefore, Dhamars are less classical than Dhrupads. [back]

17. It is interesting to note that certain sections of the Dagar Gharana actually treat Dhamar in a very deliberate and classical manner, quite to the contrary of what SG is describing. It is fairly clear that this is an artistic choice that arises from the different philosophical directions of these two gharanas. [back]

18. For example, see the Wikipedia entry on Bishnupur Gharana. [back]

19. Here SG acknowledges that musical styles that cannot be considered classical existed in Bishnupur prior to the arrival of Bahadur Khan. Again, these he treats as distinct from the classical tradition, which he considers to be the proper Bishnupur Gharana. Because of the direct lineage from the Seni Gharana, in a sense the claim being made is that the Bishnupur Gharana preserves the repertoire of the Seni tradition which, as far as vocal music, has largely died out elsewhere in India. [back]

20. My sense was that while SG would never state it this way, there was a certain musical oppression in operation. The aesthetic that Amir Khan espoused appears to be so ingrained in the connoisseur population that stylistic alternatives are not even under consideration in this part of India. The apparent uniformity of stylistic approach that one sees amongst the newer set of musicians (including those from the Bishnupur Gharana) appears to be an attempt to cater to the “mean” aesthetic established by Amir Khan. This is purely my analysis of the situation based on what SG had to say. He did not espouse this position himself. [back]

21. This does not seem to fit with the impression I’ve gotten from sources on the ground. There does appear to be some sort of a “Rajbari” structure, suggesting the existence of a royal palace. I didn’t question SG on this issue as I felt he was trying to make a larger point. Even if there is a Rajbari, there is one structure, as opposed to hundreds of temples. The intent of Bishnupuri kings was clear. [back]

22. Curiously, for all of the belief in Vaishnavism, court was held in front of the oldest temple in Bishnupur, a shrine to the goddess Mrinmayee. [back]

23. This divergence in perception of Alap as an independent art form (Bishnupur) as opposed to an integrated portion of the Dhrupad (Dagar) appears to be a result of the distinct view these two schools hold on the place of the composition. The depth, form and meaning of the composition seem to be central to Bishnupur, while this is the case with only some Dagar Bani musicians. The deconstruction of a raga down to its microtones is something that preoccupies the musical intellect of the Dagar musicians to a much greater extent. [back]

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - I

2009-09-20T00:20:00.014+05:30

The Bishnupur Gharana: an interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay

Arijit Mahalanabis^[1]

Of all of the Dhrupad traditions in India, perhaps the most obscure is the Dhrupad tradition of Bishnupur. The Bishnupur Gharana has significantly influenced the popular, urban and folk music of Bengal. However, its contributions to the world of classical music have not necessarily been well understood, or indeed, even appreciated.

One of the difficult realities of Indian classical music today is that one’s geographic location, to a great extent, limits one’s ability to be heard or appreciated. This is certainly the case with the musicians who practice in Bishnupur. Removed from the urban musical stronghold of Kolkata many of these musicians toil in obscurity without the benefit of popular acclaim. It is difficult to say that Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay is one such musician. As a prolific and accomplished performer, active teacher and able administrator, Sujit Babu is a well established figure of the Gharana. However, as a musician living and performing in Bishnupur, his views on the issues related to the gharana’s present, past and future are rather enlightening, and perhaps more thought-provoking than those of his contemporaries who perform Bishnupuri music in Kolkata and elsewhere. In this interview conducted on 5th September, 2009, I asked Pandit Gangopadhyay about a variety of different aspects of his gharana.

Arijit Mahalanabis [AM]: Namaskar Panditji. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about the Bishnupur Gharana. Can you begin by saying a few words about the gharana’s present state and its past achievements?

Sujit Gangopadhyay [SG]: The Bishnupur Gharana passed through a golden age a long time ago. Many great musicians from the gharana practiced music contemporaneously, and the gharana was famous throughout India. This may not be the case today, but the gharana is seeing something of a revival. More students are studying this music, and demand amongst audiences too is growing. Of course, musical giants are not born every day. However those who are involved with the gharana at present are doing their work, practicing music, and teaching and learning the tradition. Our age-old tradition manages to continue.

AM: Can you tell me something about your gurus? What contributions did they make to the gharana especially with regard to Dhrupad and Dhamar?

SG: My father, Amarnath Gangopadhyay, practiced both Khayal and Dhrupad. He was my first guru. He studied with Atulkrishna Bandhopadhyay, one of the great musicians of our gharana. Atulkrishna in turn, was a student of Gopeshwar Bandhopadhyay ^[2], and Ustad Tusiruddhujin Khan. He studied Dhrupad and Dhamar from Gopeshwar Babu, and Khayal from the Ustad.^[3]

As for me, I went on to study with Amiya Ranjan Bandhopadhyay, a major figure in our gharana at present. Amiya Babu is considered to be the senior-most artist in the state of West Bengal today. He belongs to a much respected family in our gharana. His father was Satyakinkar Bandhopadhyay, a great exponent of both Khayal and Dhrupad. I should point out that a very significant aspect of Satyakinkar Babu and Amiya Babu’s music is that they have both put equal emphasis on the practice of Dhrupad and Khayal, and have maintained both styles side-by-side.^[4] This was true of Gopeshwar Babu’s music also. It is a common notion that Bishnupur Gharana is a Dhrupad gharana. But really, it is a gharana that puts equal emphasis on both Dhrupad and Khayal. Certainly Dhrupad occupies a hallowed ground in the gharana. But the great musician Ramprasanna Bandhopadhyay, who was Gopeshwar Babu’s elder brother and guru, and the son of Anantalal Bandhopadhyay, was an accomplished instrumentalist. His student was sitarist Gokul Nag, the father of Manilal Nag, and one of Ravi Shankar’s gurus. Sitar, as you know, is a Khayal ang instrument. Ashesh Badhopadhyay, the son of Ramprasanna Babu, was a great Esraj player. In fact, Rabindranath was very fond of him, and he spent his life at Vishwa Bharati. So although Dhrupad is very important in the Bishnupur Gharana, it is not the only music found in the gharana. Bishnupur as a gharana encompasses Dhrupad, Khayal and Instrumental music in a very complete and exhaustive way. As a member of this gharana, I personally practice both Dhrupad and Khayal.^[5]

AM: Can you describe the process of receiving talim from your gurus?

SG: As I said I received my training from my father. As you know, our guru-shishya parampara requires us to sit with the guru, learn the chalan, roop and overall emotion of the raga, and then repeat the guru’s musical phrases over and over again. I too learned in this traditional way. For example, my father might say to me, look at the komal re and ga in Todi. Both these are somewhat flatter than the usual komal re and komal ga. One might say they are atikomal. Many ragas use these notes, but Todi is special. These things are best learned by listening to and repeatedly singing with one’s guru. It is very difficult to write such things down on a sheet of paper. See how the komal re in Bhairav is different than Todi! It is a bit higher than the usual komal re. Also as you know Bhairav has andolit Re and Dha. They are andolit in Ramkali also. But the Re-Dha andolan in Bhairav is somewhat wider, with a more Tivra bent. For this reason, when Dha is taken andolit in Bhairav, a small touch of Komal Ni also appears, from the extensive upswing of the note. It now shows as a vivadi swar regularly in performances of the raga. The same is true of Re. Its upswing in the andolan places it at a shruti that is quite a bit Tivra from the usual Komal Re. While we wouldn’t say these vivadis are part of the raga, in performance they do happen. Ramkali on the other hand has these andolans, but they are not nearly as Tivra, and as a result these vivadi chhayas of the Re and Dha do not arise. The only way to learn such subtleties is through the medium of the guru. One cannot learn these from a page. This is the kind of training I received in the Guru-Shishya Parampara.

AM: Did your gurus describe such subtleties in words, the way you have just done, or were these principles that you gleaned by singing with them?

SG: First they would speak about it, and then demonstrate musically.^[6]

AM: As you know, some gharanas like the Agra Gharana are known for Bolbant and Layakari. Others like the Dagar Bani are known for their work with the shrutis. What would you say are the stylistic characteristics of the Bishnupur Gharana?

SG: Vaishnav thought is central to the Bishnupur Gharana. Our kings were adherents and philosophers of Vaishnavism. Hence the entire culture revolved around the idea of Bhakti. When you come to Bishnupur, you will see there are uncountable numbers of temples devoted to Krishna and Radha. For this reason, the music of our gharana, instead of focusing on virtuosity and ustadi, is centered more on Bhakti ras, and giving rise to feelings of devotion in both the musician and the listener. This is why Rabindranath found this musical style more to his liking. Because many Dhrupad gharanas do not focus on the Bhakti aspect of the composition, some musicians belonging to such gharanas do not even sing the four parts of the composition clearly! Many musicians start by singing the sthayi and then begin doing bolbant and layakari on the sthayi. Then they sing the antara and launch into bolbant and layakari on the antara. And often the sanchari and abhog are dropped altogether! Here, we sing all four parts clearly first. After that, we do some Bolbant. Because of this approach, the gravity of the composition stands out.^[7] By the way, the word Dhrupad refers to a composition. Alap is not part of a Dhrupad. It is a separate genre altogether. We sing it before a Dhrupad because when Dhrupad is sung on its own, the presentation is too short. The ras that is within the raga that can attract the human mind becomes obscured. Therefore, by singing the Alap, the beauty of the raga becomes apparent, and the direct appeal of the raga to the heart becomes clear. But Alap is a totally different form of music from Dhrupad. It is anibaddha first of all. Dhrupad by its very name and nature cannot be anibaddha.^[8] But coming back to your question, singing the four parts clearly and without distortion is very important in our Gharana, so that the depth of meaning and feeling, the resonance of bhakti that is in the text, in full measure finds a home in the listener’s mind. In my limited experience, most other gharanas do not treat the four parts clearly. And as I said, musicians start doing Bolbant in the middle without first showing the full composition. But another issue is that sometimes the Bolbant becomes too much and overwhelms the composition and its intent. There is a lack of a sense of proportionality in this respect. So, to sum up, in the Bishnupur Gharana, the full form of the composition is more important than a display of virtuosity in Bolbant.

AM: But it is not the case that you don’t do any Bolbant at all, is it?

SG: No, no. It is definitely a part of the performance. But it is secondary in importance. You see, the Bolbant is the alankar or the ornamentation of Dhrupad. In Dhrupad one cannot do ornamentation that is often associated with other musical genres, because these reduce the overall gravity of the composition. So the Bolbant is the only way to ornament the composition. But it is a secondary feature of the performance, and we don’t let it overwhelm the Dhrupad.^[9]

AM: Is there a particular manner in which the Bolbant of Bishnupur is meant to unfold in a performance?

SG: When you first start learning Bolbant, you learn to move in dugun, tigun, chaugun, chhegun, and so on, in a very methodical manner. But when we perform, we don’t progress in such a systematic manner from dugun to tigun, to chaugun, etc. I, for one, mostly improvise in dugun and tigun. I try to be as creative as possible in my own way in these layas, keeping in mind the positioning of the taal. Bolbant in Dhrupad is like Taankari in Khayal. In Khayal, you set a tempo and move as per your thinking. Just like that, a Dhrupadiya unfolds his creativity in the present tempo using Bolbant as a device. On the odd occasion I might sing one pre-determined movement. But it is largely extemporaneous in nature.

AM: But in teaching students, you systematically teach them dugun, tigun, chaugun and so on?

SG: Yes, when basic training is being done, we teach fixed movements in each type of laya. Often the focus is on retaining the melody of the composition while changing the laya.^[10] But as I said, in performance, it is done extemporaneously.

[Continued in Part II]

Notes:

1. Director, Seattle Indian Music Academy. The author would like to thank Tanmoy Ganguly for his invaluable assistance. [back]

2. Gopeshwar Bandhopadhyay (1880-1963) is one of the most notable names of the gharana, and achieved all-India fame as a Dhrupadiya and composer of much merit. [back]

3. SG credits Atukrishna Bandhopadhyay’s Dhrupad training to Gopeshwar Babu and his Khayal training to the Muslim Ustad. This is interesting. Although Ustad Bahadur Khan is credited with starting the Gharana and thus importing the majority of Dhrupads into Bishnupur, I felt there might be a slight distinction here between the Hindu keeper of the tradition, who provided the Dhrupad repertoire and the Muslim keeper of the tradition, who provided the Khayal repertoire. This may not have been a distinction SG wanted to make, but it was something that struck my mind while I talked to him. [back]

4. Here SG begins to lay out the characteristics of the gharana. This is the first characteristic. The gharana takes pride in its equal contributions to Dhrupad and Khayal. [back]

5. In SG’s view therefore, the gharana itself is distinguished by the fact that it never limited itself to one or the other discipline. Dhrupad, Khayal and Instrumental music all found homes in Bishnupur. His views on other musical styles fostered in Bishnupur appear later in the interview. [back]

6. This seems like a significant bit of insight in to pedagogy in Bishnupur. A number of traditional musicians in my experience frown on speaking about the music explicitly. Repeated demonstration through music is used as the only tools of instructing the student. Here SG indicates that verbal discourse was an integral part of the training. [back]

7. There are two very interesting things about these statements. First, a key differentiator between Bishnupur and other gharanas according to SG is that the Bishnupur Gharana is centered on the idea of Bhakti as the main driving force for presentation. Thematic differentiation of this sort across gharanas, as far as I know is never seen. But what legitimizes this claim is his subsequent description of this ideology’s impact on musical style. There is a certain coherence of intent that is not found in what musicians of other gharanas have to say on this topic. [back]

8. Setting Alap aside as a separate ‘song type’ is an unusual view. But this also bolsters the idea of Khayal being an integration of Nibaddha (Dhrupad) and Anibadhha (Alap) into a single form. Here SG seems to be arguing that Dhrupad is a deconstructed form, in which the ‘bhaav’ of the composition in the form of a Dhrupad, is maintained quite distinctly from the ‘ras’ of the raga in the form of the Alap. [back]

9. SG here is drawing a parallel between Bolbant in Dhrupad and Taankari in Khayal, something he will elaborate on later in the interview. [back]

10. That is, the fixed melody and the words of the Dhrupad are sung in dugun, tigun, etc. The composition is essentially sped up while retaining the tempo of the taal. [back]

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - II

2009-08-12T14:47:00.012+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

Another anecdote from this period that Joshiji (D T Joshi) told me will, I hope, buttress the point I made earlier, to the effect that there will never again be a musician comparable with Ali Akbar Khan. Joshiji's house in Lucknow, was a meeting place for musicians. One afternoon, it was decided that the musicians present would like to hear Ali Akbar in the evening. Joshiji went over to the radio station to ask if Ali Akbar would find it convenient to come over and play. Since the prospective audience included Bundu Khan, Fayyaz Khan and Nissar Hussain Khan, Ali Akbar agreed immediately. That evening as Ali Akbar was playing Bhupali, even Fayyaz Khan had tears in his eyes! And when Ali Akbar was playing jod at a faster pace using complex right-hand stroke patterns ('lad-gutthao') Fayyaz Khan looked at Nissar Hussain, asked him to sing a "tarana", and announced, "We will listen to how Ali Akbar accompanies Nissar." This is a scenario unimaginable in today's sponsorship-driven music scene.

It seems evident to me that Ali Akbar who had been trained thoroughly by his father, thus acquiring a huge amount of erudition in the musical traditions that already existed found experiences such as the one recounted above, not only an enhancement of his musical depth but also a liberating influence. What emerged after his stint in Lucknow and then at the court of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, was a sarodiya unlike any other.

Western musicologists often describe Hindustani music performances as 'improvisatory'. But most Hindustani musicians, if honest, will admit that only about 50% of what they are doing is improvisation. The 'riyaz' (training/practice) they do is, to a large extent, a process of polishing up the presentation of set pieces which they hope to perform flawlessly during a recital. These practice sessions maybe devoted to endless repetitions of 'paltas': complex ascents and descents of one or more octaves using the notes of a particular "thaat" (a set scale of seven notes chosen from the twelve semitones that form the basic subdivisions of an octave or trying out rhythmic variations in different time signatures).

The only exception to this general mode of behaviour was Ali Akbar. I truly believe, and there is some corroboration of this in the testimony of other musicians, that Ali Akbar had no clue of what he was next going to do. For example, Kumar Mukherjee who had known Ali Akbar from his Lucknow days, mentions in his autobiography that once in his apartment in Calcutta he had requested Ali Akbar to play Maluha Kedar: a somewhat obscure raga which is a great favourite of the Agra gharana of Khayal singers. Ali Akbar complied with Kumar's request but to the latter's amazement never used the dhaivat throughout the recital. Since this particular note is normally given some considerable importance in Maluha Kedar by most expositors, Kumar asked if the absence of the dhaivat was due to the interpretation of the raga by his gharana (read 'Allauddin Khan'). Ali Akbar was quick to say that this was not so and added that somehow while he was playing "the dhaivat refused to appear"! [I have read this anecdote in Kumar Mukherjee's autobiography "Kudrat Rangi-Birangi" which is in Bengali. I do not know if it is also recounted in the English version, "The Lost World of Hindustani Music".]

This unmatched spontaneity was possible only because of Ali Akbar's total control over his instrument. In his heyday he could execute anything his musical imagination required him to play. But this is also at the root of the erratic nature of his recorded legacy. When he was inwardly at peace, his musical imagination would attain stratospheric heights and his fingers would immediately render these sublime flights of fancy. But when he did not feel in the same 'mijaz' (mood) one would hear somewhat pedestrian offerings; I have already recounted one remarkable instance of this in his 78 RPM recording of Jaunpuri and Manj Khamaj. It is very likely that these two cuts were recorded in a single session with a short interval for retuning and yet the musical qualities of the two sides are light-years apart!

Throughout the '40s Ali Akbar had been immersed in a congenial musical environment: first in Lucknow and then in the court of Jodhpur. His musical imagination was always being envigorated by interactions with other great musicians. Listeners of the generation earlier than mine own, were in broad agreement that this was Ali Akbar's "golden period". The move to Bombay in the early 'fifties meant a change in the pattern of his life. No longer was he totally absorbed in classical music. However film music in Bollywood during that era was still very largely based upon, what can broadly be described as, raga music. Indeed many of the prominent music directors of Bollywood at that time had themselves been trained in classical music. Outstanding examples of such music directors were S D Burman, Anil Biswas (who had learnt khayal from Girija Shankar Chakrabarti and Badal Khan) and Pannalal Ghosh, a flautist who had been trained by Allauddin Khan himself.

Ali Akbar produced some remarkable 78 rpm recordings during this period in Bombay, to say nothing of highly acclaimed scores for a number of films. I have not seen Chetan Anand's "Andhiyan", generally regarded as Ali Akbar's best film score from his Bombay days. During his stay in Calcutta he wrote a somewhat pedestrian score for Satyajit Ray's "Devi". My feeling is that Ray, who was a keen student of Western Classical Music, did not give Ali Akbar a clear mandate for his task. Because almost at the same time he wrote a remarkable score for Tapan Sinha's "Kshudita Pashan" (The Hungry Stones) based on a Tagore short story.

Around 1990 I had the opportunity of discussing the making of this film with Tapan Sinha and I asked him specifically about his experience of working with Ali Akbar. Sinha was effusive about Ali Akbar's sensitivity and mentioned that when he was looking at the final cut he felt that one sequence where the protagonist is galloping on horseback along a dried riverbed needed some background music. When Sinha had earlier mentioned this scene to Ali Akbar, the latter felt that the horses' hooves would provide enough of a sonic accompaniment. But the final review indicated that the sand had dampened the clattering of the hooves and Sinha rang up Ali Akbar in a panic. Ali Akbar said He'd come over immediately to the studio. He arrived with his sarode, viewed the sequence and after a minute's thought asked Sinha to roll the camera and turn on the recording equipment. I clearly remember the thrilling Sarode music that accompanied this fateful horse ride which ended in the looming shadow of the haunted castle!

I had once asked Anil Biswas why Ali Akbar left Bombay and came over to Calcutta in 1956. He rather guardedly replied that given his mercurial temperament, the 'filmi' environment made his personal life rather complicated. That perhaps Ali Akbar felt that this turbulence was having a deleterious effect on his performances as a sarodiya. His relatively short sojourn in Calcutta, I feel, was musically destructive for Ali Akbar.

His somewhat idealistic experiment in establishing the Ali Akbar College of Music yielded little in the way of well-trained musicians. The only student of the College from that era who has achieved a certain degree of recognition is Rajeev Taranath --- an emigre from Bangalore! Yet clearly Ali Akbar had hoped that since Bengal over the previous fifty years had provided the home base for many prominent instrumentalists the College and, particularly, his presence would lead to a great flowering of young talent in Calcutta. Unfortunately, Ali Akbar did not have the luxury of devoting very much time to the teaching of students; his concert schedule during the late fifties was a punishing one. During the winter months, there were several occasions when he had to give as many as ten performances in a week! What I have said just now will be disputed by some: Ali Akbar has himself told various interlocutors, that he had "struggled for thirty years to establish an 'Academy of Music' in Calcutta", and only after failing in this endeavour decided to establish a school in California. But such statements can be refuted simply by adding thirty to 1950, which was the year he left Jodhpur!

Sadly for Indian music, Ali Akbar spent the last four decades of his life, for the most part, away from India. His recorded output during this period is generally rather disappointing. As I have already mentioned, Ali Akbar performed 'as the spirit moved him' and there was little in the environment in the U.S. to rekindle the musical fires that lay buried within him. He was surrounded by what in pop culture are termed "groupies": individuals whose love and admiration for Ali Akbar vastly exceeded their knowledge or discernment of Hindustani music.

Any reasonably knowledgeable recording engineer in India would know that to ask Ali Akbar to play a raga for a pre-assigned, and extended period would never yield an example of his best music. Yet Ali Akbar, during the sixties was prevailed upon to record LPs with titles such as "The 40 Minute Raga" (Marwa) and "The 80 Minute Raga" (Darbari). For this latter recording session, I suppose the hope of the recordist was that the first two sides of the LP recordings would be a leisurely alaap (an expansion in time scale of his 78 RPM recording which I have alluded to already) and then 2 sides of 'gatkari'. As it turned out, Ali Akbar did not feel right for such a project! Fifteen minutes into the first side he can be seen already starting on the 'jhaala' section, and this occupies the entire second side. This recording has been made with great attention to audio fidelity but provides a very poor glimpse of the deep insight of Darbari that Ali Akbar had himself so amply demonstrated in his 78 RPM recording produced two decades earlier! It and the Marwa release pale in comparison even with his 20 minute LPs of Durga and Gauri Manjari. In these two cuts also made while he was in the US, he seemed to awaken from years of musical hibernation and demonstrate anew the extraordinary powers that had captivated Indian audiences in the 'forties and 'fifties.

The last memorable recordings that I have heard were produced for the All India Radio during one of his visits in the early nineties. In particular a fascinating new creation dubbed "Megh Sarang" shows that the musical genius was still at work though generally not audible to the music loving public in India.

I have never had the good fortune of meeting Ali Akbar and have admired him from a distance. In equal measure, I have been exasperated by the waywardness of his genius. Now that he is no more, I look back on that concert given on his birthday in 1959. The evening had started with a recital by Samta Prasad and, as he sat down for his solo, he leaned forward to the microphone and said "Khan Saheb ko ek hazaar saal ki umar miley"! I trust that Ali Akbar Khan Saheb's music will live for a thousand years more!

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - I

2009-08-11T14:39:00.005+05:30

If a random group of scholars of English Literature were to be asked when they expected the reemergence of a literary persona of the stature of Shakespeare, I am sure that everyone would simply say "Never". I think the same response would come from Bengalis if asked about the "next Tagore". For myself, I do not think that it is possible for a sarodiya with the same compelling musicianship of Ali Akbar to ever appear again. This piece is an attempt to draw attention to what I feel were the features that made Ali Akbar's music a singular phenomenon. It is also a tribute from an ardent admirer who due to unforeseen circumstances did not follow Ali Akbar's musical output very closely during the last twenty years.

If one is to judge a musician at the end of his career in any manner that can claim to be objective, the procedure is simple:

1. Examine the recordings that are available;
2. See how the music lovers have responded to the musician during his performing career;
3. if possible, gauge how fellow musicians viewed the artiste .

In all but one of these criteria it would be difficult to make a strong case for Ali Akbar as one of the greatest of all Hindustani musicians. In the first place, the quality of Ali Akbar's output fluctuated wildly, not only over the course of his six decade long career, but even within the span of a single week or a single day!

As for listeners' reactions, Hindustani music lovers are, to my mind incorrigibly opinionated: the devotees of Pandit ABC will not acknowledge even the technical competence of Ustad XYZ if the latter is regarded as a competitor of the former! This propensity becomes even more pronounced when one restricts to the subset of listeners who are student/practitioners themselves. While Ali Akbar's devotees would invariably find his music overwhelming I would quite often wonder wether I was listening to a different concert at a different venue.

One occasion which I remember vividly even after almost 50 years was a concert held at the lawns of a private residence in South Calcutta, to celebrate Ali Akbar's birthday which also happened to be the Bengali New Year's Day and the anniversary of the founding of the Ali Akbar College of Music. After a long solo by Samta Prasad, the main item commenced: a most remarkable, unwieldy and unsuccessful assemblage of four musicians: Ali Akbar himself, Nikhil Bannerjee, Bahadur Khan and Ashish Khan!

The first problem was that only Ali Akbar, Nikhil Bannerjee and, of course, Samta Prasad had microphones in front of them. The two sarodiyas in the second row could be barely heard; but during the alap Ali Akbar felt compelled to be fair and give one fourth of the time to these inaudible members of the quartet. The remaining time was split between himself and Nikhil Bannerjee. The alap in Bihag gradually progressed into the jor and one of the musicians in the second row was playing and Ali Akbar with a broad grin snatched away the slow musical progression of the jor with a jangling and undecipherable cascade of notes ending in Sa, played a brief mohara, and handed over to Nikhil who gave it back to Ali Akbar. Half the audience roared "Wah wah!" for what was a bored and exasperated outburst from Ali Akbar which lacked any musical content whatever. And Ali Akbar rocked in mirth! Unfortunately the devotees could not comprehend that their idol was openly mocking their reaction!

It is only when we try out the third criterion and ask fellow-musicians, that we find a near-universal feeling of awe and wonder at the achievements of Ali Akbar. But even here, I am compelled to qualify what I have just stated. One has to probe musicians who have heard Ali Akbar in the fifties or earlier. I recall that in 1977, my student Peter Manuel brought over a young sitariya to my flat in Delhi (he is now well-known and hence will remain anonymous here). We spent a very pleasant afternoon talking about music and listening to choice items from my collection of spool tapes, mainly Ghulam Ali Khan and Vilayat Khan. Before leaving the young man thanked me effusively for playing for him the two maestros that he most admired. When I apologized for not playing any of Ali Akbar's music since my collection did not include any live recordings of his, he looked surprised and asked if I considered Ali Akbar in the same league as Ghulam Ali and Vilayat. I laughed and said that he would probably be assaulted physically, if he had put this question to Vilayat Khan himself!

The most extraordinary feature of Ali Akbar was that he did not play along any of the established traditions that had existed before he had burst into the Hindustani music scene in the late thirties. But this is what makes his music very difficult to evaluate in an objective fashion. I will try to clarify what I mean by describing my personal encounter with the music of Ali Akbar Khan.

I had had very little prior exposure to Hindustani music when I started learning the sarode. My very first encounter with Ali Akbar was through the medium of (what I believe) was his first recording: a three and a half minute exposition of Ahir Bhairav with tabla accompaniment by Jnan Prakash Ghosh. I was wonderstruck that sarode could be so emotionally evocative, that in such a limited time a presentation of a raga could start with a completely relaxed meandering on the mandra Shadaj string and end with a lilting jhala and yet the whole progression seem utterly logical and unhurried. Even after fifty years I remember the recording almost by heart and cannot think of doing any changes that could improve upon what Ali Akbar had played. In particular, there was a 'harkat' near the tar Sa which haunted me for years: when five or six years later I was taught the raga, I tried to replicate that phrase but try as I might I'd always fail to achieve the effect Ali Akbar created. It was some twenty years later, I realized that Ali Akbar had achieved his magic by using the (prohibited) notes, Suddha Ni and Suddha Re! He is the only musician who could ever induce in my mind, such a state of "willing suspension of disbelief".

But the next 78 rpm record of Ali Akbar, Jaunpuri and Manj Khamaj that I heard produced a very different reaction. The Jaunpuri seemed to be devoid of any sparkle whatever; it was a medium fast razakhani gat whose 'manjha' vitiated the arohan by using the phrase "Re ga Ma" without serving any artistic purpose whatever. How could the same man have recorded that magical Ahir Bhairav I wondered as I flipped the disc over to listen to the Manj Khamaj. And suddenly the musical wizardry was in evidence in every stroke. A double sided alap in Darbari again evoked a mixed response. On the one hand the first side, the alap, was a superb distillation of the spirit of Darbari, all the more remarkable since the time available was three and a half minutes. The jor and jhala on the second side was very fine as sarode playing but strayed from the generally accepted grammar of the raga.

And so it continued all through my life. I'd hear a superb recital and then would follow a string of disappointing concerts. And I remember, once when I complained to my guru Radhika Mohan Maitra (Radhubabu), that I will stop listening to Ali Akbar if I keep hearing such failed performances he said something like "You do whatever you want to, but remember that Ali Akbar is truly outstanding no matter how long his patch of bad recitals last." This confounded me somewhat because one reason I could not enjoy Ali Akbar's concerts at this time was that he violated every rule for the steady development of alap and jor that Radhubabu was inculcating in me with such care and effort. I concluded at that time that Radhubabu's reply was just a cautionary measure to prevent me from getting into polemical disputes with other young musicians. But Radhubabu's admiration for Ali Akbar was unshakeable: he had heard him when Ali Akbar first emerged from under the wings of his father and joined the Lucknow station of the All India Radio and he told me how he would listen through the static and still be moved to the very core by the recitals Ali Akbar would broadcast.

[Continued in Part II]

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - III

2009-07-14T02:46:00.006+05:30

[Continued from Part II]

The next morning Mr. Mishra and I set off for the Maurya Sheraton, where Panditji was dossed up. The receptionist first refused to give us his room number (citing security reasons) and then, when we explained we had an appointment, refused to let us enter because there was a do-not-disturb sign on his door. We were about to leave in dejection, when I spotted Pt. Ulhas Kashalkar entering the hotel, accompanied by Sh. Madhup Mudgal. I naturally rushed to touch his feet. He recognised Mr. Mishra and asked him if he could help. Made abreast of the situation, he promptly invited us to his room. So the four of us, Mr. Mishra and MM on the two armchairs, me on the chair by the desk, and UK on the bed, chatted on for the better part of an hour.

[Note: For the sake of convenience, and especially as the post features several musicians worthy of the accolade 'Panditji', I shall at times make use of the South-Indian practice of referring to musicians by their initials. There is naturally no question of any disrespect meant by this; I sincerely hope none is taken either.]

By this time I had host hope of getting it autographed by BSJ, so I requested UK to sign it instead. He initially demurred, saying he couldn't sign it before Bhimsenji. I mollified him by saying if I got to meet him in the evening (there was a chance left) I'd get another copy for him to sign. He then cheerfully scrawled his name on the flyleaf, and so did MM.

At this point both MM and UK decided to meet BSJ, so we all pushed off to his room. Luckily the sign had been removed, so we went in. A few more people were present. Panditji chatted for fifteen minutes, then excused himself, saying he was tired. I went to his son and reminded him of his promised. He first asked me to come at four o'clock and then, when I said I wouldn't be able to, sugested I leave it be. My face dropped, so he took pity on me and asked me to request the big man himself. Panditji's response was, "My hands are very weak, so I can only promise to try. Let's have a go!" And he did sign!

I then turned to UK and then said I'd brought a camera but didn't have the nerve to take pics as Panditji was tired. He said no no, no problem at all, come along. So I made him stand next to Panditji and took a snap of them together. Promptly, Mr. Mishra, MM and some of the other people present there came up and requested snaps. Someone took pity on me and snapped one of mine with BSJ. We left after that. What a day!

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - II

2009-07-13T22:43:00.003+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

The recital, when it began, bore all the signs of a full-scale disaster. Panditji took his time to find his sur. When he began, his voice was so hoarse and shaky one couldn't discern any notes at all. I'm an avid fan of Panditji's, but have never really warmed to his interpretation of certain Ragas like Shuddha Kalyan. And I was dreading he'd present just that. Certainly, the singing gave us no clue. For the first three minutes I couldn't make out anything of the raga, except that the rishabha seemed a bit flat for Kalyan. After a while, the contours of Pooriya began to emerge. Then without warning, he paused abruptly on the pancham, and began "aaj so bana" in Pooriya Kalyan. All was revealed!

It took him about ten minutes to fully warm up. But once he did he was roaring like a lion just the way he used to twenty years ago. Vintage Bhimsen every inch. His heavy gamak taans were right there in place, as were all his old tricks, pukars, surprisingly accurate laykari (except for a few miscueings), voice modulations etc. But what really moved all of us in the audience was that he took just as much pleasure in his singing as he did in his prime.

His age showed only rarely, such as when he mistimed the 'sam' a couple of times. Anand Gopal Bandyopadhyaya on the tabla was very understanding, and skillfully covered up such rare lapses.

The Khayal was followed by a Dadra in Mishra Gara, and then "Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada" in Bhairavi. I say 'Followed', because it was almost the literal truth. He would finish one item, take exactly one long breath, a pause of about fifteen seconds, and proceed to the next one. In a man one-third his age, such a commanding display would have been commendable. At his age and health it was nothing short of a tour de force.

[Continued in Part III]

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - I

2009-07-12T02:29:00.010+05:30

This post has a long, varied history. It began life as an e-mail to a friend. Then, at his suggestion, I posted it to RMIC. Then years later, I was involved with setting up two separate blogs on music. One was of course this one, envisaged as a collective effort. The other was a solo deal called "Aavartan". I had originally posted it in the latter. But that venture turned out to be a bit of a non-starter. So I suppose reposting the article here is only a natural thing to do.

First, some mild self-aggrandisement. My biography of Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, published by Rupa & Co, came out round the beginning of 2004. The reason I mention it is that it has everything to do with the events narrated below. In the course of writing it, I had interviewed Mr. Amar Mishra (who incidentally passed away a couple of months ago). He was instrumental in setting up the ITC Sangeet Research Academy, and was also a close personal friend of Panditji. When I heard that Bhimsen was scheduled to sing at the ITC Sammelan in New Delhi this year, I contacted Mr. Mishra to find out if I could get to meet him.

Anyway, on the day of the recital, he and I made our way to the green room. Panditji arrived a few minutes later, a frail, shrivelled man with a woollen cap on his head and an air of extreme dejection and bewilderment about him. He was shunted onto a wheelchair and pushed into the green room. Mr. Mishra was busy talking to his other acquaintances, so I went inside, introduced myself to Sh. Srinivas Joshi, Panditji's son, and showed him a copy of the book. His interest grew when he saw the Rupa label, then he passed it on to his father. I asked him if Panditji could autograph my copy, but he declined, saying his father suffered from weakness in the limbs.

That is when Mr. Mishra came in, and introduced me to Panditji. The conversation turned back to the book for a little while. As we were taking our leave, I once again asked Srinivasji if an autograph was absloutely out of the question. He told me to accompany Mr. Mishra the next day (he'd been given an appointment earlier), because if Panditji signed one autograph, others would immediately pile on.

[Continued in Part II]

DSS Blog Revived!

2009-07-10T22:38:00.017+05:30

We're back! For upwards of six months this blog was shamefully neglected as we grappled with professional and other more urgent concerns. This neglect was especially criminal because of the excellent initial response it had elicited (I suspect this enthusiasm was reflective not so much of the quality of our output - Kalyanda's posts excluded! - as of a deeply felt need for this sort of an endeavour). Hopefully all that will change, and we will upload frequently and regularly just as we did six months ago. Already we have several interesting articles in the pipeline. But more on that later.

One cause of this hiatus was purely technical in nature. The blog desperately needed a redesign. And when I say 'needed' I mean just that. Aesthetics apart, certain key features had stopped functioning altogether, which made the blog much more difficult to read. In particular, we had used a Javascript-based template hack from Hackosphere for our expandibility feature. This is the feature that initially displays only a paragraph or two of each post, and expands to show the complete post when a link is clicked. Very useful, results in compact, organised homepages, but one day I noticed the damn posts just wouldn't expand! And just DSS's, but also of all the other blogs where I had added this tweak.

It transpires that the hack was functionally dependent on some code uploaded in the developer's website, which had got hacked in the interim. Though Hackosphere does offer a workaround, I felt getting rid of the javascript would be perferable. Fortunately, Beautiful Beta offers just that, i.e. a CSS-based expandibility tweak. But then again, removing the old script and then adding the new was too much trouble. Much simpler to start from scratch.

Secondly, the old design was dated. At 800 pixels it was wider than most Blogger default templates. But even then it did not look so good, especially at today's resolutions. Aesthetically also, the design needed loads of reworking. And lastly, there was the question of the menubar. Beautiful Beta offers an elegant method for adding a menubar just above the posts. While adding this to my food blog, I managed to modify it so that it was integrated with the masthead. Of course, adding this feature to the DSS blog made sense. So all these factors combined meant a comprehensive redesign, aesthetic as well as technical.

Starting from scratch might have been the obvious solution, but it called for considerable investments of time and effort. And yet without this redesign there was no point adding new posts, given the blog's dysfunctional features. Which is why we kept dithering over the issue. Fortunately, when I did start work, there were enough people to chip in. Arnab did the photography. Arijit Mahalanabis and Angshuman Das gave very useful suggestions.

So finally here it is - the revamped blog. Bells and whistles working once again and, I feel, better looking too in the bargain. In fact, thanks to the new CSS-based expandibility and especially the menubar, it looks and functions like a Wordpress blog more than anything else! And yet it bears its own fully customised look, feel and identity, which we cannot have with Wordpress.

Incidentally, that is why my vote in the Blogger v. Wordpress debate goes to the first. Agreed, Blogger default templates are primitive, ugly, and offer only a fraction of Wordpress's features. On the other hand, it does offer fully customisable templates. Which means you can add third-party hacks and tweaks, and thereby get almost all the features that make Wordpress so great. Moreover and most importantly, since Blogger templates are fully customisable, you can craft a unique look and feel for your blog. Wordpress permits template hacks only for paid accounts, so in the free version you are stuck with default templates. I know it's the fashion for computer-geeks to ridicule Blogger's crude features and looks in comparison to Wordpress's. But to my mind at least, it is the precise opposites that rings more true. I tend to think of Wordpress as analogous to Windows: easier to use and snazzier looking off the shelf, but offering only limited customisability. You want more tweaks, you pay for it. On the other hands, Blogger reminds me of a Linux distro. Initially much less user-friendly, but in fact more flexible, and thus much more rewarding to the experienced user.

Of course, these tech issues are beside the point. What really matters is that the redesign has restored the blog's functionality. All the tweaks work just fine. And we have also added a few new features, such as the menubar and the contents page (still being worked on), which makes navigation easier. So now that we have restored and further enhanced the blog's readability, adding new posts has become worthwhile again. And there are several new posts in the pipeline. Vivekanand, regular contributor to the DSS Orkut comm and now RMIC as well, has promised a write-up about Tanpura training. I myself plan to write rejoinders to several DSS and RMIC debates, also post here stuff originally written a long time ago for other fora. The best news: I believe Kalyanda's writing down his recollections of Ali Akbar Khan. I am not sure if it is true, or whether it will be completed soon, or whether once it's completed he will consent to us publishing it here. At this stage we can only wait and hope. For sure, this is something to look forward to!

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - III

2008-12-22T16:46:00.016+05:30

[Continued from Part II]

7. Khayal and Tarana

The word ‘khayal’ literally means ‘thought’ or ‘imagination’. Ejaz-e-Khusravi contains several references to this term. However, little inference can be made as to how such Khayals were performed in that era. Certainly, it cannot bear a close resemblance to today’s iteration. The noted Persian scholar Shahab Sarmadee has put forward the conjecture that Khusro used the term in a more general sense, that is to say, in its literal meaning rather than as a reference to a musical form. (quoted in Miner 1993: 19) Others have speculated that in Khusro’s time Khayals and Qawwalis used to be sung together, and only later did Khayals acquire the status of classical music.

Nevertheless, several musicians sing Khayal compositions whose words as well as music they attribute to Khusro. A prominent example is 'Piya Navelara Paya', a composition in Raga Poorvi.

Amir Khusro’s putative associations with the Tarana run much deeper. One of the most persistent legends of Hindustani music relates to the encounter between Amir Khusro, who was then associated with the court of emperor Allauddin Khilji, and Gopal Nayak, court-musician to the king of Devagiri. Allauddin commanded Gopal Nayak to present the Raga Kadambak for six evenings running. During the entire performance, Khusro lay concealed under the emperor’s throne, and stealthily absorbed all that the Nayak had sung. On the seventh day, he astonished everyone present in the court by reproducing all that Gopal Nayak had presented. However, since he couldn’t follow the Nayak’s language, he substituted the text of the compositions with meaningless syllables. And that is how the Tarana was born! (Willard 1834: 121)

Modern scholars, however, are quick to dismiss this story as an urban legend. One reason for this is that the Raga Kadambak is such a complex composition that assimilating its intricacies merely by listening is virtually impossible. (Mishra 1990: 16-17) At the same time, especially given the significance of such apparently meaningless syllables to Sufi practices, and given also the structure of the Qaul and the Qalbana, we may safely contend that Khusro did indeed play a significant role in the ultimate emergence of the Tarana as we know it.

8. Khusro's Influence on Contemporary Musicians

The last eight hundred years have done much to erode Amir Khusro’s contributions to music. This is so much so that today we have no way of distinguishing his own work from later interpolations in his name. Hence, unlike in the field of literature, for instance, as a musician Khusro continues to remain an indistinct, even legendary figure.

Nevertheless, throughout these years, he has been a source of inspiration to musicians. Many have attributed their own creations to him. Some have sought to revive obscure Ragas traditionally ascribed to him. Then again, the manner in which people have sought to incorporate his poetry into contemporary musical forms makes for a fascinating study.

The composition Hazrat Khwaja Sang Kheliye Dhamaal is a classic example. For centuries, Qawwali and Khayal exponents have presented this in their own respective styles. Traditionally, it is associated with Raga Bahar.

Rubaaidar Taranas are a special type of Tarana, where the second stanza incorporates a Persian couplet or quatrain instead of the usual mystical syllables. Some feature a few lines of Urdu, Hindi or even Sanskrit. Many musicians of the present era, notably Ustad Amir Khan, have used Khusro’s Persian poetry for their Rubaaidar Taranas.

Consider the Ghazal ‘Khabaram Raseeda Imshab, Ke Nigaar Khwaahi Aamad’. Within it, we find this quatrain:

Ba labam raseeda jaanam / Tu biya ke zinda maanam
Pas azaan ke man na maanam / Ba chekaar khwaahi aamad

(My life hangs on my lips, come so that I may live again
For if you arrive after I am dead, your coming shall be pointless.)

Several clips exist of this composition presented as a Qawwali. First, a rendition by Javed Taufiq Niazi Qawwal, who presents it set to Raga Bageshree (the quatrain occurs at around 4.15).
- Javed Taufiq Niazi: Khabaram Raseeda Imshab

Similarly, Ghouse Muhammad Nasir of Pakistan, who derives his musical lineage from the Atrauli Gharana of Alladiya Khan (quatrain at 5.48).
- Ghouse Muhammad Nasir: Khabaram Raseeda Imshab

Ghazal singers, now. First, the great Mehdi Hassan (quatrain: 5.01):
- Mehdi Hassan: Khabaram Raseeda Imshab

The much younger Massoud Wafa and Zaaher Hovaydaa present the same composition in a contemporary, upbeat style (strangely, both seem to have omitted the quatrain):
- Massoud Wafa: Khabaram Raseeda Imshab
- Zaaher Hovaydaa : Khabaram Raseeda Imshab

We have already seen how Ustad Amir Khan incorporated the quatrain within his own Tarana in Raga Darbari. The following is a link to the rest of his rendition:
- Amir Khan: Darbari (contd.)

Others have sung this composition. Here we have Ustad Mohammad Hussain Sarahang of Afghanistan, who studied under Ashiq Ali Khan of Patiala. Look out for the quatrain at 3.28:
- Mohammad Hussain Sarahang: Darbari

This beautifully demonstrates the manner in which the same lyric has been interpreted in so many different manners, indeed genres. It also illustrates how Amir Khusro has influenced creativity cutting across stylistic lines.

Ustad Amir Khan has used several other quatrains of Khusro’s in his Tarana compositions. The following composition in Chandrakauns is one of his most beautiful. It is sourced from Patrick Moutal's page on Hindustani Music.
- Amir Khan: Chandrakauns

It features the quatrain Khansahib mentions in his 1956 article:

Su-e Man Aa Ki Tura / Yar-e-wafadar manum.
Har Cheh Dari 8aman awar / Ki Kharidar manum.

(Come to me O love, for I love thee true.
To achieve thee is my aim, no matter what be the price.)

9. Bibliography

‘Early Sufis in the Chishti Order’, available online at: http://www.chishti.ru/order_of_sufis.htm.
‘Khwaja Gharib Nawaz’, available online at: http://www.chishti.ru/o_gharib_nawaz.htm.
‘Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishti’, available online at: http://www.chishti.ru/order_of_sufis.htm.
Anwar, Khwaja Khurshid (1976) A Gift to Posterity, (originally published in The Pakistan Times), available online at: http://films.hindi-movies-songs.com/a-gift-to-pro.html
Baba, Gudri Shah, ‘Hazrat Nizamuddin Awlia, r.a.’, available online at: http://muslim-canada.org/nizamuddin.pdf
Bhatkhande, VN (1990 reprint) Leading Music Sytems of the 15th, 16th, 17th, & 18th Centuries, Delhi.
Das, RK (2004) Ameer Khusro – the Great Indian, Delhi.
Khan, Amir (1966) ‘The Tarana Style of Singing’, available online at: http://caferisko.ca/ak/tarana.html
Miner, Allyn (1993) Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Delhi.
Mishra, Susheela (1990) Some Immortals of Hindustani Music, Delhi.
Saeed, Yousuf (2001) 'Excerpts from Khusrau's Persian Poetry', available online at: http://www.alif-india.com/love.html
Saeed, Yousuf (2001) 'Some Anecdotes from Amir Khusrau's Life', available online at: http://www.alif-india.com/legend.html
Saeed, Yousuf (2001) 'Some Qawwalies and Folk Songs of Khusrau Tradition', available online at: http://www.alif-india.com/lyrics.html
Willard, NA (1834) A Treatise on the Music of Hindoostan, Calcutta.

[Concluded]

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - II

2008-12-21T06:46:00.009+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

4. Khusro and Music Theory

Just as Amir Khusro was born at a decisive juncture of history, so did his music lead to a decisive phase in the development of North Indian music. Historically, the evolution of this art form has been characterised by deviance from traditionally acknowledged principles. For example, the great scholar Sarangadeva, writing just prior to Amir Khusro’s birth, commented that the music of Bharata and Matanga had become extinct.

Similarly, it seems that by Amir Khusro’s time, Sarangadeva’s precepts themselves started losing relevance. One controversial issue was his division of the octave into 22 shrutis or microtones. This was compounded by the fact that he took as the fundamental note of the octave not the first but the fourth microtone, referred to as chhandovati. (Willard 1834: 43) Such an arrangement produces a musical mode or scale featuring flattened third and seventh notes, corresponding to the present-day Kafi thaat. (Bhatkhande 1990: 28)

Amir Khusro realised that this convention was outmoded. Accordingly, he adopted as the fundamental note of the object the first shruti, called teevraa. This yielded a scale comprising seven natural notes, which is familiar to us as the natural scale or the Bilawal that. According to many, musicians in the South continued to follow Sarangadeva’s system, which led the northern and southern streams of music to gradually diverge and coalesce into self-contained musical systems in their own right. Therefore, it seems Amir Khusro’s innovations have played a critical role in shaping Hindustani music into what it is today.

5. Khusro and the Origins of Ragas

Khusro is also regarded by many scholars as the creator of Raga Sarparda, or Sarparda Bilawal as it is now known. A characteristic feature of this Raga is that it uses only the seven notes of the natural scale. This lends credence to the belief that the practice of using the natural scale began with him.

Apart from Sarparda mentioned already, Khusro is popularly credited with having devised Ragas like Yaman, Zeelaf, Sazgiri, and so on. He himself mentions in his magnum opus Ejaz-e-Khusravi several names like Hijaj, Jangula, Sarparda, Ghaaraa, Mujeer, Eman (Yaman), Farodast Waakhrez, Farghanaa and Husaini. (Das 2004: 213) Interestingly, he himself does not claim credit for their creation, and instead modestly states that they already existed in Indo-Iranian music.

Nevertheless, subsequent scholars consider Khusro to be the creator of a number of them. They point out that the Ragas mentioned are actually blends of existing Indian and Persian melodies. Yaman, for example, is an amalgam of the Indian Hindol (as it existed then) and the Persian Nairez or Nairiz. Similarly, Saazgiri comprises the ancient Indian forms of Purbi, Vibhaas, Gaud and Gunkali along with the Persian Ahang. (Ibid.)

Of these, only Yaman remains popular in today’s day and age. Sarparda is performed only by members of selected Gharanas. Hijaj and Zeelaf are performed only very rarely. Saazgiri is even more obscure. Others like Farghanaa and Farodast Waakhrez have disappeared altogether.

6. The Qawwali

The origins of this musical form are shrouded in obscurity. Some scholars maintain that many forms of Qawwali existed much before Khusro’s time. At the same time, there is little doubt that he played a seminal role in propagating and popularising Qawwali. Many compositions of Amir Khusro remain as popular today as they were in his own time.

However, Khusro’s contribution to Qawwali is so extensive that it deserves a separate study in its own right. Here, we shall confine ourselves to the impact of this form of music on classical music.

Amir Khusro is said to have created six forms of music, namely Qaul, Qalbana, Khayal, Tarana, Naqsh, and Gul. The last two have lapsed into obscurity. On the other hand, the Qaul remains ever popular. Many consider it obligatory to begin a Qawwali recital with a Qaul. There are some who believe that Amir Khusro did not exactly create this form, and that it had been incorporated into Sufi traditions much before Khusro’s birth.

In essence, the Qaul comprises of a Hadith (saying) of Prophet Mohammed, to which are appended certain apparently meaningless syllables such as nom, tom, yalali, yalala, ta na na and so on, which are today identified with the Tarana form. These syllables actually carry considerable mystical significance, and are used by Sufis as incantations to be repeated over and over.

In the cotton-carding-inspired poem, we saw the same semantically significant words repeated over and over in such a way that all syntactic meaning is lost. The vocalist Ustad Amir Khan has contended in many places, including his seminal 1966 article, that Tarana syllables originally did hold semantic significance, in that they are actually corrupted forms of Persian and Arabic words. Over time and rapturous repetition, however, they were corrupted in a way that obscured their meaning.

This clip of his Darbari features at 1.31 a verbal interjection where he expounds upon his views on the Tarana. He also explains the meaning of his own composition 'Yar-e-Man Biya Biya', to which we shall refer later.
- Amir Khan: Darbari

The Qaul ‘Man Kunto Maula’ attributed to Amir Khusro is by far the most popularly sung. Its lyrics are:

Man kunto maula,
Fa Ali-un maula

Dara dil-e dara dil-e dar-e daani
Hum tum tanana nana, nana nana ray
Yalali yalali yala, yalale
Yalalala yalalala lalalala le

The meaning of the first two lines, a saying of Prophet Mohammed, is as follows: ‘Whoever accepts me as a master, Ali is his master too.’ It is followed by the mystical syllables discussed above. A wonderful rendition by Ustad Jafar Hussain Khan Badayuni can be accessed from Youtube.
- Jafar Hussain Khan Badayuni: Man Kunto Maula

The Qalbana is now performed much less frequently. In fact, it has faded out of public memory to such an extent that its very characteristics and contours are a source of controversy. A rare example available online, performed by Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan of the Delhi Gharana and accessed from Yousuf Saeed's site on Amir Khusro, offers some clues as to its musical structure.
- Iqbal Ahmed Khan: Qalbana

Structurally it is not unlike what is called a Rubaidar Tarana. Its first stanza, the Sthayi, consists of mystical syllables, the next (or Antara) incorporates a Persian couplet. An important distinction is that it makes use of several different Talas. The present example, for instance, begins in Firodast, changes to Ektala, Jhaptala, Teentala, and then returns to Firodast.

[Continued in Part III]

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - I

2008-12-20T05:14:00.006+05:30

Amir Khusro and his Influence on Indian Classical Music

- Abhik Majumdar

[This piece started life more than three years ago, as a script for a proposed documentary. To my chagrin, the project was shelved just as I completed the draft, having put in much time and effort. I had largely forgotten about it all this while. Thanks are due to Leher Zaidi for reminding me of it in the course of a chat on sufism, and also for prodding me to post it. I do so here after refurbishing and recasting it in the form of an article.]

1. Introduction

Hazrat Amir Khusro was born in AD 1253 and died in AD 1325. In these 72 years, he made seminal contributions as a philosopher, mystic, scientist, historian, diplomat, tactician, and above all, as a poet and musician. Much of this is either lost or remain only in manuscripts confined to library shelves. His poetry and music, however, have spawned not one but several living traditions that flourish to this day.

In respect of music, Amir Khusro is today credited with a bewildering number of inventions and innovations. According to many, he created musical instruments like the Sitar and the Tabla, composed new Ragas like Yaman and Zeelaf and Talas like Chakka and Soolfakhta, and created musical forms such as the Qawwali, the Khayal, and the Tarana.

2. The Chishtiyya Sufi Order

The Chishtiyya order began around the 10th century AD. The story goes that Abu Ishaq Shami, a native of Syria, once met a Sufi mendicant who directed him to settle in Chisht, a small town near Herat in Afghanistan. From then on, he became known as Khwaja Abu Ishaq Shami Chishti, and it is from him that the Chishtiyya order is derived. Khwaja Abu Ishaq died in AD 940.

Ultimately, the order reached India through the efforts of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, popularly known as Gharib Nawaz, or 'protector of the poor'. Born in AD 1138-39 in Sajistan, Iran, he took to mysticism early in his life. Legend has it that once, whjen he was in a trance, he felt the Prophet Mohammed himself ordering him to settle down in Ajmer, which he did in 1190. The Chishti order thus took roots in India, and continues to flourish to the present day. It boasts some of the most exalted Sufi mystics of all times, including Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Khwaja Fariduddin Ganj-e-Shakar of Ajodhan (the present-day Pak Pattan in Pakistan), and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, the mentor of Amir Khusro.

Hazrat Nizamuddin was born in AD 1238 in Badayun, a town near Delhi. In his early years he aspired to become a qazi. A chance meeting with a musician led to his hearing for the first time the name Khwaja Fariduddin, for whom he developed an inexplicable reverence. In his eighteenth year he went to Delhi and met Khwaja Fariduddin’s brother Sheikh Najibuddin Mutawakkil. One day Nizamuddin asked the Sheikh to pray so that he may become a qazi. The Sheikh remained silent. On Nizamuddin’s repeating the request, he said, ‘God forbid that you become a qazi; be something else!’ Shortly afterwards, the call of a muezzin awakened something in him. He promptly set off for Ajodhan, without even taking any food with him.

At Ajodhan, Khwaja Fariduddin had already received a premonition of Nizamuddin’s arrival. He readily accepted Nizamuddin as his disclple, and eventually made him his successor as the khalifa (head) of the Chishtiyya order. Hazrat Nizamuddin then went back to Delhi and, on divine inspiration, set up a khanqah (or monastery) at nearby village called Ghiyaspur. He gained renown for his piety, learning and wisdom, matched with an overwhelming compassion for the poor. In this compassion he was stubbornly resolute, which earned him the wrath of emperor Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq himself. The emperor even threatened to destroy Hazrat Nizamuddin’s monastery when he returned to Delhi from a campaign. The saint is said to have merely murmured ‘Dilli door ast’ (Delhi is far away). Sure enough, before the emperor could reach Delhi, a canopy collapsed and killed him. In the same year AD 1325, Hazrat Nizamuddin also died.

It is beyond dispute that Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia made seminal contributions to the establishment of Sufism in India. This school of thought quickly attracted followers, since people perceived it as a relief from the strict rigidity preached by the Hindu and Islamic orthodoxy. Indeed, the Sufi tradition in India represents a confluence of the best that either religion has to offer, and due to its syncretistic and non-prejudiced outlook, it has been instrumental in promoting harmony between the Hindu and Muslim communities.

The fundamental beliefs of Sufism concern love as a path to spiritual salvation. It lays great stress on ishq-e-majaazi (temporal or erotic love), as a means to ishq-e-haqiqi, or divine love. Inevitably, adherents of Sufism have written some of the finest love poetry ever. Sufis also emphasise the notion of dikr (or zikr), which literally means ‘reference’ or ‘remembrance’. This entails invocation or contemplation of the divine.

Different sects adopted different methods of dikr. Unlike the Suhrawardi and the Qadri, which found music objectionable, the Chishti and a few other orders laid emphasis on samaa, that is, dikr through ecstatic singing, dancing and so on. It is from this spiritual context that Amir Khusro’s monumental contribution to literature and music emerged.

3. Amir Khusro's Life

Amir Khusro’s father was an immigrant from Turkey, forced to flee his home due to repeated Mongol invasions. He settled down in Delhi and soon acquired a position of prominence. He married the daughter of Imaad ul Mulk, an Indian by birth and a nobleman in the court of emperor Ghiyasuddin Balban.

Khusro’s Indian ancestry exposed him to the greatness of Indian culture, especially its music, for which he developed a special liking. He was never an attentive student, but discovered an abiding love for poetry at a very early age. This, coupled with his equally strong spiritual inclinations, led him to Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia at the tender age of eight.

There exists a legend that he was initially reluctant to go to the saint’s khanqah, and his mother had to literally force him to accompany her there. When they reached, he refused to enter the monastery, and instead, remained standing outside its gates. He then composed in his head the following lines:

Tu aan shahi ke ber aiwan-e qasrat
Kabutar gar nasheenad, baaz gardad
Ghareeb-e mustamand-e ber der aamed
Be-yaayad andaroon, ya baaz gardad

(You are a king at the gate of whose palace
Even a pigeon becomes a hawk.
A poor traveller has come to your gate
Should he enter, or should he return?)

Hazrat Nizamuddin, sitting inside the khanqah, read the thoughts in Khusro’s mind. He immediately dispatched a servant to read out to the young boy standing by the gates the following:

Be-yaayad andaroon mard-e-haqeeqat
Ke ba ma yek nafas hamraaz gardad
Agar abla buvad aan mard-e naadan
Azaan raah-e ke aamad baaz gardad

(O man of reality, come inside
So you become for a while my confidant
But if the one who enters is foolish
Then he should return the way he came)

Khusro was so impressed that he decided forthwith that he had found his spiritual guide.

Over time the love between mentor and disciple grew to such sublime proportions, Nizamuddin even declared that had his religion permitted it, he would have wished for Khusro and himself to be buried in the same grave.

This bond between them also formed the inspiration behind the finest of Khusro’s poetry. Written in both Persian and Hindavi (the tongue spoken by Indians in and around Delhi), his works speak of his erotic love for his mentor, through which rapturous state he sought to access the divine. Indeed, rapture is the fundamental characteristic of his poetry. Once, he chanced upon a dhunia (cotton carder) at work. The rhythmic twanging and buzzing of the carding instrument led him to compose:

Darpai-jana jaanhum raft, jaanhum raft, jaanhum raft. Raft raft jaanhum raft, aihum raft-o aanhum raft, aanhum raft, aanhum raft Aihum aanhum, aihum aanhum aanhum raft, raftan raftan raftan dah . . .

The words make little sense literally, but the repetition of the same words over and over, coupled with the strong underlying rhythm, heightens and reinforces the sense of ecstasy that is the objective of Sufi worship. According to some, this ecstatic repetition is what coalesced into the tarana form of classical music.

Amir Khusro was also an astute politician and tactician. He served no less than eleven kinds spanning three important dynasties. Clearly, his diplomatic skills were of a very high order, for he managed to remain in royal favour even in such turbulent times.

Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia died in 1325 at the age of 95. Khusro was in Awadh at that time. When he came to know of his mentor’s demise, he was inconsolable and declared he would not live long either. Within a few months his prediction came true, and a still grief-stricken Amir Khusro joined his master in the other world.

[Continued in Part II]

Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

2008-11-28T10:37:00.008+05:30

Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

- Abhik Majumdar

[This article was originally written for the Pragoti website, and first appeared here.]

1. Introduction

Awarding vocalist Bhimsen Joshi the Bharat Ratna is surely a welcome step. It has been uniformly welcomed by the music fraternity, the media, and of course the public at large. About the only question raised is whether it has not been too long overdue. The 86-year-old maestro is in very weak health (though according to sources close to him, he intends to perform at this year’s Sawai Gandharva Festival in December). Conferring accolades at this late stage in life, when one is too old and infirm to appreciate in due form, does seem rather pointless.

Certainly this year’s conferment did not evoke the kind of ugly controversy it did back in 1999, when Sitar exponent Ravi Shankar was accorded the honour. Vocalist Jasraj publicly questioned its appropriateness. According to him, some time earlier Shankar had contemplated settling abroad which, in Jasraj’s view, rendered suspect his loyalty to the nation. He went on to suggest Lata Mangeshkar was a more deserving candidate, and also asserted conferment of these awards was the result of hectic lobbying rather than the intrinsic merit of the candidates.

Ravi Shankar’s reaction was predictably one of shock and disgust. More interestingly, Mangeshkar herself joined Kishori Amonkar in dismissing outright Jasraj’s suggestion. She welcomed the decision to award Ravi Shankar, and even said this should have been done long ago. The pitch was queered still further when guitar exponent Vishwa Mohan Bhatt first criticised Jasraj for not taking up his (Bhatt's) case, and then alleged that a Delhi-based music mafia, comprising the likes of Amjad Ali Khan and Zakir Hussain (who for the record is Mumbai-based), was monopolising the music world.

Allegations of this sort are common to most prizes and accolades, not just our National Awards. Dwelling on how true or valid they are is not likely to lead us anywhere much. Given the paucity of confirmed facts available to us, we can only speculate and hypothesise. Instead, here I seek to examine another aspect of this system of awards.

Though our government spent much time and effort in initiatives to sustain our culture, they rank among our more conspicuous failures. Egregious handling by state bodies actually served to lessen the relevance of these tradition in popular perception. And moreover, they also bred a culture of nepotism and claques or "lobbies".

Our National Awards sit oddly within this unwieldly framework. Looking at the Padma awards doled out to musicians in the last fifty-odd years, it is difficult to determine what underlying purpose, if at all any, determined their conferment. And now forty-four years after the awards were instituted, the government seems to have suddenly woken up to the possibility of awarding musicians the Bharat Ratna!

This article examines these developments in the context of the Hindustani classical music tradition of northern India. In particular it addresses questions like whether the awards were intended towards any discernible purpose, and how successful they have been in giving effect to that purpose. It also looks at recent trends where conferment of first the Padma Vibhushan and now the Bhart Ratna on musicians has become customary.

2. Antecedents of National Awards

Article 18 (1) of the Indian Constitution prohibits the State from conferring titles that are not military or academic distinctions. Several reasons exist why this provision was incorporated into the Constitution. One is surely the feudal origins of hereditary titles – this was the time when dismantling Zamindari and other feudal systems of landholding was accorded some priority. In any case, both when our National Awards were instituted in 1945 and in the Supreme Court judgment Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India, it was emphasised that these awards were not in the nature of titles.

It is another matter that very soon after the National Awards were instituted in 1954, recepients began to use them in the manner of titles. So much so that in 1968, a note had to be circulated asking recepients to stop prefixing or suffixing these awards to their names, or mentioning them on letterheads, invitation cards and so on.

Such misuse was perhaps inevitable. Notwithstanding the government’s strenuous assertions to the contrary, the National Awards scheme did bear startling resemblances with British chivalric orders. For example, most such orders have three classes of membership. The Order of the Bath, used to decorate senior civil servants and military officers, comprises the following categories: Knight Grand Cross (GCB), Knight Commander (KCB), and Companion (CB). Similarly our National Awards: the Padma Vibhushan, the Padma Bhushan, and the Padma Shri.

Another resemblance involves the disproportionate representation given to civil servants. As the British television series Yes Minister lampoons it so memorably: "Did you know, twenty percent of all honours go to civil servants? . . . The rest of the population has to do something extra to get an honour, something special. They work for twenty-seven years with mentally handicapped children, six nights a week, to get an MBE. Your knighthoods simply come up with the rations."

So it is with our National Awards. Even the 1954 notification states the Padma Awards are intended to recognise varying levels of service " . . . in any field including service rendered by Govt. [sic] servants." (italics mine) Predictably, civil servants, and also politicians and military officers, proceeded to collar the lion’s share of Awards, that too as a matter of routine - "with the rations", as it were.

This is not to suggest representatives of other walks of life were relegated to an afterthought. Right from the inception of the inception of these awards, academics, artists and sportspersons among others were counted among the recepients. The 1954 Padma Vibhushan awardees, for example, comprised four public figures (Zakir Hussain, BG Kher, VK Krishna Menon and King Jigme Dorje Wangchuk of Bhutan), the physicist Satyen Bose, and the painter Nandalal Bose.

The actual malaise lay at a deeper level. With the Indian bureaucracy being as opaque as it was and still is, determining "distingushed service" became a hush-hush affair, largely shielded from public scrutiny. What may euphemistically be termed "subjective considerations" began to play an increasingly significant role in this process.

It did not take long for this opaque (and frequently subjective) method of assessment to extend to other areas such as music, our main topic. However, this has to be appreciated in the light of another consideration, namely our government’s post-independence endeavours in sustaining our musical traditions.

3. Government as Patron of Music

Classical music flourished in northern India largely due to the patronage extended to it and its practitioners by the feudal aristocracy. Independence in 1947 brought in its wake phenomena such as the merging of the princely states and the abolition of Zamindari, which in turn dismantled the srtructure of patronage that our musicians depended upon.

The state sought to step into the breach, rather ham-handedly. It did so through several schemes and institutions. Bodies like the Sangeet Natak Akademi sought to stimulate research and performance in music, dance and the dramatic arts. Universities and schools of music imparted musical education in an organised, systematic manner, in marked contrast to older traditions of pedagogy which depended entirely on the idiosyncrasies of the mentor. Most importantly, state-controlled media like radio regularly and systematically commissioned classical music recitals.

There is a reason why I used the words "systematic" and "systematically" in close succession in the previous paragraph. This is actually where the weakness of these initiatives lay – they were simply too systematic or, to be precise, too formalist in their approach.

The radio introduced a system where all artistes were to be graded according to their competence. "Audition boards" have become power-centres in their own right. Even in their early days, their methods were frequently questionable. They persisted in asking theory-oriented questions to traditional musicians. This when traditional pedagogic systems valued experiental understanding and demonstration, and rejected theory for its own sake as sterile and abstract. In later years the system deteriorated beyond all recognition, as the professionalism of the early years gave way to bureaucratisation, and then the consolidation of vested interests. Even if one discounts this latter-day degeneration, questions have been raised whether the formalism inherent to the gradation scheme was at all appropriate to a musical tradition that valued received knowledge and extempore improvisation over formal study.

This formalism has proved the downfall of other initiatives as well. Universities and music schools emphasised completion of syllabi and curricula at the cost of ensuring proper assimilation of imparted knowledge. As a result, students became familiar with only the superficialities of musical concepts, and gained no insights into what they actually meant, or how they were to be developed further.

A favourite anecdote of mine involves a friend who once sat in some sort of a selection committee. One candidate claimed she had cleared the sixth-year examinations in music. My friend commented she must have studied Poorvi and Pooriya Dhanashri (two Ragas that share certain strong structural similarities); the candidate replied yes, she had. So my friend asked her to explain the difference between them. After a long, agonised pause she ventured the following: "The only difference I can recall is that Pooriya Dhanashri is in the fourth-year syllabus, and Poorvi is a fifth-year Raga."

4. National Awards and Hindustani Music

One would have expected the conferment of National Awards to be rigidly controlled along formalistic and bureaucratic lines. However, a cursory perusal of the awards lists suggests just the contrary. Over the years there have regularly occurred some strange conferments, and some even more explicable omissions.

In the initial years, the awards were conferred along somewhat regularised lines. Leading musicians of the day were given the Padma Bhushan, and others the Padma Shri. In 1957, Mushtaq Hussain Khan and S N Ratanjankar became the first Hindustani musicians to be awarded the Padma Bhushan (M S Subbulakshmi had won it back in 1954). They were followed by the likes of Allauddin Khan (1958), Hafiz Ali Khan (1960), Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (1962), Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan (1967), Bismillah Khan (1968), Rahimuddin Dagar and Kesarbai Kerkar (1969), Ahmedjan Thirakwa and Hirabai Barodekar (1970), Amir Khan, Gangubai Hangal, Nissar Hussain Khan and “Master” Krishnarao Phulambrikar (1971), and Vinayakrao Patwardhan (1972) among others.

Despite the considerable cultural significance of the Dhrupad genre, its practitioners have so far been been either unlucky or unworthy of selection committes’ approbation. So far, four Dhrupadiyas have been awarded the Padma Bhushan – Rahimuddin Dagar (1969), Aminuddin Dagar (1976), Rahimuddin’s son Fahimuddin Dagar, and the Rudra Veena exponent Asad Ali Khan (both 2008). Inexplicably, maestroes Ram Chatur Mallick and Siyaram Tiwari were relegated to Padma Shri status (conferred in 1970 and 1971 respectively).

Ignored so far are the two brothers Zia Fariduddin and the late Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, who have contributed to music not only as top-notch performers but also pedagogues of extraordinary merit. They have freely given of their knowledge, produced several excellent disciples, and continue to run a gurukul in their own house and at their own expense. All this when Dhrupad exponents are generally notorious for being indifferent to students from outside their family.

Zia Mohiuddin Dagar is noted for his seminal contributions towards the near-extinct Rudra Veena. Asad Ali Khan (Padma Bhushan 2008) became the first practitioner of this rare instrument to receive a National Award. Other noted exponents include Shamsuddin Faridi, Bindu Madhav Pathak, Eknath Pandit and Dabir Khan among others. None of them have received even a Padma Shri so far.

Pakhawaj exponents have been similarly neglected. Ayodhya Prasad was given the Padma Shri in 1968, Purushottam Das in 1984, and Shankarrao Shinde Apegaonkar in 1986. Omissions include the late Raja Chhatrapati Singh, veteran Ram Ashish Pathak, and contemporary performers Manik Munde and Shrikant Mishra.

Even among practitioners of the mainstream Khayal genre, shocking omissions abound. These include vocalists Narayanrao Vyas, Vasantrao Deshpande, Vilayat Hussain Khan, his son Yunus Hussain Khan, Rajabhaiya Poochwale, his son Balasaheb Poochwale, Munawar Ali Khan, Gajananrao Joshi, and his disciple Ulhas Kashalkar (arguably the finest vocalist around today); Sarod exponent Radhika Mohan Maitra; and Sitar exponent Balaram Pathak. Vocalist Jitendra Abhisheki and Tabla maestro Allah Rakha were awarded only Padma Shris (in 1988 and 1977 respectively).

While S N Ratanjankar was one of the first recepients of the Padma Bhushan way back in 1957, his very able disciples have been ignored. K G Ginde and S C R Bhat dedicated their lives to the propagation of music. Apart from being excellent performers, they were also known for their immense scholarship. Dinkar Kaikini spent most of his life with All India Radio, and then as a preceptor with the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. The trio have not even a Padma Shri between them.

Indeed, those who dedicated themselves (and often sacrificed their performative careers) to the propagation of and research in music have generally fared very badly in the National Awards game. Sumati Mutatkar was given the Padma Shri in 1999, when she was 83. The much-venerated Thakur Jaidev Singh, Prem Lata Sharma, Vamanrao Deshpande, Lalmani Mishra (also a respected Vichitra Veena and Sitar exponent), B R Deodhar and Ramashreya Jha "Ramrang" have achieved not even that.

5. Awards and the Public Eye

On the other hand, let us look at who have prominently benefited from the awards system. Allauddin Khan was the first Hindustani musician to receive the Padma Vibhushan. Since then, he has been joined by fourteen more. While no major controversies have been created about their conferment, there have been some eyebrows raised now and then in musical circles. Vocalist Jasraj, flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia (both 2000), Sarod exponent Amjad Ali Khan, and Santoor exponent Shiv Kumar Sharma (both 2001) are renowned musicians, and the object of much veneration among laypersons and the cognoscenti alike. At the same time, they have also been accused of compromising their musical standards so as to enhancing their popular appeal.

[I personally believe that despite immense efforts made by its purveyors, the Santoor is inherently and severely constricted as a classical instrument. It allows for only abrupt, discrete transition betweeen notes, and is incapable of generating the meend (or glides, frequently mistranslated as glissando but actually closer to portamento in western musical terminology) so essential to our music.]

This is not to suggest that Padma Awards, or its upper echelons, have gone only to those who have courted the public eye. Among Padma Vibhushan awardees, Gangubai Hangal (2002) and Mallikarjun Mansur (1992) are highly respected in all quarters as both uncompromising musicians and exemplary human beings. The maverick genius Kumar Gandharva received it as long ago as 1990. Kishori Amonkar (2002) is well known also for her somewhat idiosyncratic behaviour, but nobody can accuse her of diluting her music. And then we have those who were subsequently awarded the Bharat Ratna, to whom we shall revert in a while.

Even the other awards have seen a few truly inspired decisions. Vocalist Khadim Hussain Khan, prodigiously learned as he was modest to a fault, was given the Padma Bhushan in 1982, and the reclusive Annapurna Devi in 1979. But surely these stray instances cannot outweigh the shabby treatment meted out to so many notable figures in the realm of our music.

6. Conclusion: Music and the Bharat Ratna

The list of musicians awarded the Bharat Ratna is set to increase for certain. Rumour has it that Kishori Amonkar, Mallikarjun Mansur, Sarod exponent Ali Akbar Khan, Carnatic vocalist M Balamuralikrishna and Odissi exponent the late Kelucharan Mohapatra are possible contenders. Days before the award to Bhimsen Joshi was officially announced, Jasraj went on record calling himself a recluse, a madman, and an arrogant, whimsical, foul-mouthed maverick (and thus presumably indifferent to awards and other recognition).

Nobody can say what the future holds, but so far the awarding of the Bharat Ratna has evoked largely positive responses. Even the controversy surrounding Ravi Shankar died a quick death as it became increasingly clear that the diatribe against him was not undiluted by personal motives.

Admittedly, he and also Lata Mangeshkar have not been entirely uncontroversial figures. Among other things, some have accused them of plotting to undermine their rivals’ careers. But such rumours should not, cannot detract from their immense contribution to music. Incidentally the other awardees, Bismillah Khan, M S Subbulakshmi, and of course Bhimsen Joshi, are recognised non-controversial figures who, once again, have made immense contributions to music.

One wonders how is it that the awards committe got it right so consistently. For that matter, why open up the Bharat Ratna to musicians all of a sudden in 1998, 44 years after it was instituted? It is nobody’s case (well, almost nobody’s case) that Ravi Shankar, Bismillah Khan or Bhimsen Joshi do not deserve the Bharat Ratna. But surely, can anyone argue the maestroes of yesteryear were any less deserving of the accolade?

Matters are made even more confusing if we keep in mind that (a) in the last fifty-odd years ghastliest lapses have been committed in respect of other awards, and (b) the government’s own efforts towards the betterment of music have been dismal flops. Or does it? To my mind, these two factors themselves suggest a possible solution.

At this time, the government’s credibility in respect of cultural interventions has sunk to an all-time low. Now, the best way to restore this tarnished credibility is surely through taking decisions that lie beyond reproach. Isn’t that just what the government doing here? It does look like a possible solution, but whether it is the right solution, or even a right solution, can only be speculated upon.

The Hoax of the Century - IV

2008-09-21T11:49:00.006+05:30

[Continued from Part III]

Q. “Gosh, is it really that bad?”

A. “Indeed, once you admit any art without meaning, you open the door to all kinds of aberrations. So you may have singers braying and bellowing, crooning and cackling, moaning and mumbling, shouting and threatening all because they had nothing to say.”

Q. “Now that you put it that way, the moaning of Gangubai Hangal becomes explicable. And she has won no less than 9 awards for her music!”

A. “That’s a matter for bemoaning our national brains. And I have not mentioned the gesticulations and the theatrics of singers such as Bhimsen Joshi or the grimaces of the tanbaji-wallahs. Have you noticed how these pseudo-Khyaliyas got worse and worse as they advanced in age? Faiyaz Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan were shouting hoarse during their latter recitals and Omkarnath Thakur had just descended to bathos during his last years. If all these were to have audience before Muhammed Shah of yore, they would have been despatched immediately to the world to which their music belonged.

In contrast consider the two genuine representatives of their respective music – the late Siddheswari Devi in North India and M.S. Subbalaxmi from the south. Their music attained a mellowness with their age because they were each on the right track to begin from the start. Such musicians were must have been the rule in the last centuries rather than the exception they are now.

No music can devolve only on its technicalities for too long. You may find on a fair examination that the Dhrupad and the Khyal and the Tappa are already extinct modes of Hindustani music. Thumri survives rather precariously in some of the Kathak schools of dancing and with a fast diminishing number of singers. It is the Ghazal that is now in the forefront.And Indian cinema music ceased to be ‘Indian’ quite some decades ago. Even the notes they employ now are not to be found in our musical scale (saptak).”

Q. “Do you any chance for a revival of North Indian classical vocal music?”

A. “Yes, when our Industrial-Commercial economy turns back to a handicrafts economy and when music may once again be regarded as a legitimate are rather than a drawing-room luxury, inflating the egos of the musicians. The restoration of the meaning and purpose is the first step in the revival of any art or civilisation. The present climate of our national life does not auger well for any cultural values, hell bent as we are in ‘catching up’ with the mechanically advanced countries, our ‘Festivals of India’ notwithstanding.

In such a climate the representatives of genuine art are in a minority and at a discount. One cannot hope to find the required patronage or the audience for genuine classical music, though curiously, it makes far less demands on one’s patience or tolerance than the counterfeit varieties. It is amazing how audiences throng to attend the most atrocious buffoonery in classical Hindustani music lured merely by ‘famous names’. It is the fear of the beautiful and the fascination for the grotesque that brings all the rewards for the hoaxes. Nor does any one have the patience and perseverance to cultivate a music like the Khyal which needs at 20 years of training before taking to the public platform. What you will see more and more will be the much publicised experiments of musicologists to amalgamate the music of the North and the South and the West and East too, so that no recognisable Indian music will be left any longer.

Once upon a time you could have seen a singer facing the Lord in a temple pouring out his song in devotion. You can now see the back of an Indian conductor before a group of mannequins drooling out what is supposed to be Indian music, sung in different keys! And this is supposed to be progressive modern music for you, instead of the stereotyped linear melodic devotional music of yesterday. Be that as it may. We have come a long way from what was once gandharva music with the ragas as deities.”

Q. “I see it all now, rather a sad situation. And what would you take to listen to an hour of Kumar Gandharva?”

A. “Say around Rs. 2000/-. But to witness the scene of Balakrishna drinking in the music of the blind Surdas, I would give my very life!”

[Concluded]

The Hoax of the Century - III

2008-09-20T11:23:00.005+05:30

[Continued from Part II]

Q. “What makes the Khyals of Sadarang so unique?”

A. “Because Sadarang (who was initially a beenkar in the court of Muhammad Shah (1719-48), by name Niyamat Khan) was a true reformer of vocal music, one who restored the essential form of Hindustani music from its decadent Dhrupad form of the time. In the compositions of Sadarang, you see the themes of Hindi love-poetry (which are anything but sensual), the whole heritage and dignity of Dhrupad, the fluency of the Hindi and Persian languages and the manner (paddhati) of the been in its glide or meend, plus a number of musical alankars that were introduced into the body of the composition.

One could make a life-long study of the compositions of Sadarang with respect to their musical form, how each alankar is exactly suited to the meaning of the word it embellishes. This was a music at once attractive and meaningful, as much in its original compositions (by Sadarang and his associates) as in its subsequent improvisations, like in the Thumri. No wonder that rasika Muhammad Shah was impressed, - impressed enough to accord royal status (darbar gayaki) to the Khyal immediately, without waiting for an ‘expert’s committee’. There are many more subtleties of the Khyal which one may observe from its authentic exponents rather than from the “reviews” of Hindustani music from newspaper critics.

Just ask yourself if the music of anyone of the current Khyal singers would be accepted by Muhammad Shah. More likely, they would be sent out immediately without their necks. But absolutely no one seems to entertain the slightest curiosity, to ask about any singer – “is the Khyal that once displaced the Dhrupad from the royal courts of Delhi and Gwalior?” There seems to be a general ‘paralysis of the critical sense’ in the arts and a mortal fear, as if all comparisons with previous models were anathema.

If you have encountered the original compositions of Sadarang, you could see that they were not easy to compose even by a seasoned musician, though they appear deceptively simple. It is not just a matter of allotting svaras to words as per the grammar of the raga. A composer like Sadarang comes once in a century. Consequently the music of Sadarang could not be copied or multiplied in every royal court of North India. And the Dhrupad having lost its pride of place, many would be vocalists “took to the Khyal”

About the beginning of the 20th century, there appeared two unfortunate influences in Hindustani music – Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande in the field of ‘theory’ and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in the field of ‘practice’. They thought they were fulfilling the role of Vishnu the preserver. With all his monumental work in classifying and naming ragas, Bhatkhande failed to notice the unique quality of the Khyals of Sadarang. His obsession was with the nomenclature of ragas. With the result, he made it appear as if any musician with the knowledge of the grammar of a raga could be a composer of Khyals. In all his six volumes of “Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati” he finds no place even to mention the unique qualities of the Sadarang’s musical compositions though he had the opportunity of listening to and putting into notation the authentic rendering of the Gwalior Khyals. And witness the brilliance of the products of his Marris College at Lucknow. They are all caricatured copies of the pseudo-Dhrupad-Dhamar of Faiyaz Khan passing of as Khyals.

And Vishnu Digambar Paluskar with his obsession to “popularise” the classical music of North India, succeeded only in popularising himself. One may these facts if one compared the rendering of Sadarang’s compositions by Vishnu Digambar’s line from Hassu Khan, with those of the line of Natthu Khan who remained in Gwalior. These latter singers were in a microscopic minority.

Q. “Who then were in the majority camp of Khyaliyas?”

A. “The ‘Khansahebs of the Khazana’ and the ‘Pandits of the Raga’. Either from Bhatkhande or elsewhere these pseudo-Khyaliyas got the idea that the words (sahitya) of the Khyal were of little or no importance. What mattered to these (mis-)leaders of classical music was the raga. And you have all the music critics blindly following this lead. Even if you mumbled the words as Ameer Khan used to do, or indicated them by a wave of the hand (how symbolic!), it was alright, as long as you somehow gave the impression that you were “producing classical music”.

Have you ever heard from any singer an astai and antara clearly and consistently articulated and set perfectly to the matras of the tala? And what about the consistency of the meaning? That’s only for folk music, not for the higher classical categories as Bhatkhande pontificated! It was with this background that you got the whole horde of pseudo-Khyaliyas – Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur Gharana who could grind out a raga for hours without reaching the tar saptak, or Faiyaz Khan of the Agra Gharana who passed off his pseudo-Dhrupad-Dhamar as Khyal or Abdul Karim Khan of the Kirana Gharana ( and of the Sarangi line – nothing wrong in that by itself) who imagined he could imitate Rehmat Khan when nobody was looking, or Bade Ghulam Ali Khan of Sabrang Gharana who thought he could get the colour of the Khyal by mixing in colours of Qawwali, Thumri, Ghazal and the rest with sargamlocutions!

A Gharana of Khyal implies an original composer of Khyals and not a ‘style‘ of representing classical non-music under the excuse of a raga. If you think I’m exaggerating, do examine what the Khansahebs and their sisyas give out as Khyal. Do they render the words of the Khyal clearly, so as to bring out its meaning, as in the Thumri, Dadra, Ghazal, etc. Are they really singing the whole composition “in tala” or they concerned only with the coincidence of the sam of the tal or the cheez? Are there any alankars as an integral part of the composition or is that all as a show of vocal acrobatics, and most important of all – what is that they are elaborating for hours – the raga or the cheez with respect to its theme? If you find positive answers to all these questions, then you may say they are genuine representatives of the Khyal. But what do you find our current ‘big names’ of Hindustani music doing, like – Bhimsen Joshi, Mallikarjun Mansur, Jesraj, Parween Sultana, Kumar Gandharva, et al? What part of their performance can you admit as real and enjoyable music? And why do you think the Ghazal is now in the ascendant in Hindustani music?”

Q. “Probably because of the rapport the singer can establish with the audience?”

A. “Precisely, and rapport means artha and bhava. The ‘names’ I mentioned above are not to blame. It is what they received as ‘classical music’ from their teachers and it is what they will pass on to their students, even more denuded of content because there was neither form nor content to begin with, but only the grammar of the raga. Alladiya Khan and Company were the leaders of such classical non-music. By their time, the last generation of authentic Muslim singers of Khyal – Rehmat Khan and Nissar Hussain of Gwalior – were no more. There was no one influential enough to question the authenticity of these pseudo-Khansahebs. One could write a whole thesis on the changing patterns of patronage in North Indian music from the sacred setting of the temple and the aristocratic assemblage of the royal courts of North India to the present democratic (maifils) and the AIR and Sangeet Natak Akadamies.”

[Continued in Part IV]

The Hoax of the Century - II

2008-09-19T11:19:00.003+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

Q. You just mentioned three forms of the North Indian music. Are they all counted as classical music?”

A. “That depends on how refined an example of each type may be and how excellently it may be presented by any particular singer. There may be a ‘classical’ performance of a ‘Natyasangeet’ or a pedestrian performance of the finest of Khyals.”

Q. “What are the lakshanas of the Khyal in Hindustani music?”

A. “The Khyal is one among several extant types of North Indian music, like the Dhrupad, Dhamar, Hori, Kajri, Thumri, Dadra, Tappa, Qawwali and others. It is certainly the most difficult type of North Indian music to perform adequately and yet it has become the most popular form of North Indian classical music, because out of the five essentials, the pseudo-Khyaliyas have simply eliminated sahitya, rasa and tala and made an efficacy from svara and raga, camouflaged with the cover of tans (alankars) with no reference to the image of the cheez or composition. To carry the simile further: a single match stick could burn the effigy down in a trice. Just ask a Khyaliya “What are you singing about?” If he had a sense of humour, he might answer – “Five thousand rupees”, or whatever his fee was. But they don’t have a sense of humour, nor do their dumb patrons have any and that’s how the farce of “Classical Hindustani music” flourishes and grows. You remember the little child in Hans Anderson’s “The Emperor’s new Clothes”? We have long since passed that age when an innocent little child could show up the farce by saying – “Look, the Khansaheb isn’t singing any cheez at all, he is just exercising his lungs”. Today we need the sword of Mansurji, heralding the end of a yuga, to put all bogus artists in their place and to stop them fooling everyone.”

But we are living are living in a world of ‘make-belief’ from bogus swamis and bogus beggars even – ‘Ersatz culture’ all the way down. There’s nothing our mechanical world cannot simulate – ready- made heroes, ready-to-swallow opinions and ready-made awards and instant glory.

But let us for a moment pull ourselves back from the jetset age to that of the horse and the buggy and the palanquin. No media men to manufacture ‘messages’ and opinions. It is rather the sophisticated age of the later Moghuls. The scene of classical music had shifted from the temple to the Moghul court. The audience could be counted on one’s elbow tips, but they were men of learning and taste. By Muhammad Shah’s time, the Dhrupad had already declined to a duel between the singer and the drummer – a denudation of all rasa and bhava. It was at that

point that the Khyal emerged as a reaction to the soulless Dhrupad. The time-filling alap of the Dhrupad was dispensed with and many alankars were introduced into the body of the composition, always consistent with the meaning of the words of the composition. In place of the four parts of the Dhrupad, the Khyal consisted of only two parts – the astai and antara. The tals of the Khyal were simpler than those in Dhrupad. Otherwise the essential dignity of the dhrupad was preserved in full.

But the forte of the Khyal was the manner of its improvisation. An authentic singer of the Khyal had to be quite as musically versatile as its composer. He had to virtually create new compositions (bandishes) with the cheez in all his improvisations and not merely mechanical permutations and combinations of the notes of the raga. Just imagine what this involves by way of training and skill. You cannot have teenage prodigies giving public recitals of Khyal as you may have youngsters making a mark in instrumental music. Here to a knowledgeable rasika can easily distinguish between mere ‘control of an instrument’ and real depth of exposition.

Then, the singing of the sargam in a Khyal recital is the most infantile of inanities in Hindustani music. It was probably introduced by Abdul Karim Khan to flatter South Indian audiences, and Parween Sultana has built her reputation from this infantilism and no one has pointed out how ridiculous it is. But in the traditional school of the Khyal, the names of the svaras are not mentioned even in the tuition stage and yet they have the finest of Khyal compositions with the subtlest modulation of svaras.

In the Khyal you see the art of musical improvisation at its best, something you do not meet in any other form of North Indian vocal music. Yet it must all seem effortless and not as if the singer was contesting in a tournament of tans and tals as Krishnarao Shankar Pandit gives the impression he was.

The proper facility for vistara (improvisation) requires first the foundation of a few hundred merited compositions learnt by talim, from a guru in the Khyal tradition and not merely from a graduate of the Bhatkhande School. After a few decades of practice based on those compositions, so that the vistara will be not just a grammatical elaboration of the raga but a thematic elaboration of the cheez, through new bandishes in every avartana. Such an elaboration cannot be extended beyond 15 to 20 minutes for a cheez, if repetition is to be avoided. I marvel at the tolerance of our audience who are prepared to sit grimly through the “systematic grinding of a raga” by the pseudo-Khyaliyas, in imitation of the inferior instrumentalists.”

Q. “Now that you mention it, it did not strike me that the present day Hindustani vocalists are actually imitating the manner of the instrumentalists who are “free from the tyranny of words!”

A. “Not merely that; when instrumentalists were exposed to good vocalists, their instrumental music likewise had the quality of bandishes – whole and complete phrases – as represented by that greatest of instrumentalists of this century – Ustad Bundu Khan.

That quality now, belongs to the past. Unfortunately our present day musicians have never heard either vocal or instrumental music of that quality, which goes by the name of gayaki ang. Today this term is not understood (or represented) even by reputed masters like Ravi Shankar because they simply have not heard vocal music of the gayaki ang.”

Q. “Then where would one encounter the real gayaki ang in the Khyal?”

A. “Eminently in the music of Sadarang. There are scores of Khyal compositions of Sadarang, in which a single astai contains more beautiful bandishes than one would hear in a whole concert of the pseudo-Khyaliyas.”

[Continued in Part III]

The Hoax of the Century - I

2008-09-18T09:57:00.009+05:30

THE HOAX OF THE CENTURY
- THE CLASSICAL MUSIC THAT NOBODY HEARD

- K N Ienger

[Sh Keshavram N Iengar, professor of architecture and a keen sangeet rasik, studied music under Dr H G Moghe, a disciple of Eknath Pandit of Gwalior. Sh Iengar penned this lengthy article in December 1985, shortly before his death. It was sent to us by his student and DSS regular Suvir Misra. Abubakr Khalidi, another regular, kindly undertook to re-type and format the original scanned manuscript. Many thanks, Suvir and Abubakr!

[A caveat: Many aspects of the article are controversial. Sh Iengar's viewpoints are keyed to a bygone era, and present-day readers might not relate to them easily. Parts of the article may seem outmoded, even idiosyncratic. This is especially true of his very strong views on performers many of us venerate. Readers are requested to treat the article in its proper spirit, and exercise due moderation in their responses. It goes without saying that the opinions expressed are solely the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the DSS blog or its members.]

“NOTICE”
GRAND HINDUSTANI MUSIC FESTIVAL
Benefit Programme by SURSAGAR

Q. “Aren’t you going to attend the concert of Bhimsen Joshi?”

A. “They couldn’t afford it.”

Q. “What do you mean?”

A. “You see, I have a rate for most of the Hindustani classical vocalists. I must be paid so much an hour for listening to them. For Bhimsen Joshi I would charge Rs. 1, 000/- per hour.”

Q. “You are kidding.”

A. “I am not. If only you knew how little of music these reputed ‘names’ had with them. Why, even the simplest of ‘folk music’ has more elements of genuine music than these ‘classical festivals’ so fervently advertised. “

Q. “Aren’t you taking an extreme view – rather airing your prejudices too blatantly? Bhimsen Joshi is a box-office draw, you know.”

A. “That’s one of this century’s hoaxes. Have you observed how these vocalists get worse and worse as they grow in age?”

Q. “It may be the strain of years and from failing faculties.”

A. “Not quite. It’s because they must progress; and if you have set out on a wrong track to begin with, you must grow wronger and wronger as you go along. Can you imagine any of our saint-musicians singing more and more abhorrently as they grew older?”

Q. “That’s because they had fewer aspects of music to contend with. They were immersed in their bhakti and their words and notes (svara and sahitya) flowed from the fullness of their hearts.

A. “You’ve hit the nail on the head. And what are the greater aspects our classicists are contending with? “

Q. “The raga exposition, the tala gymnastics, their vocal acrobatics, their public image , kowtowing to the A.I.R., the Music Academies, the Media people, and……”

A. “Perfectly right. You have exposed the case already. And where do bhakti and sahitya find a place in this music? Would you not agree that ‘folk-music’ has more rasa than the Hindustani classical music of today?”

Q. “Yes. How then did it get the label of ‘classical music’ at all?”

A. “Indeed. Should not all the patrons of ‘Hindustani classical music’ raise the same question? Does classical literature have less meaning than non-classical literature, or is classical architecture less useful and beautiful than ordinary architecture? How does any art get to be ‘classical’? The ‘classic’ or ‘classical’ in any art represents a ‘standard of excellence’, achieved over generations of application and which is long lasting. In classical art the elements of form and meaning are perfectly blended, as in Nature, whence we have excellence of form and nobility of content. Such classical human works approach the perfect beauty of Nature. This does not mean that human art should imitate the outward form of Nature. “Art imitates Nature in Her manner of operation”, as St. Thomas Aquinas said. Accordingly, there is more perfection in the padmasana of the stone and metal images of our deities than in the realistic lotuses of Ravi Verma. How could a botanical lotus support a buxom woman?

In Indian vocal music the constituent elements are – svara, pada and laya or notes, words and rhythm; or more completely – svara, sahitya, raga, rasa and tala. Svara is the mathematical correctness of musical notes and also the constituent notes of the melody. The combination of certain consonant notes (samvadi svaras) taken in a scale, constitute a raga. Each valid raga has a distinct atmosphere and the several raga-modes become the means of expressing a mood or bhava more powerfully than if the song did not have the atmosphere of a raga. Remember that a raga is an aid to bhava and does not express a distinct bhava independent of the words of the song. The sahitya and the svaras raga together become the means of communication of bhava or rasa. There is no bhava or rasa in instrumental music, contrary to what many people believe. As for talas, there is no music without rhythm, and the rich Indian patterns of rhythm (talas) are a special feature of Indian music.

The various talas provide the gait and tempo to each song – like the gait of an elephant, camel, a horse and so on; that is, provided the words of the composition (cheez) are at all articulated. There is no significance of tala with Hindustani vocalists who do not have a literary composition to present, but refer to the tala only to return to arrive at the sam, in the refrain. For such rendering, one tala would be as good as any other, and the vocalist and tablist could go their separate ways most of the time.

There’s another element in addition in vocal music – the alankars – musical embellishments that must be appropriate to the text and the dignity of the theme of the particular song. How can you have a cascade of tans in a song that says: “Karim nam tero” or “Pida na jani”? Musical alankars do no pass muster by themselves independent of the composition. But what do you

find with this element currently? At certain point in the recital of a cheez, the singer begins his battery of tans. This is just like saying: “You can begin laughing after I have told you all the jokes of the evening.”

Musical alankars must be taken with the sahitya or not at all. There is really no place for tanbaji (an indulgence of tans for their own sake) in the rendering of the Khyal or Thumri or Tappa. It may go if at all, with a Tarana. But it seems to be feature borrowed from the instrumentalists, while playing fast gats.”

[Continued in Part II]

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - III: The System and the Small Guy

2008-06-30T22:54:00.009+05:30

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage
Part III - The System and the Small Guy

- Abhik Majumdar

[This is the third in a series of articles on NCPA's recent move to commercialise its archival resources. Here Abhik takes a look at the "system" - the state, big business, large research bodies - and how much, or how little, it has done for the small guy.]

1. Introduction

Lots could be said on the ethics of commercialisation. Particularly on how control shifts seamlessly from the government to big business. This has happened so many times before. And each time the small guy has been short-changed in the process. The present instance, the commercialisation of the NCPA archives, is only one of the more recent examples. In this article, I discuss the functioning of a few such institutions in India.

2. Copyrights

India is waking up to the money-spinning potential of copyrights. As different interest-groups struggle to come to terms with it, bystanders can get to see some truly bizarre developments.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has taken the lead in securing its rights. So much so that at one point the media, staggered by the stringent conditions imposed on it, even contemplated boycotting the circus altogether. Once the tournament got underway, it was the League's turn at the receiving end of intellectual property laws. Teams faced legal action for playing copyrighted music without permission.

Overenthusiastic use of copyright laws has led to other developments also. For one, the high cost of licensing is being blamed for the declining amounts of music aired on TV channels. The same high fees are also reportedly eroding the financial viability of commercial FM channels.

A report carried by DNA accuses the music industry of imposing steep royalties to offset dwindling album sales due to piracy. It quotes a Saregama executive as explaining the question of reducing royalties did not arise, as FM channels have not helped the cause of Indian music:

When the first phase of FM radio begun, we thought it would give a fillip to musicians by promoting various genres of music. However, nothing of that sort has happened. Instead, all you see is about 150-odd FM stations, all playing the same Bollywood music in the Top 20 format.

This claim would have been much more believable had the recording industry not used the precise opposite argument to justify its own high revenues from album sales.

Saragama is a leading member of the Indian Music Industry (IMI), the nation's premier lobby-group for the industry. According to IMI's website, "When revenue from top selling hits is lost to piracy, companies cannot afford to invest in specialist areas and offer consumers a wider selection of music."

So on the one hand, high revenues are justified as necessary for providing diversity; and on the other hand, FM channels have steep royalties slapped on them because they do not provide enough diversity! Given the pitiful lack of diversity in Saregama's own catalogue (high revenues notwithstanding), one fears to ask them if they plan to reduce royalties for channels actually "helping the cause of music."

Which leads to the question, if this is the conditions faced by commercial broadcasters, what is the condition of community radio organisations? Royalties comprise a big obstacle. While American copyright societies charge low-power FM stations about Rs. 5.73 per hour of music, Indian societies levy something like Rs. 480!

3. Community Radio

Matter of fact, community radio forms another classic instance of small guys getting marginalised. The report referred to above states some more interesting facts. Broadcasters can buy transmitters only from two government-approved companies, both selling their products at Rs. 1.5 - 2 lakhs. Also, they must not carry any "news" reports. The problem here is, what constitutes "news" is not defined or specified.

We have seen how quickly the liberalisation of airwaves translated into commercial FM broadcasts. Community radio has not been so lucky; it has barely got off the ground, and the state is doing nothing to help. As a commentator put it, "Does the government of India trust Rupert Murdoch more than its own citizens?" (Incidentally, the quote is taken from this article, which I recommend highly as a concise summary of all that is wrong with broadcasting in India.)

In 1995, the Supreme Court held in Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting v. Cricket Association of Bengal that airwaves are public property [para 47] and that the right to communicate implict in the right to freedom of speech (Article 19(1)(a)) includes the right to broadcast over airwaves [para 44]. Consequently, in 2002 the government announced a policy change. By 2006 it had brought out guidelines twice over. In 2007 the I&B Secretary claimed no less than 4000 stations will be established in the next few years.

Initially, the developments were received with considerable enthusiasm in both mainstream and non-mainstream media. This very quickly gave way to disillusionment, as activists awoke to the reality of red tape and prohibitive costs. It also became clear that the government had no intention of letting go of control. As a bureaucrat is reported to have explained at a conference:

See, private radio broadcasting is just an 8-year-old baby in India. It’s in its infancy and so we have to advice (sic) the child, ‘Do this . . . please don’t do this . . ..’ Once you mature, we’ll give you leeway . . . but you have to prove yourself mature; please exercise self-regulation.

4. Copyright Societies

So far we have seen copyrights used by the big guys against other big guys. The law of copyright is not indifferent to the the interests of the small guy. It contemplates the establishment of copyright societies or collectives, whose job is to enforce rights and obtain royalties on behalf of individual right-holders. In Indian law, Part VII of the Copyright Act, 1957, covering Sections 33 to 36-A, deals with copyright societies.

The Indian Copyright Office site provides a list of copyright societies presently functioning in India. It lists all of four societies:

Cinematographic films: Society for Copyright Regulation of Indian Producers for Film and Television (SCRIPT) (no official website yet)
Musical works: Indian Performing Right Society Limited (IPRS)
Sound recordings: Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL)
Reprographic works: Indian Reprographic Rights Organization (IRRO)
Another one, the Indian Copyright Society (ICRS), which is mentioned in the list, appears to be an umbrella organisation of sorts. Its website advertises "single-window" clearance of copyright licensing, but does not say much beyond that, especially about the Society's antecedents.

Three out of the first four have deep, pervasive links with the big guys. Little is known about SCRIPT, but the name itself suggests an organisation of producers, i.e. big guys. PPL was created by members of the Indian Phonographic Industry (IPI), which in 1994 changed its name to IMI. IRRO was formed with the active participation of the Authors Guild of India and the Federation of Indian Publishers, the first an organisation for small guys, and the second for big guys. It is not known how effectively IRRO protects authors' interests in respect of big-guy publishers. The site mentions virtually nothing of its activities.

IPRS seems to be the only organisation created to genuinely uphold the interests of small guys. According to its website, it was established in 1969 by the left-leaning composer and trade-unionist M B Sreenivasan, with the help of lyricist Naqsh Lyallpuri. Its former directors include composers Salil Choudhury, Laxmikant (Kudalkar),P Ramesh Naidu, Naushad and M S Viswanathan; lyricists R N Jayagopal, Kannadasan, O N V Kurup and Majrooh Sultanpuri; singer-composers Hemanta Mukherjee and Sudhir Phadke, and even actor I S Johar.

In the 1990s it transformed itself, and appointed as executives dedicated professionals from the younger generation. Recently it has been in the news for initiating proceedings against IPL to secure the interests of its members.

India still lacks a performer's rights society. IPRS is a performing rights society. It protects the interests of writers, lyricists and composers, licensing their performances in exchange for royalties. It does not protect the interests of the performers themselves.

Organisations abroad like the Canadian Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) play a major role in securing performer's rights. In the financial year 2006-07, ACTRA disbursed as much as $9 million to its members.

5. Conclusion

Radio stations, record companies, copyright societies, and music archives. I discuss them together not for similarities in their area of functioning; it has more to do with the way the have functioned in India for so many years.

Short-changing the small guy started with the licence raj. It shut out entrepreneural opportunities to all but a chosen few. The liberalisation process demonstrated that neglect of the small guy has nothing to do with the system of governance. No matter if it's the sarkari babu or the corporate executive at the helm, the small guy gets short-changed regardless.

All-India Radio owns by far the most extensive archives in the nation. In the sixty-odd years since independence, it has consistently denied outsiders access to its archives.. Now it is also taking steps to commercially release its recordings. So is the Sangeet Natak Akademi.

The Akademi's archival access record is only marginally better. Though officially it is open to all members, it is subject to frequent operational delays typical of government-run institutions in India. Privately run archives have their own access-related issues. It has been the experience of some that bodies like NCPA and ARCE-AIIS are actually more receptive to the needs of foreigners (read westerners) than Indian scholars!

Intellectual property laws do not constitute a solution. A ponderous judiciary not entirely corruption-free jacks up legal costs, thereby ipso facto tilting the scale against the small guys. This is even if you discount the powerful lobby-groups big guys control. Even under ideal conditions, it can protect only some small guys, like performers and composers.

What about the interests of the rasik? In most art-music traditions, the role of an informed audience is no less important than that of the performers themselves. And yet they seem to be perpetually getting the short end of the stick. Patchily distributed albums at inflated prices, barred access to archives, sloppy broadcast organisations, the industry-wide craze for big-draw names at the expense of musical excellence, these are only some the obstacles Indian rasiks keep facing.

And yet it is because of the small guys, the creators, the performers and their audience, that music is alive today. Everything else, recording companies, government-run cultural agencies, broadcast channels and music archives equally, play only a peripheral role in the production and consumption of music (if I may resort to such soul-destroying terminology).

The tragedy today, therefore, is that these peripheral players, coincidentally the big guys, predominate over the small guys. In the process, so do their interests take precedence over that which nourishes the life of music.

[back to prefatory note and list of articles]

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - II: Legal Issues

2008-06-28T13:13:00.025+05:30

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage
Part II - Legal Issues

- Abhik Majumdar

[This is the second in a series of articles on NCPA's recent move to commercialise its archival resources. Here Abhik takes a look at the legal issues involved.]

1. Introduction

NCPA's tender for the marketing of audio tracks in its archives is not an isolated development. All-India Radio, owner of by far the most extensive archives in the country, is also taking steps to commercially release its recordings, as are other institutions like the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Such policy changes inevitably affect the interests of many. And none more so than the artistes involved, whose performances are being utilised in a manner they had perhaps not contemplated. The legal implications of this, under both public and private law, need to be examined closely.

2. Public-Law Remedies

One possibility is to challenge the commercialisation as arbitrary and therefore violative of the right to equality under Art. 14. Notwithstanding the "National" present in NCPA's name, this strategy is problematic.

It is well settled in Indian law that the fundamental rights listed in Part III of the Constitution are available only against the State. Artice 12 of the Constitution defines 'State' as comprising inter alia "local and other authorities". A lively debate ensued over what the term "other authority" meant or comprised. By far the widest interpretation of the term was given in Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib in 1980. The effect of this was diluted in a number of subsequent decisions such as Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (2002) and Zee Telefilms v. Union of India (2005). In the last decision, it was held that the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) did not fall within Art. 12. The court observed:

It is not that every body or association which is regulated in its private functions becomes a 'State'. What matters is the quality and character of functions discharged by the body and the State control flowing therefrom.

NCPA is not created by a specialised statute; the Tata group site states it is in the nature of a registered society and a public trust. It does not enjoy a state-conferred monopoly (or indeed, any kind of monopoly) over its activities. Apparently it does not even accept government grants; most of its money including its initial endowment has come from the Dorabji Tata Trust. The government has hardly any control over it. Nor can its activities of promoting the arts be considered to be in the nature of a sovereign function (that is, an activity considered to be the preserve of the government alone).

Under the circumstances, there is little chance of NCPA being considered "state" under Article 12. However, one more argument can be proffered. In Zee Telefilms, the court held that even if the body in question cannot be considered "state", if its functions are in the nature of public functions a writ may be filed under Art. 226. It referred to AMSSMVSSJMS Trust v. VR Rudani (1989), where a college run by a private trust shut down without paying its employees their dues. The court held [at p. 707]:

The words "any person or authority" used in Article 226 are not to be confined only to statutory authorities and instrumentalities of the State. They may cover any other person or body performing public duty. The form of the body concerned is not very much relevant. What is relevant is the nature of the duty imposed on the body.

Of course, in this case the court concluded the college performed a "public duty" because it received funds from the government, and was affiliated to, and thus subject to regulation by, Gujarat University, a state body.

Neither factor applies here. Nevertheless, a case can be made out that NCPA's work is in the nature of a public duty, given that it describes itself as a national centre. However, this is a rather weak line of attack as far as the NCPA is concerned and, in my opinion, best not taken as things stand. It is far more effective if used against AIR or SNA, whose identity as "state" is manifest.

3. Remedies Under the Copyright Act

Private-law remedies deriving from the Copyright Act, 1957, seem to comprise a more promising line of attack. (A copy of the Act may be sourced here.)

A common misconception exists that copyright in sound recordings rests with the performer. To understand why this is incorrect, one needs to keep in mind that copyright can subsist only in embodied, permanent works. Literary, dramatic and musical works (as in composed melodies) are works of this nature, as are cinematograph films and sound recordings.

A performance is not. It is by its nature ephemeral or immanent unless embodied in a film or sound recording. And if this is done, it is the embodiment, rather than the performance itself, that becomes the subject of copyright.

Copyright rests in the author of a particular work. Given the foregoing, the "author" of a performance need not be the author of its embodiment as a sound recording. Indeed, in most cases he is not. Section 2(d)(v) defines the "author" of a sound recording as its "producer". Clause (uu) of the same Section defines "producer" in respect of a sound recording or cinematographic film as the "person who takes the initiative and responsibility for making the work."

Hence if NCPA invites a musician and records his performance, it is the former, by virtue of having produced the recording, who is recognised as the author and thus the copyright-holder of the recording.

To protect the interests of performers, the law of copyright vests them with what are called performer's rights found in Chapter VIII of the Act. Section 38(3) outlines the nature and ambit of the right; in essence this amounts to a prohibition on unauthorisedly recording a performance, making reproductions of the recording, broadcasting the recording, or otherwise communicating the recording to the public. Section 39 states that these rights may not apply in cases involving bonafide research or educational purposes.

Section 38(2)(b) deals with making reproductions. It specifies three grounds, namely (i) without the performer's consent, (ii) made for purposes other than those for which the performer consented, and (iii) in respect of a recording made under Section 39, for purposes other than that covered in that Section. The italics are mine.

Noted musicians Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan claim that NCPA routinely asked for their consent only in respect of research and educational purposes. If so, then clearly NCPA must secure fresh consent from all performers before it can legally proceed with commercial release.

4. Legal Validity of Pre-Existing Permissions

The shoddy drafting of the Copyright Act gives rise to a legal situation both interesting and pertinent to the present topic. Section 19 lays down strict requirements for the assignment of copyrights. It has to be in writing, and must identify the work and specify the nature, duration and territorial extent of the rights assigned, the royalties to be paid, and so on. Clause (4) is relevant to us: it states that if the rights assigned are not exercised within a year, the assignment lapses unless the contract of assignment specifies otherwise.

These principles have been made to apply elsewhere in the Act also. Section 30-A makes the provisions of S. 19 applicable mutatis mudandis to licensing of copyright under S. 30. Likewise, S. 39-A applies the provisions mutatis mudandis to performer's (and broadcaster's) rights.

Reading S. 19(4) with 39-A, we may infer that in the absence of a contract to the contrary, if the performer's consent for commercial release is taken but not utilised within a year, it lapses. Consequently, NCPA did a good job drafting the consent form, it might need to seek fresh consent for recordings over a year old even if it did secure consent for commercial exploitation at the time of recording. And the same holds true for AIR and SNA.

This anomaly can be attributed to shoddy drafting. Section 39-A effectively treats copyrights and performer's rights as similar (or, as we lawyers say, ejusdem generis). This is both inaccurate and misleading. Copyright can be likened to any other property right. Such rights are designed to enable the owner's enjoyment of his property. So just as my right over my land entail some subsidiary rights (for example, the right to grow oranges, the right to stop other from picking those oranges etc.), so does my right over my copyrightable work entail rights such as the prohibition against unauthorised copying, which enable me to enjoy the fruits of my property.

On the other hand, performer's right is similar to a right to permit someone else to acquire a particular property. If I have the first option on a piece of land, I can permit a potential buyer to purchase the land, prevent him from doing so, set conditions and other limitations etc. But for all that, I am not able to myself enjoy the oranges growing on the land.

Now, if I assign my copyright in a book to X in exchange for future royalties (as is often the case), and then X sits on it and refuses to publish it, I stand lose ont considerable. Not only can't I enjoy the benefits deriving from the book, I can't even assign the copyright to someone else (since it's already assigned to X).

Suppose on the other hand, I allow X, on the promise of future royalties, to record my performance for commercial release. Subsequently X sits on it once again. This time, while I won't get any royalties, there is nothing to (legally) prevent me from performing the same compositions in the same styles as many times as I want.

Suffice it to say, then, that the unwarranted conflation of copy right and performer's right into a single "type" has inadvertently resulted in the performer's interest getting better protected.

5. Moral Rights

Section 57 confers on the author of a copyrightable work the rights to (a) identify himself as the author, and (b) restrain any mutilation, distortion etc. of the work; both rights subsist even after the copyright has been assigned.

Section 39-A does not extend S. 57 to cover performer's rights as well. This is a pity. As is widely know, commercial releases of live Hindustani recordings are often heavily edited to the extent even of greatly diminishing their artistic excellence. At this time, though, the performer seems to have little legal remedy in this respect.

6. The Way Forward

Several public- and private-law remedies exist to mitigate the effects of wanton commercialisation of archival recordings. At least on paper. Whether as of now they comprise practicable strategies is another issue. Nevertheless, it is at least clear that performers have at least a thin toe-hold, standing on which pot-shots against NCPA and other errant archives may be contemplated.

[back to prefatory note and list of articles]

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - I: Overview

2008-06-26T12:00:00.026+05:30

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage
Part I - Overview

- Arnab Chakrabarty

[This is the first in a series of articles on NCPA's recent move to commercialise its archival resources. Here Arnab presents an overview of the facts, and also his viewpoint as an artiste.]

1. Introduction

In keeping with the spirit of the times, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, seems to be turning market-savvy. Recently it brought out a tender, and also circulated an e-mail, inviting financial and marketing partners for a project that seeks to commercially release selections from the Centre’s archive of recorded music. This is being done ostensibly to "support the NCPA's core founding principles with regard to the wide-ranging dissemination of India's rich cultural heritage." Notwithstanding the laudable nature of this objective, doubts remain whether the venture is really much different from usual sell-outs to corporate interests.

2. NCPA: Background and Antecedents

According to the Tata group's official website, NCPA is registered as a society as well as a public trust. However, according to some it was founded through a special legislation. In any case, it funded through a generous grant from the Dorabji Tata Foundation. This includes a substantial endowment, which, if invested wisely, can definitely help sustain its routine operating costs, if not more.

It occupies a large chunk of some of the most coveted real estate in Mumbai. Some time ago it built a large apartment complex to house its employees. Subsequently it took permission to sell the flats commercially. The NCPA Apartments Complex, as it is now known, ranks among Mumbai’s most expensive addresses in terms of cost per square foot of area. Recently, an apartment sold for Rs. 36 Crores. As per its rules, the Centre is entitled to 50% of proceeds from the sale of an apartment, half of which it hands to the Maharashtra government.

Despite such largesses, NCPA’s heyday is long gone. In what seems to be its twilight, it looks to the past as a way of legitimising its present. Its powers-that-be, coupled with a hired “arts administration consultant”, have come together to anoint themselves the guardians of over 5,000 hours of what they claim to be among the finest instances of recorded Hindustani and Carnatic music performances.

Reports suggest the Centre is facing a financial crunch. Though this has been denied by its administrators, the fact remains that it had opened its premises to hosting "corporate events and high-class (sic) receptions" as early as four years ago.

3. NCPA and Dissemination

Serious practitioners and connoisseurs of Indian classical music know very well what a farce the business of arts administration is, especially in India. Unlike other professionals with secure jobs and a steady source of income, musicians are financially vulnerable and often make poorly informed decisions based on an immediate, desperate need for cash. It is the responsibility of organisations like the NCPA, which are basically funded by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds and government patronage, to ensure that whatever they do serves the interests of the artists they engage. Unfortunately, it seems to me that these “premier institutes” in India are essentially vehicles that prey on the vulnerabilities of those who lead insecure, even destitute lives in the service of the arts, merely to serve the vested interests of a few.

NCPA's prior record in dissemination is dismal. Its earlier posture on the issue of sharing archival material is legendary. Even those artists who had performed at the venue were routinely refused copies of their own concert recordings by the centre’s staff, citing potential commercial “misuse” by the artist, although reportedly, frequent exceptions are made for powerful patron-musicians and their acolytes.

Given its earlier stance, it does not strike the discerning observer as though the NCPA administrators have suddenly sprouted empathy for students of Indian classical music and their need for these recordings for educational purposes. The decision to sell its archival recordings after almost forty years of zealous hoarding has ostensibly been taken with the objective of generating revenue. Obviously, the NCPA anticipates great profitability, if they can justify the hiring of a foreign “arts administrator” to oversee this project. So what is the financial need that drives this venture?

This is all the more galling because NCPA is neither the creator, and nor even really the owner, of the works they propose to sell. It is merely a repository. Not every artist has been consulted before his/her performances were recorded for the archive. According to khayal and thumri exponent Shubha Mudgal and tabla maestro Aneesh Pradhan, the Centre rarely ever signs or makes verbal agreements with artists whom they record in concert. Whenever it has bothered to make agreements pertaining to these recordings, they have almost always read “archive and educational” in the embedded statement of purpose. Even so, they use their (cement and bureaucratic) muscle to hoard recordings, to which, they do not own the rights.

The centre has already drawn up a catalogue of works they intend to publish, and without even consulting many of the artists who have created them, be it in the role of a main performer or accompanying artist. What is even more appalling is the fact that Owen Mortimer, the Centre's foreign “arts administration consultant”, claims in his tender notice that the intellectual property rights of each musician featured in the catalogue would be respected and all applicable laws honoured. As of now, this statement is both untrue and blatantly misleading. It remains to be seen how the Centre will rectify this infirmity.

4. NCPA and the Welfare of Art

Given how the “private sector” of the Indian classical music business is dominated by a number of interest groups that operate like a mafia, it is institutions like the NCPA that independent individual artists would look to for patronage, representation and protection of the collective interests of the professional community. With its infrastructure and access to both powerful private individuals as well as government resources, NCPA could have served as a powerful tool in the process of creating a regulatory body or even a labour union governing matters concerning Indian classical music. Alas, it seems to be nothing more than a struggling behemoth, a white elephant trying to sell the aura of its heydays to keep its reputation afloat, at the cost of innumerable individual musicians who are mere collateral to the interests of self-proclaimed musicologists and art administrators who infest the hallways of this hallowed institution.

Had the Centre been truly interested in the welfare of Indian classical music and musicians, they would have long ago, taken a progressive stand on the issue and created schemes under which they could nurture and sustain musical talent and steer it in the right direction. They would have exercised more discretion in their hiring process and involved genuine musicians and musicologists in the centre’s day-to-day affairs.

One of NCPA’s greatest shortcomings is the fact that its music department is essentially a tool in the hands of a small but powerful cartel of musical pretenders who pose as theorists and arts administrators. Indeed, all it has achieved in so many years is their archive. It has been conserved for over half a century with meticulous attention to security, and is now being made available to the public “with the larger goal of creating as large an audience as possible for Indian classical and traditional music” – at a price, of course.

A price which numerous artists, living and dead, rich and poor, have already paid, by way of poorly remunerated performances, some of which were recorded without consent, either written or verbal. For the benefit of the NCPA, of course, whose administrators, in the process of prostituting their zealously guarded archive, have now circulated a mass e-mail to all the e-mail addresses at their disposal, asking for the highest bidder to aid the process of this unilateral effort at commercialisation of the works of a wide range of artists. Ironically, this list of undisclosed recipients of the aforementioned email includes numerous artists who have performed for the NCPA, and whom the centre’s administrators did not think pertinent to consult before circulating such a message.

A large number of Indian classical musicians of the previous two generations have died either of starvation, or disease wrought by acute poverty. This, in itself, has absolutely no reflection on the class or capability of individual musicians. The fact of the matter is that transition of Hindustani music from princely patronage to the public concert stage has claimed many casualties, and transformed the profession into a vicious rat race for commercial success. It is a very small number of commercially successful musicians who control a vast majority of the limited resources available to the community, leaving many much more deserving artists to languish in poverty and anonymity.

5. Conclusion

Given how the measure of big-time commercial success in Hindustani music today is, in most cases, the ability to put on a pseudo-mystical façade and pander to the tastes of ignoramuses, it is for premier institutions like the NCPA to stand up for genuine artists, and to help generate patronage for serious music. Instead, the NCPA chooses to sell its archive and from what may be construed from its actions so far, deprive its musicians of royalties or even the right to decide if their own recordings may be made public or not!

While the NCPA, in its widely circulated mass e-mail claims that works of “the finest Indian classical and traditional musicians of the past 40 years (are) to be made available for international retail, in consultation with artists and their families and with strict adherence to intellectual property rights and all prevailing laws applicable for their legitimate release”, most investigations reveal that no such steps have been taken to date. This leads one to believe that NCPA officials are essentially paying lip service to the public at large, while soliciting financial participation of third parties in their bid, purportedly aimed at “presentation, preservation and promotion of India's rich legacy of classical, traditional and contemporary culture.”

[back to prefatory note and list of articles]

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - Prefatory Note

2008-06-25T00:00:00.010+05:30

The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) is moving towards the commercial exploitation of its archival recordings. The manner in which it has gone about it suggests a low priority accorded to the interests of music and musicians. We at the DSS Blog respond here with a series of articles that explore the various aspects of this issue in its larger context.

NCPA's preparations are indeed extensive. It has floated a tender seeking partnerships from the music industry, and also appointed as Arts Management Consultant one Owen Mortimer from the consultancy group C-Sharp. (Owen, presently also a director of the Rajasthan International Folk Festival, was earlier associated with the Les Azuriales Opera Festival and the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) as Acting Projects Manager.)

Strangely enough, it is only after undertaking these steps that it has started informing concerned artistes. On 13 June 2008 it circulated an e-mail on this venture, the text of which is nothing more than a copy/paste of the tender mentioned above.e

This casual treatment gives credence to apprehensions that the venture accords low priority to the interests of music and musicians. It also makes one wonder how serious they are about their promise made in the tender about conducting the venture "with strict adherence to intellectual property rights and all prevailing laws applicable for their legitimate release."

Not unnaturally, these developments have evoked great dismay in the musicians' community. Some have already already placed on record their strong reservation about the venture. The media, though, has yet to catch. An extensive web-search yielded not a single newspaper report on the issue.

We at the DSS Blog feel that the project is not only a cause of concern in itself, it also raises larger questions about the commercialisation of cultural heritage. In response, we present here a series of articles that examine this and other related developments, together with their larger ethical, legal, historical, economic and other implications.

This prefatory note also features a list of posts in the series. Other articles, as and when they are posted, will be hyperlinked to it.

Overview - Arnab Chakrabarty
Legal Implications - Abhik Majumdar
The System and the Small Guy - Abhik Majumdar

Swear on My Love, My Beloved

2008-06-01T09:53:00.021+05:30

[Another first - a short story this time, reposted from here. As Kalyanda remarks, 'The dramatis personae are classical musicians, but the topic is hardly Shastriya Sangeet!' Enjoy!]

December 1978, a bitterly cold Delhi evening. The Guru and his Chela sat huddled over a Bajaj convector heater, warming their fingers and slowly sipping the single malt the Chela had bought from the Bangkok duty-free. 'So you just want to do a bit of reconnoitering preparing for the year's field work for your thesis on Thumri?' asked the Guru.

'Yeah, that year hopefully will begin in September ’80 but I’ll need that much time to work on my Urdu so that I don’t have to use interpreters for interviewing tawaiifs.'

'Of course' said the Guru, 'interpreters are a drag when you want to have a tete-a-tete with a tawaiif. When and where do you plan to reconnoitre?'

'I’ll start with Old Delhi from tomorrow and maybe in January go to Calcutta and look up the area where Wajed Ali Shah lived his last years. I believe Thumri started there and maybe there are a few old fossils who can tell me interesting stories. Then there is Bombay which I don’t know much about and you don’t either.'

Next evening the two were again huddling over the heater but in a far darker mood. The Chela’s forays in Old Delhi during the day had not yielded a single address where he could possibly find a tawaiif. And the Guru had just come back after a seminar with his mathematician colleagues; they had scheduled the departmental New Years’ Eve party at his flat because there would not be a Missus around to take the punchbowl away just as the party started to get interesting.

The Chela was quizzical. 'What is wrong with these chaps coming over with booze for a few hours just before midnight?' he asked.'Look, I listen to mathematical jokes so that I can make a living, but listening to such banter is not my idea of ringing in the New Year,' replied the Guru glumly. 'Oh, I will come over with some dancing houris to enliven things,' assured the Chela.

The Guru gave a start and said, 'Why don’t you just go and scoot off to Calcutta first thing tomorrow instead of trying to be helpful? These guys are Tamil Brahmins, vegetarians and would have apoplectic fits if they encountered a sarangi or tabla player in my flat whether or not the female was present.' 'That does it,' said the Chela, 'let me go and have a serious look around and if I find a suitable troupe I’ll book them. Today is the 29th, so we can’t waste much time.'

Reluctantly the Guru decided to accompany the younger man, knowing full well how dubious the tastes of his sitar student were. At least by accompanying him a veto on the final choice could be exercised. Having coaxed his Padmini engine to start the Guru and his Chela rode off into the deserted streets. After a meal at one of the Pandara Road eateries, the quest began in earnest.

'Where do we go now?' asked the Guru. 'Go past the New Delhi station and then we will turn left and I will guide you after that' said the Chela. Twenty minutes after leaving the New Delhi station behind and many twists and turns, the Chela said, 'you may as well stop here. The place I once saw dancing girls five years ago must be somewhere around, we’ll look out for it as we walk around.'

'G. B. Road,' said the Chela in response to the Guru’s query, 'what is this place?' They walked along a narrow pavement littered with an assortment of garbage and beggars’ bowls. The Chela stopped at a paan shop and asked where he could find ‘naachne walee larkiyan’ and the paan shopwallah replied in an exasperated tone that around here there are only ‘pesha karney walee larkiyan.’

This kind of Hindi was Greek to the Chela who could recite a substantial amount of Ghalib and Momin but was wont to respond to a simple query like 'Kya haal' with 'tasallee baksh!' So the Guru translated, 'There are no dancers here, only whores.'

Nothing deterred, the Chela dove into a narrow side street and almost at once the two could hear the sound of ‘ghunghroos’ and tablas.

They followed the sound and came to a dark and dank doorway.Stepping inside they were buffeted by a wall of stench of ammonia which can only be described by the Sanskrit ‘soochee bhedya’ (not pierceable by a needle.) As they climbed a rickety set of stairs, the ‘ghungroos’ got louder and finally on the third floor they came to a well-lit room where a thin fortyish man was pumping away at a beat-up harmonium. A tabla player fondling a duggi and a slightly built woman engaged in bargaining the price of the next number with a couple of dissolute customers.

Upon seeing the Chela’s Anglo-Saxon visage, all conversation ceased. The matron of the place came rushing over driving away the train of beggars who had followed the Guru-Chela duo up the staircase and asked the new visitors to sit on the not so immaculately white sheet, which covered the floor. As soon as they sat down, a young woman came in with two garlands of flowers one of which she put around a beaming Chela’s neck. She tried to do the same with the Guru, but he put up a deprecating hand and muttered 'Main driver hoon.'

The guru whispered to the Chela 'Let's get the hell out of this place. I am not having this lot enter my flat!' The Chela addressed the matron 'Main ghazal sunnaa chaahtaa hoon.' This request caused consternation, the dancing girl and the tabla player went away and a new girl came in with a new harmonium player.

She knelt in front of the exotic duo, and began humming gently. As the harmonium player trilled off a phrase or two of Jhinjhoti, she put one hand over her head in a vaguely danseuse like posture and opened her mouth. And an ear-shattering falsetto screeched into the night.

When the song ended the Chela wanted to know about the author of the ghazal. 'Qalaam kaun?' The Guru translated 'Yeh kiska ghazal?' The answer came with a flashing smile: the Chela jotted it down in all solemnity. Satisfied, he then stuffed a fifty-rupee note into the singer’s décolletage and the duo left.

The Chela remarked as they got into the car, 'I must find out who the poet was. The lyrics were pretty decent but I just cannot recall a poet, past or present, called Mohammed Rafi.'

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mere mehboob tujhe meri mohabbat ki qasam
Phir mujhe nargisi aankhon ka sahaara de de
Mera khoya hua rangeen nazaara de de

(Swear on my love, my beloved
Give me again the support of your eyes
Give me back the vividness, the colour of my lost vistas)

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - V

2008-05-13T04:00:00.003+05:30

[Continued from Part IV]

11. The End

In 1976, to the astonishment of everybody present, just after finishing a concert in Calcutta, Radhubabu announced that he was retiring from the professional arena! He then proceeded to unwrap a package from which appeared a set of printed sheets which he distributed to the audience. In these sheets was an explanation of the conditions under which he would, in future, perform: using wittily composed rhymed quatrains he explained that he would stop all broadcasting activities and would only play in small private gatherings of those who were particularly interested in his music.

Some months later when he was asked to explain the reasons behind his retirement, he said that he no longer felt like continuing with the rigorous schedule of riyaz (practice) that is essential to maintain ones skill levels. He said that this was particularly so since there were anyway few takers for his austere variety of music.

Retirement turned out to be a disastrous error of judgement for two Contradictory reasons. Radhubabu, who was famously disinterested in “pleasing mass audiences”, had nevertheless become addicted to the attention he received as a performer and soon began to crave for this “high”. As a result he went back on his promise not to give public concerts. Whenever requested by individuals, (like Amjad Ali Khan) for whom he had a particular fondness, he would oblige. But he was no longer the technical virtuoso he once had been and these reappearances did little to enhance his reputation.

On the other hand when he played for the smaller audiences he had in mind in his retirement statement, he showed a far mellower aspect of his musical personality: most listeners felt that if he had adopted such an approach during his professional heyday, he would probably never have experienced the feeling of neglect which led to his retirement.

Ironically the people of Calcutta at last woke up to the fact that a remarkable musical personality had been living in their midst. The matinee idol of Bengal, The late Uttam Kumar, organized a civic reception for him and many other organizations honoured him for this contributions to music in Bengal. But it was a bit too late to stem the rot.

During the last years of his life he was lonely and depressed. Some of his senior disciples had moved away from him others, while still faithful, were making a living outside Calcutta. His daughters had married and were far away, most of his close friends had passed away or were themselves too frail to come and visit him.

In July 1981 a small cyst was detected on his lower back. Though Dr Chandra, who removed it surgically, repeatedly told him that the growth was benign he became convinced that his “time was up!”

One morning in the first week of September his brother found him lying bleeding and unconscious at the door connecting his bedroom and bathroom. He had evidently taken a fall during the night and suffered a concussion. A scan revealed serious hemorrhaging in the brain.

He was operated upon but although he recovered consciousness and was soon speaking coherently, his condition slowly deteriorated and he passed away on the 15th of October, 1981. The neurosurgeon who had treated Radhubabu ruefully told Radhubabu’s daughter that his patient would certainly have survived had he not lost the will to live.

[Concluded]

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - IV

2008-05-12T04:00:00.001+05:30

[Continued from Part III]

8. Radhubabu Turns Pro

After Partition Radhubabu moved to Calcutta: he realized that there was no future for him in Rajshahi even though his father, Brajendra Mohan, clung to his life there. Because no property had been acquired in Calcutta, Radhubabu faced the prospect of life without the support of his ancestral riches. He started practicing Law in the courts in Calcutta as an Advocate. His degree in Law entitled him to do this but interlocutary practice was an activity he disliked even more than teaching at Rajshahi College. Gradually he realized that the only course open to him was to become a professional musician and for the first time began to charge fees for teaching nusic and performing in concerts.

The instinct of being a patron however did not go away completely. With his friend the great tabla player Jnan Prakash Ghosh, he started a music club where members paid a monthly fee and could attend concerts held at Jnan Prakash’s home in an atmosphere which approximated the ambience of a zamindar’s music room. Because the organizers were respected musicians and most of the audience true afficianados most performers would rise to great heights in the concerts they gave at the Jhankar Music Circle.

This institution survived almost unchanged till the middle of the sixties but thereafter changed character when a more “forward looking” management took over the running of the club. Such an organization cannot exist in the present day since monthly subscriptions of a few dozen music lovers will not suffice to cover the fees of even a moderately rated professional musician.

9. Radhubabu Enters the National Arena

In the 1950’s Hindustani Music received a new impetus from an unlikely source: the Government of India. After the first General elections in 1952 the Cabinet minister in charge of Information and Broadcasting was a music lover and Sanskrit scholar, B V Keskar. He had a somewhat grandiose vision of making classical music the choice of the masses and Sanskrit a language which everyone in India would use!

He started a new initiative of special broadcasts of classical music over All India Radio including the weekly Saturday night National Programme of Music and annual Radio Sangeet Sammelans (Music Conferences) held in various centres around India. Although most of Keskar’s other ideas like the banning of Bollywood music and the harmonium from All India Radio have been discontinued the National Programmes and Radio Sangeet Sammelans have endured.

The National Programmes had a major impact: they brought almost instant national recognition to several fine musicians who while highly regarded in their own regions were not known to the public all over India. Amongst the musicians who benefitted from such exposure were Radhubabu and a host of Marathi musicians like Gajanan Rao Joshi (a singer/violinist).

Within six months of Radhubabu’s first National Programme he was being invited to perform in Bombay, Amravati, Nagpur in Maharashtra and places like Indore and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. Such invitations continued almost throughout his professional career: as has been explained, Radhubabu felt more at ease amongst the audiences in Western India and probably gave a better account of himself at such venues.

There was a tradition in Maharashtra of listening to a single artiste for a whole night! As the performer for the soiree would sit down the senior members of the audience would declare that “We will only go after listening to Bhairavi” (a morning raga)! To lessen the burden of playing all night on these journeys Radhubabu often took with him young disciples like Buddhadev Dasgupta, Arun Chatterjee (Sitar) or Kalyan Mukherjea. He also on a few occasions took with him young promising tabla players like Shankar Ghosh and Shyamal Bose as accompanists. Thus not only did Radhubabu make his own music known but gave currency to the “Calcutta style of tabla playing . This style came to dominate the music scene in the sixties and seventies because both Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar used representatives of this style for accompanists in many of their recordings and concert tours.

10. The Years of Decline

By the middle of the fifties, Radhubabu had become an established figure in the Hindustani music scene. In the late fifties and sixties he was making concert appearances all over India and had a very large coterie of students. He had gotten over the trauma of Partition and was living a comfortable upper middle class existence, seemingly content with his life. His parents, for the most part, lived with him though Brajendra Mohan kept going back to Rajshahi in order to continue a legal battle seeking compensation from the Pakistani authorities for the estate he had lost.

An indication of Radhubabu’s satisfaction with his life during the fifties is that for the first time he, the arch-traditionalist, created new ragas and even a new instrument! The first of these ragas, ‘Lalitamanjari’ (dedicated to his wife) was perhaps the finest of his creations. The singer Pandit Chinmoy Lahiri adopted this raga, contracting the name to ‘Lalita’. (Lahiri’s disciple, Parween Sultana recorded this in one of her early LP albums and this preserved it for posterity.)

I mention a few more of his melodic creations most of these are named after his close friends:

‘Madanmanjari’ named after Dr. A. V. Madangopal, an eminent opthalmologist of Amravati;
‘Chandra Malhar’ created in honour of Dr. S. R. Chandra who will appear in our story a little later, and somewhat untypically;
‘Shahi Kanada’ created for a recital in the court of the late King Zaheer Shah of Afghanistan.

Starting in the early sixties Radhubabu turned his attention to the design of instruments. He modified a Sarod, by replacing the skin covering of the drum by a thin piece of wood, and replacing the knife-edge bridge of the Sarod with a wider bridge as in the Sitar. He christened it the ‘Mohan Veena’. In 1960 he devoted half of a National Programme to this instrument, playing an alap and a short gat in ‘Mian Malhar’. This was appropriate since the Mohan Veena sounded very much like a Sursringar — an instrument reserved for playing alap only.

Why did Radhubabu create this new instrument? Perhaps Radhubabu felt somewhat guilty that he never gave recitals on the Sursringar in spite of having learnt it from Dabir Khan and owning a beautiful instrument which had reputedly belonged to the great Ustad Mohammed Khan. He did design a few other instruments but these were not as successful as his experiment with the Mohan Veena.

Radhubabu’s cup seemed to be overflowing when he bought a comfortable house in Jadavpur, one of the Southern suburbs of Calcutta. For a person who “owned” an estate of several thousand square Kilometres, the necessity of having to live in rented premises must have been difficult, to say the least.Notwithstanding all the positive aspects of his life in the early sixties, a few perceptive observers noticed an undercurrent of dissatisfaction.

Radhubabu may have preferred music making to lecturing at Rajshahi College or practicing Law as a means of making a living, but never felt comfortable in his new position of a “peddler” of an Art of which he had been a patron. This strongly influenced his attitudes towards the music world and led to a gradual deterioration of his market appeal. He never approached any of the organizers in Calcutta asking them to feature him in concerts they arranged and indeed was often hostile towards them when they met him to negotiate terms. Also he never learned the artifices of playing to the galleries. If asked in concerts to play in a lighter vein (thumris or dhuns) he would acquiesce but on such occasions gave the impression of being bored.

This was particularly true when he was playing in Calcutta, his home base. As a result, though his appeal remained strong in Northern and Western India his appearances in Calcutta became less frequent. Though he never mentioned any such feelings, the fact that during the busy “music conference season” in Calcutta he would perform only occasionally must have been galling.

A steep decline began when one afternoon while on his way to teach a student, his car was hit by a truck and Radhubabu sufferred substantial injuries including broken ribs, a fractured collar bone and a dislocated shoulder. Fortunately one of the best orthopaedic surgeons in India, the late Dr S R Chandra, was a personal friend and he received first rate care and made a complete recovery in about six months. But this meant that he had to forgo all concert engagements, particularly the outstation ones. So music organizers all over India got to know that Radhubabu had suffered grievious injuries, but not that he had recovered completely!

Radhubabu prepared very carefully for the first concert he broadcast after his accident. It was a truly memorable performance: Shankar Ghosh recounted that he listened to the late night rendering of Chhaayaa-Bihag in the company of Ali Akbar Khan who remarked that he had not heard Radhubabu in such a lyrical mood for a very long time!

Radhubabu was hoping that the Radio Sangeet Sammelan concert in November 1962 would help restore his national reputation anew but the entire series of concerts were cancelled when the Sino-Indian border dispute led to a short but disastrous war in October. Naturally ’63 and ’64 were somewhat lean years. Another setback came when the Radio Sangeet Sammelan was cancelled in 1965 because of the Indo-Pak war. His concert appearances dropped sharply from this point.

During this time there were other disappointments. One of his senior disciples, Nemai Chand Dhar, passed away at an early age. another of his favourite disciples, Kalyan Mukherjea, went abroad to pursue an academic career. Kalyan’s style was perhaps closest to his own; Radhubabu’s mother often mistook Kalyan’s playing as her son’s! So while Radhubabu was happy about Kalyan’s scholastic achievements he was sorry to see him go away. In 1967 his mother to whom he was very close died and perhaps his most loving and stern critic was no more!

By this time the first generation of bureaucrats who had controlled All India Radio and had brought Radhubabu into the limelight were being replaced by new faces and Radhubabu, of course, made little effort to cultivate a personal relationship with these new “baboos”. As a result National Programme broadcasts declined in frequency and his market shrank even further.

By the early seventies Radhubabu had become somewhat bitter about the small measure of recognition he was receiving. Even the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1972 failed to revive his spirits substantially. Early in 1973 his wife, who had been ailing from a cardiac problem for many years, finally passed away. This was followed by the untimely death of his dear friend, Justice A K Mukherjea. At that time Radhubabu wrote to the judge’s widow that he felt alone in the world and no longer felt enthused about music.

[Continued in Part V]

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - III

2008-05-11T04:00:00.002+05:30

[Continued from Part II]

5. Radhubabu in his Prime

In 1939 Radhubabu was studying for a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cacutta University and also enrolled in the University College of Law preparing for a Bachelor’s degree in Law. Hewas living in Calcutta in a modest lodging house for men. This was because Brajendra Mohan stubbornly refused to acquire property in Calcutta for fear that his children would lose touch with Rajshahi, leading to the neglect of the estate, particularly the temple of the family deity.

Radhubabu would return to Rajshahi whenever the University was in recess and for special occasions, most notably, the annual meeting of the Aashaaray Club, an informal gathering of friends of the Maitra family who celebrated the onset of the monsoons in the month of Aashaar (the middle of June) by holding a musical soiree , generally lasting all night, for which only the very distinguished of musicians would be invited to perform.

Around this time he went through an unusually fecund period of “music making”. Many of his best bandishes stem from the years ’39 to ’42. Some of them soon entered the corpus of what are called purani cheezen or “traditional items”. One of the reasons for this misconception (apart from the quality of the compositions) was that many of them were played in concerts by Vilayat Khan. (It is worth pointing out that usually Hindustani musicians play compositions from other gharanas (schools) only if they are seventy-five to a hundred years old. But Radhubabu and Vilayat Khan had come to an agreement that they would freely perform bandishes from one another’s repertoire.)

Because Radhubabu’s social credentials were impeccable, he began to attract a very large number of students from genteel Bengali families, some of them chronologically many years his senior. One such “older student”, the late Anil Roy Chaudhuri became a self appointed amanuensis and started making notations of Radhubabu’s compositions and later extended this to notating the traditional bandishes of Amir Khan and what Radhubabu would consider appropriate embellishments (taans) for these bandishes.

These notations preserved in huge ledger books was to become the very basis of Radhubabu’s method of teaching his disciples. Once the new student had learnt how to hold and tune the instrument and to play the basic scales, each lesson would begin with Radhubabu asking the student to copy from the appropriate ledger the bandish of a particular raga and some taans which he would specify by their number in the ledger. After the lesson had been copied Radhubabu would show the student how to execute the various musical phrases, if necessary, by playing them himself.

This might sound like an assembly line approach to teaching what is an “ancient musical tradition” but it was an extremely effective method. In mastering these rote exercises, his students would not only develop technical sills but also subliminally acquire “good musical taste” and an insight into the nature of the raga. This accounts for the fact that Radhubabu produced dozens of Sitar and Sarod students who, even if they were not brilliant concert performers, were capable of giving a satisfactory rendering of a basic corpus of thirty or forty ragas. Most importantly they were capable of imparting their own knowledge and skills onto a new generation of students.

6. A New Age Dawns

In the late thirties and early forties, Hindustani music was entering a “golden age”. In 1939 the organizers of the All Bengal Music Conference in Calcutta, faced a peculiar dilemma. A sarangi player, who regularly accompanied the great thumri singer, Begum Akhtar, requested an hour or so of time to present his own vocal recital!

He claimed to be descended from a legendary nineteenth century vocalist who had never given public concerts in Calcutta. After some hesitation, they gave him a slot during a usually sparsely attended afternoon session and were rewarded by a magnificent rendering of Shuddha Sarang; this was the first public concert given by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan!

In 1940 Ravi Shankar gave his first concert in Calcutta, soon to be followed by Ali Akbar Khan and Vilayat Khan. The emergence of these four “debutants” marked the beginning of a new era. Let us return to Radhubabu’s story.

7. Radhubabu in the Forties

After completing his education Radhubabu returned to Rajshahi and took up a position as Lecturer in the Philosophy Department of Rajshahi College. Lecturing however was not his cup of tea! Perhaps to alleviate the boredom of life in Rajshahi, Radhubabu decided to contest the municipal elections in Rajshahi as a candidate of the Congress party. He won the election easily, but more importantly, this foray into politics led to the acquisition of his most illustrious disciple.

In 1942 a new civil servant had come to Rajshahi to oversee the administration on behalf of the government. This new officer was an amateur musician and wished to get to know Radhubabu. However being a civil servant of the British administration he felt it would not be proper for him to visit the local zamindar: after all, part of his job was to oversee the activities of the feudal tax collector. Through an intermediary, he sent invitations to Radhubabu to visit his home and play but Radhubabu being a Congressman refused to visit a “British agent”.

However during the election campaign, the proprietor of a business enterprise, who could influence a large number of employees agreed to bring a substantial block of votes to Radhubabu if Radhubabu would help him get an extra quota of sugar. (This was during the War and sugar was rigidly rationed.) So Radhubabu agreed to visit the government official and play for him. Not only did the official grant the quota of sugar Radhubabu was looking for, but P. M. Dasgupta became a close friend and his son Buddhadev became a disciple in 1943.

Since it was difficult to get hold of a new Sarode in Rajshahi, Radhubabu loaned this new student the sarode which had belonged to Amir Khan.It was only 6 years later when Buddhadev started his training as an engineer, that he acquired his own instrument and returned the ancient heirloom to Radhubabu.

In july 1944, Radhubabu married Lalita Sinha a lady from the “royal family” of Sushang. The occasion was marked by great festivities in Rajshahi. A significant little incident bears mention. In Bengal weddings are always associated with the Shehnai: usually at the entrance of the house a small raised platform (the nahobat) is constructed where a team of shehnai players sit and for each stage of the proceedings render appropriate ragas.

Of course, such an arrangement had been made in the Rajshahi palace but to the consternation of the Maitra household, Ustad Bismillah Khan, who had been invited to participate at a soiree due to be held later, insisted on ascending the platform to do the “shehnai players’ job”! He even paid off the local musician who had been hired to play the shehnai saying that for the occasion of his friend’s wedding he would
not concede the right to perform nahobat to anyone else!

Sadly this was the last great festive occasion celebrated in Rajshahi: three years later with Independence (which in Bengal also brought in its wake the Partition) the entire fabric of Radhubabu’s life was torn apart.

[Continued in Part IV]

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - II

2008-05-10T04:00:00.003+05:30

[Continued from Part I]

3. Radhubabu and Calcutta in the 1930’s

When Amir Khan passed away, Radhika Mohan faced the difficult decision: how was he to further his musical education? The two great contemporary masters of the sarod lived far away in Central India and although both of them had met Radhika Mohan during their visits to Rajshahi, neither had heard Radhika Mohan play the Sarod. As far as they were concerned Radhika Mohan was just the eldest scion of the zamindar of Rajshahi. When Radhika Mohan visited them individually, expressing a desire to become a disciple, they treated him very graciously; they addressed him as “Radhubabu” in deference to his feudal status, but neither seemed to be interested in teaching him.

One of them suggested that Radhubabu learn from a Calcutta based student of his since this would obviate the necessity of long journeys. The other maestro told him that he first needed to have an accurate idea of the annual income of the Rajshahi estate so that an appropriate scale of nazarana (remuneration) could be determined. The young Radhubabu was no fool and simply made polite noises and left.

After coming back to Calcutta, for he had now joined Presidency College, he sought the advice of many well wishers and finally decided to become a disciple of Mohammed Dabir Khan, a Veena player of the Seniya gharana (school) who was a direct descendant of Tansen, the court musician in Akbar’s durbar. Radhubabu studied alap, dhrupad, dhamar and later the technique of Sursringar from Dabir Khan for more than 12 years.

Radhubabu’s music now began to develop in unexpected ways, quite independently of his formal talim (training) under Dabir Khan, simply because he was now living in a major metropolitan city. It might be useful at this point to pause and give a brief thumbnail sketch of the ambience of Hindustani music in Calcutta at this time.

4. Calcutta’s Culture in the 1930’s

Calcutta was culturally and intellectually a vibrant city: Rabindranath and Raman the first two Indian Nobel laureates had been based in Calcutta and the intelligentsia had become aware of the enormous possibilities which would open up upon doing work that met the highest international standards.

However Hindustani music was not regarded as “high art” perhaps because of its association with the decadent lifestyle of the last Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah, who lived in the outskirts of the city in the last years of his life. Cultivation of classical music was confined to the mansions of the landed gentry (zamindars like the Tagores) and the newly rich business houses (like the Mullicks of “Marble Palace” fame).

What music flourished outside these aristocratic premises was scattered in enclaves of Muslim neighbourhoods like Metiaburuz, where the musicians who were part of Wajid Ali Shah’s entourage had taken up lodgings after the Nawab’s death. Amir Khan would stay in such a neighbourhood during his visits to Calcutta. Most importantly, the middle classes did not in any significant fashion involve themselves with Hindustani music.

The case of D T Joshi, a young boy from an upper middle class Brahmo family , who was to become a close friend of Radhubabu, illustrates the situation very poignantly. Joshi got interested in music because he used to go past a sitar-maker’s shop on his way to and from school. He started learning Sitar from the only teacher who was available — the owner of the shop. One day he was introduced by his sitar-maker cum teacher to a bearded gentleman who the sitar maker said was the best sitar player alive. The young boy Joshi innocently asked this gentleman if he could play jhala, a technique the shopkeeper refused to teach him! The gentleman smiled and invited Joshi to come to a concert he was giving that evening. Joshiji would later say that his whole life changed when he heard Inayet Khan that evening! Joshiji was to become one of Inayet Khan’s most favoured and distinguished students.

I have recounted this incident to bring home the point that classical music was an esoteric and “forbidden art” . In Calcutta at that time a College student from an upper middle class family could order books from Heffers’ of Cambridge or Blackwell’s of Oxford, but could find a good Sitar teacher only through the unlikeliest of coincidences!

Radhubabu’s first concert in Calcutta also is illustrative of the ambience in which Hindustani music was practiced in those days. Radhubabu had been invited by a member of the famous Ganguly family to play in an evening concert where two other Ganguly family members, Shyam (on the Sarod) and Hirendranath (on the tabla) would be performing.

When the concert ended and Radhubabu was about to leave the venue, he was greeted loudly by a ruffianly looking fellow who congratulated him for playing a concert worthy of a disciple of Ustad Amir Khan. The man explained that Amir Khan when he came to Calcutta lived in his neighbourhood and that he regarded Amir Khan “like my own ustad”. So he had brought along his “comrades” to make sure that Radhubabu was not heckled by the followers of a rival Sarod maestro from whom Shyam Ganguly was then learning!

It is my conviction that this encounter made a very deep and negative impression upon the young Radhubabu. He never quite overcame his distaste for the concert scene in Calcutta and much preferred the more scholarly and genteel Marathi Brahmin audiences he encountered in Maharashtra.

Radhubabu’s musical horizons were widening all the time. He recorded a few short pieces for the Megaphone Company of India in 1936. these 78 RPM recordings show that already he was trying to break new ground as far as the idiom of the Sarod was concerned. Features, like tans modeled upon khayal, which he would not have learnt from Dabir Khan,were showing brief glimpses. Clearly the more eclectic variety of music he was now hearing was influencing him!

Soon he started broadcasting over the newly established Calcutta station of the All India Radio and people in other places started taking notice.Apparently the great Allauddin Khan once called his son and daughter over to the radio and chided them with words to the effect “See how a zamindar’s son plays “di ri di ri” (a typical set of sarod strokes) — surely you ought to be much better than him!” The two maestros who had turned him away started to send out feelers to Radhubabu that all he needed to do now is come and get a “final coat of polish” and both of them were more than eager to have him in their stable of disciples.

In 1937 Radhubabu decided to enter a music competition sponsored by the All India Music Conference of Allahabad. Not only was he judged the best sarod player but the best competitor in all sections and invited to give a recital during the Conference. In fact he got further exposure when Allauddin Khan who was scheduled to play with his son, Ali Akbar Khan asked Radhubabu to accompany him since Ali Akbar was indisposed.

In those days the musicians who participated in this Conference were housed in large and elaborately furnished tents by the riverside: one tent to each artist and throughout the day musicians would visit one another chatting, gossiping and interacting cordially. So Radhubabu became known to almost all the contemporary music stalwarts not just as the son of a zamindar but as a talented young Sarod player who could hold his own amongst professional musicians. Radhubabu had arrived!

[Continued in Part III]

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - I

2008-05-09T04:00:00.010+05:30

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times

- Kalyan Mukherjea

1. Introduction

Radhika Mohan Maitra (1917–1981), popularly known as Radhubabu, was one of the finest sarod players of his generation. Perhaps more interestingly, he lived through a period of unprecedented change both in Indian society and Hindustani music. Hindustani music, the way it is perceived by society and the way it is propagated changed enormously during Radhubabu’s lifetime. Not only was his career affected by these changes, his career had an enormous effect upon how the general public and the community of musicians perceived one another.

This biographical essay attempts to convey an impression of the spirit of the times in which Radhubabu developed as a musician; many small anecdotes, not important for an account of Radhubabu’s life, have been recounted since they throw light upon an era of which hardly any trace remains.

This essay is based upon my recollection of conversations with Radhubabu and some of his closest friends. I have checked the biographical details with Radhubabu’s daughter, Ms. Sudeshna Bagchi but, of course, any errors are solely my responsibility.

2. The Early Years

The appellation “Radhubabu” comes from ”Radhu” , a dimunitive form for “Radhika” and the honorific suffix ”babu”, which is something like the Japanese “san” or Hindustani “ji”. Since the use of “babu” while referring to a young boy or teenager is somewhat inappropriate, I have in describing Radhubabu’s early years, preferred to use his name.

Radhika Mohan was the eldest son of Rai Bahadur Brajendra Mohan Maitra whose father Lalit Mohan was the zamindar (feudal adminstrator) of a large estate whose main centre was the town of Rajshahi. (Rajshahi is now located in Bangladesh, just across the Indian border is Maldah in West Bengal.)

The zamindars lived on the income accruing from the taxes they collected from their estates, this right had been granted them in the late 18th century by the East India Company, the first British colonial adminstrators of India.

The zamindars were often addressed as “raja” or “maharaja” depending on the size and prosperity of their estate. They lived with as many of the trappings of royalty as they fancied and could afford. Thus zamindars who enjoyed music often employed masters of Hindustani classical music as “court musicians”.Indeed they were largely responsible, through their patronage, for the preservation of Hindustani classical music after royal patronage at the Mughal court declined during and after Aurangzeb’s reign.

One of the court musicians in Rajshahi during the 1920’s and 30’s was the Sarod player Ustad Mohammed Amir Khan of Shahjahanpur who was Radhika Mohan’s first teacher. Another musician who had a profound influence on Radhika Mohan during his early years was the great Sitar player Ustad Inayet Hussain Khan whose son the late Vilayat Khan was a dominant figure in the Hindustani Music scene in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Inayet Khan was the court musician at the estate of Gauripur the seat of the Roychoudhuris — a great patron of music and friend of the senior Maitra. In fact not only were the two patrons friends, but Amir Khan and Inayet Khan had a warm personal relationship. According to Radhubabu, Inayet Khan would, in private, refer to Amir Khan as ”chachamiyan” or uncle! Moreover, in an era when aristocratic ladies largely stayed in their own quarters, Radhika Mohan’s mother, Binapani, had become a disciple of Enayet Khan.

It was fairly common for one or more members of the patron’s family to become students of the musician-in-residence; generally these “noble disciples” did not exert themselves strenuously to master the music, although some exceptions did occur. For instance Birendra Kishore Roychoudhuri of Gauripur was a sursringar player who was greatly respected, even by professional musicians, for his musical accomplishment.

A younger cousin of the senior Maitra used to take lessons from Amir Khan, but hardly ever exerted hinself and was making little progress when the young Radhika Mohan got fascinated with the instrument and whenevr the opportunity arose, tried to imitate the lessons his elder cousin neglected to practice. One day Amir Khan saw the small boy trying to play the Sarod and approached Brajendra Mohan with the proposal that Radhika Mohan become his disciple.

The senior Maitra was not too keen about this but Amir Khan was greatly respected in the Maitra householdand his requests could not be summarily rejected. More importantly, Binapani was very keen that Radhika Mohan acquire some background in music. So Brajendra Mohan relented though he extracted a promise from the ustad that the youngster’s studies will not be compromised by his music lessons. Radhika Mohan started formal lessons from Amir Khan in 1928.

Since the teacher and student were more or less under the same roof, lessons were delivered orally by singing and later by exhortations to imitate as the ustad played. Radhubabu, in later years, followed the same method with his own disciples, except that the newer generation of learners had to copy down notations of the “lesson of the week”, so that a fading of memory would not hamper all progress for a whole week.

The relationship between Amir Khan and Radhika Mohan must have been somewhat unusual: Radhika Mohan addressed his teacher as “ustad” and Amir Khan when teaching him would address him as “beta” (son) but if Radhika Mohan addressed a request, Amir Khan would start his response with “huzoor” (sir) as befitted an employee speaking to his feudal lord!

Amir Khan’s hunch that Radhika Mohan possessed a certain natural musical talent was soon vindicated when Radhika Mohan began to make rapid progress. On one occasion when Inayet Khan had come to perform at a concert in Rajshahi, he heard Radhika Mohan and as a gesture of his appreciation of the young boy’s talent, sought Amir Khan’s permission to teach Radhika Mohan a few of his choice compositions. Many generations of Radhubabu’s students have learnt some of these “bandishes” (compositions) from the notations made by Radhika Mohan in his voluminous ledger books in which he kept record of his lessons. This warm relationship between Amir Khan and Inayet Khan was carried over into the next generation: Radhubabu and Vilayat Khan were close friends.

There were other musical stimuli which Radhika Mohan experienced. Because of Brajendra Mohan’s interest, many concerts were held in Rajshahi and musicians, both professional and scholarly amateurs, were frequent visitors. From one person from the latter category, Shree Bhagavan Sen , a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Radika Mohan received his first lessons in Dhrupad singing and playing the Pakhawaj.

It should be mentioned that although the court musicians were employees of the zamindars, Amir Khan was not always in Rajshahi nor Inayet Khan in Gauripur. They had the freedom to go and play concerts at other “courts” or in metropolitan cities and Amir Khan would go every year to Calcutta for several months on end. During these visits he gave concerts and taught a large number of students, at least one of them, Timir Baran later achieved popularity as a composer and concert musician.

During his visit to Calcutta in 1934, Amir Khan fell ill and passed away. Radhika Mohan who had just matriculated from High School, rushed over to Calcutta upon hearing that his ustad was ailing but by the time he arrived the ustad had already been buried. More heart-breakingly for Radhika Mohan the ustad’s instrument, which had belonged to the 19th century sarodiya Murad Ali Khan (Amir Khan’s grandfather) had disappeared! It would be many years before Radhubabu would recover this ancient and beautiful instrument. One of his most distinguished disciples, Buddhadev Dasgupta, played on this instrument for the first six years of his musical career.

[Continued in Part II]

Announcement: Prof Kalyan Mukherjea

2008-05-08T10:43:00.004+05:30

I cannot express how difficult it has been to write this post. It's not just that news of this magnitude does not occur every day. It's also the elation, the excitement, that I want to share. Team member Arnab showed this blog to his mentor Prof Kalyan Mukherjea, 'Kalyanda' to friends and acolytes. And Kalyanda was so appreciative of our efforts that he agreed to contribute his own writings!

This is all the more significant because Kalyanda is not an easy man to please. He has himself consistently striven towards the highest standards of academic and aesthetic integrity, and brooks little compromise in others as well. And that he has chosen to identify with us implies that he approves of at least intention behind our endeavour. Welcome aboard Kalyanda, this is a truly memorable occasion for us youngsters!

I wish I could say "Prof Kalyan Mukherjea, of course, needs no introduction". Sadly that is not the case, he does require an introduction for most people. And that he does is surely a telling commentary on our times. Kalyanda is one of those rare individuals who have made authoritative contributions in in two distinct areas. People with a fraction of his accomplishments in even one field tend to become Page 3 fixtures. And yet he remains largely unknown to the public, deriving contentment from his vocations rather than the recognition they have brought him.

Kalyanda is by training and profession a mathematician. He studied at Cambridge and Cornell, taught at UCLA for some time before shifting to the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. In addition, he has been involved with Indian classical music from a very early age, and has studied under the likes of Pt Radhikamohan Maitra (Radhubabu) and Pt D T Joshi. Indeed, his approach to music is a consequence as much of the tutelage he received as of his own temperament.

Radhubabu was a singular figure in the annals of our music. Though a scion of a prosperous Zamindar family, he was no dilettante and could hold his own against any professional musician of that era. In addition, he was an articulate, erudite man with degrees in both philosophy and law. His highly evolved intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities instilled in him an impressive grasp over both theoretical and practical aspects of music. This is a rare combination, and one he has passed on to his disciple as well.

It is not surprising that Kalyanda's grasp over theory is considerable. Anyone of his academic outlook inevitably and naturally tends towards a theoretical understanding of music. However, his extant recordings also reveal a superbly developed musician in the technical and performative sense. His technical proficiency differs from the aggressive if empty speed-binges that are becoming the norm these days. Rather it is understated, and subordinated to the cerebral and aesthetic requirements of our music.

In 1995, he suffered a paralytic stroke that effectively ended his career as a performer, and restricted his involvement with music to teaching and research. By his own admission, his concert engagements prior to his stroke were few. His brand of music had no place in today's musical world, neither did his dogged refusal to appease market demands.

Our friend Mandar Mitra has uploaded a few of his recordings here. In addition, an autobiographical essay may be accessed at this link. Kalyanda's begins his contribution to this blog with a lengthy biographical article on his mentor Pt Radhika Mohan Maitra published in several parts. We hope this will be followed by many, many more.

Review: Deepak Raja, Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition (2005)

2008-04-23T23:16:00.003+05:30

Deepak Raja, Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition (Delhi: DK Printworld, 2005) 432 + xxiii pages

Review by Abhik Majumdar

(an edited version of this article originally appeared in 'The Book Review', August 2007)

Deepak Raja’s book is a very interesting, somewhat idiosyncratic compilation of articles. Reviewing it poses a challenge, as it escapes the usual taxonomic classification for writings on the subject. It is clearly not a scholarly work in the formal sense. As is the case with most compilations, the various topics it encompasses cover too broad a spectrum to merit the cohesiveness one associates with academic treatises. Moreover, though some footnotes and other references have been provided, they are sparse and infrequent.

On the other hand, characterising it as a compilation of journalistic essays will be inaccurate. It bears a depth of perception and analysis seldom found in such works, or indeed anywhere else. Moreover, unlike usual collections of short essays, this book seems to have been compiled with a definite, clear-cut objective in mind.

Indeed, so intriguing is Raja’s perspective that it makes more sense to focus on this than to chart out a conventional review. The author makes use of the rather provocative phrase ‘connoisseur activism’ to describe his agenda, which is very apt. Another approach is to treat the book as a response, a quintessentially Indian response, to certain (may I suggest, Western-inspired?) scholarly practices.

The discipline of ethnomusicology is traditionally anchored to a ‘cultural outsider’ approach. Its discourses begin with the assumption that the author has no specialist knowledge as such, and conducts his research using objectively verifiable methods and processes accessible to everyone.

Raja’s methods effectively amount to an inversion of this. In the introduction, he sets out his conception of the writer’s role: ‘A writer is, after all, nothing but a connoisseur who has decided to share his understanding with other connoisseurs. And, as such, he is part of the watchdog mechanism, which keeps art faithful to its elevating (sic) ideals.’

Thus he locates the author firmly within the cultural tradition on which the book bases itself. He assumes both author and audience to be ‘insiders’ to the tradition; indeed, the book is not likely to make sense to someone unfamiliar to it. Furthermore, Raja ascribes to the author the specialist knowledge reserved for initiates within the tradition.

Often, his pronouncements seem to be bare assertions unverified and unsubstantiated by external corroboration. Such an appraisal is misleading. His views are intended to make sense to only those who possess a familiarity with the subject-matter, and often it happens that this ‘making sense’ constitutes substantiation enough for ‘insider’ audiences, a fact that those unfamiliar with the milieu may fail to appreciate.

An example may bear this out. In the essay entitled ‘Archival Music and the Cultural Process’, he discusses the impact of sound recording on our musical tradition. In the course of this, he makes the startling pronouncement, ‘The guru sisya parampara was not very different from a reliance on pre-recorded music in its explicit intent.’ He goes on to point out that this pedagogical tradition invested considerable time and effort to ensure that the disciple emerged as a faithful clone of the mentor.

Fortunately, three human failings prevented this from being successful: imperfect perception, imperfect retention, and imperfect reproduction. As a result of these three, gaps in the disciple’s learning emerged over time, gaps which he was obliged to fill by interpolating his own ideas within the framework of the mentor’s tutelage. And in this manner, a modicum of originality was infused within the tradition. As Raja himself puts it, ‘Because of these imperfections, the traditional system became an effective instrument of continuity within change.’

I cannot imagine how such an insight can be empirically verified. Indeed, seeking objectively substantiate it approximates an exercise in futility. And yet the history or our music is filled with instances of talented musicians being denied recognition as artistes of the first rank, simply because they sounded too close to a Gharana forbearer. Hence, to those familiar with this background, Raja’s assertions make perfect sense; moreover, for them, substantiation in the conventional academic manner is neither necessary nor even useful.

The book is divided into five parts: viz. Culture, Terminology and Economics; Form, Idiom and Format; The World of Ragas; The Major Genres; and The Major Instruments. While all the parts conform to a uniformly high standard of exposition, to me personally, the first chapter is of especial value. Here the author deals with how our music relates to various social, economic and technical developments. In the chapter entitled ‘If Peanuts is What You Pay’, he even uses his background in finance to analyse how market forces have actually promoted a deterioration in musical quality:

The sums add up because of the role of the two dominant intermediaries in the music market: the recording companies, and concert sponsors. They are both playing a progressively larger financial role in the music market – without having either the need or the desire to promote quality music.

In the second part, the author examines musical practices such as Jugalbandis and the use of the Tihai (a threefold repetition of a short musical phrase designed to fill a specific number of beats). As it is, his opinions are forcefully expressed; in this part they tend towards the subjective at times.

The third part is also very interesting. Here, Raja examines certain aspects of the concept of Raga. In ‘Raga Chemistry and Beyond’, he draws parallels between Ragas and concepts of hemistry. Surely an original approach, though how far the parallels are borne out is a pertinent question. On the other hand, ‘Kedara at Sunrise’, where he debunks many commonly-held myths about the time theory of Ragas, is unquestionably a piece of analysis of the highest order.

The last two parts are keyed to more functional objectives. The inside flap describes them as respectively presenting ‘comprehensive backgrounders on the four major genres of vocal music’ and featuring ‘detailed factsheets on eight major melodic instruments of the Hindustani tradition.’

Here, more than his analytical insights it is his familiarity with the nuances of the subject matter that is manifest. In the chapter on the Rudra Veena, for example, he touches upon an astonishing range of topics, including mythical lore; historical antecedents; organology; instrument design; ergonomics; acoustics; and recent performers. These chapters surely constitute valuable resource material, notwithstanding the paucity of external references.

Another thing that stands out is his integrity. For example, he himself belongs to the school of Vilayat Khan the Sitar maestro. However, when discussing the origins of the Surbahar, whose creation has been variously ascribed to Sahebdad Khan (the maestro’s great-grandfather) and Ghulam Mohammed of Lucknow, he freely admits, ‘The latest research favours the latter attribution.’

All in all, it cannot be denied that the book marks an exciting new approach to writing on Hindustani music. To be honest, it is not without its drawbacks. At certain times the forcefulness and candour of Raja’s expression might give the impression of being opinionated. But when one attempts such a strongly individualistic work, I suppose this is only inevitable. In any case, it does not mar the overall excellence of the book.

However, I feel compelled to end with a caveat: A significant part of the book, especially the earlier chapters, presumes a prior familiarity with the subject matter on the part of the audience. For this reason, despite the author’s easy writing style, some parts of the work may not be accessible to laypersons.

Random Thoughts on Composers

2008-04-22T16:28:00.003+05:30

While compositions are integral to classical music, composers are often neglected. I noticed the irony at a concert of Smt. Kalapini Komkali when she announced before beginning that she would be singing a composition of her fathers and after, a traditional bandish. The traditional bandish was a composition of Sadarang whose name is clearly sung as part of the song. Wouldn't it be better to say "a traditional bandish of Sadarang's"?

Considering how ubiquitous Sadarang's compositions are in the classical repertoire, I was surprised that there didn't seem to exist any analysis or listing of his compositions. I recently came across an excellent book published in 2000 that does just that, Hindustani sangit ke mahan rachnakar Sadarang Adarang by Shailendra Kumar Goswami. I have been surprised that many musicians I know were unaware of it.

A few years ago the Gundas Sangeet Sammelan here in Mumbai celebrated their anniversary (was it their 50^th?), with an impressive line-up at Shanmukananda Hall. Although in honor of "Gunidas", Jagannathbua Purohit, one of the greatest composers of recent times, no one made an effort to sing any of his compositions, not even C.R. Vyas, one of his main disciples. Ironically, the night I chose not to attend and instead went locally to hear Aarti Ankalekar she sang Gunidas's famous compositions in Jogkauns.

How many of you are familiar with Abdul Rehman Khan? He was the guru of Nirmala Devi, Lakshmi Shankar, and others including Mahendra Kapoor and Parveen Sultana for a short time. He was also the composer of many, if not all of the thumris sung by Nirmala Devi and Lakshmi Shankar on their LP masterpieces of Punjabi style singing. He also composed one of Shobha Gurtu's most popular thumris, "chod gaya sajan mera". He was a colorful personality and used to record at A.I.R. under the name A.R. Kumar.

Although arguably the most successful composer of thumris since Bindadin Maharaj, he is forgotten today. Even by people who ought to have remembered him. The other day I read an interview of Nirmala Devi's son, the Bollywood star Govinda. There he recalled his mother's guru's name was Abdul Karim Khan!

In public performances, singers often mention the composer's name when it is someone the public is familiar with (Kumar Gandharva, Ramashreya Jha, Balwant Rai Bhatt, S.N.Ratananjankar etc.), but not necessarily for Daras Piya, Sanad Piya, etc. A.I.R. broadcasts do not provide the space for any announcement of the composer, unfortunately.

I particularly like the way Smt. Veena Sahasrabudde announces and recites the lyrics with her impeccable diction before singing. Birju Maharaj has kept Bindadin's thumris alive most beautifully, but hundreds of bandsish thumris notated in the "thumri sangraha" and other books have become extinct, as have the hundreds of bandishes from Manikbua Thakurdas's books and Gokhale gharana bandishes. Thanks to the labor of love of K.G. Ginde we have the collection of S.N. Ratanjankar's compositions in "Abhinav Geet Manjiri" and the recordings of all the compositions done by Gindeji is likely to be commercially available sometime.

Very nice collections of bandishes with recordings have been done by Dinkar Kaikini, Ashwini Bhide Deshpande, Babarao Haldankar and Leela Karanbelkar (Gunidas compositions). Also expected are collections of bandishes of Khadim Hussain Khan and Sharad Chandra Arolkar. As a student of music, I am so grateful to all these great people who have continued in the tradition of the great Pt. Bhatkhande.

Review: Mashkoor Ali Khan, New Jersey Concert (1999)

2008-04-13T00:11:00.008+05:30

Concert: Mashkoor Ali Khan - Princeton Junction, New Jersey - 29 October 1999

Review by Chetan Vinchhi

Mashkoor Ali Khan has enviable Kirana pedigree. But his 1999 concert in New Jersey belied his roots. The air was agog with excitement at the prospect of hearing a direct descendent of Kirana gharana pioneers Abdul Karim Khan and Abdul Wahid Khan. But what does air know, huh? This is a partial review of his performance.

Well past the due time, Mashkoor Ali Khan tuned the tanpura and the surmandal, flanked on his left by Anand Gopal Bandopadhyay on the tabla and on his right by Jyoti Goho on the harmonium. As he casually plucked the surmandal, the Kalyan scale emerged. He started a brief alaap in Marubihag, a good choice for the opening item! This was the first time I was hearing him. His voice has a pleasant texture. Everything kosher so far.

The brief alaap morphed into the the canonical 'rasiya maane naa'. For the first few minutes, the raag structure was held together by the mukhada itself. After that, the mutilation began. There was no palpable design to the raaga presentation. The customary Kirana treatment of sur was conspicuous by its absence. There was a lot of sargam gayaki. In fact almost all his melodic gestures comprised of sargam! The lack of structure was reinforced by the way the taar shadaj was hurled rather gracelessly at us.

The antara was not even sung and there was no development of the antara ang and the laya increased. The faster laya gave MAK the opportunity to diplay some fearsome 'fast-fast' sargam taans. The whole aural spectacle was akin to a WWF wrestling match. And MAK was all over the poor swaras. Thus ended the baDa khayal without any aakaar taans whatsoever!

The chhoTa khayal was just a teentaal version of the latter part of the vilambit. The only faint saving grace was MAK's better facility with the drut laya. Finally, thankfully, the raag ended, the drut also without the antara being sung. Quite easily the worst Marubihag I have had the misfortune of hearing.

The second piece started with drut ektaal tarana in what was intended to be Desh. This is such an evocative melody, but the singer could not summon the romance. Chhayaas of various raags flitted in and out of the presentation, quite possibly accidentally.

We were truly in the presence of greatness that evening. Halfway through the Desh, Vilayat Khansahib walked in. Things came to a standstill as everybody recognized him. After he had settled down, the artists asked for his ijaazat to sing and continued the tarana. Most of the development here too was in the form of sargam. By now, this was par for the course. This was followed by a bandish in ati-drut jhaptaal. This was my first exposure to the taal at that laya in a classical context and I must say it sounds quite nice.

In the brief interval, Vilayat Khan-sahib was seen chatting with the artists. I fantasized about this being a spot tutorial in Desh and allied melodies!

The second half began with Darbari. It was unfortunate that the singer had already spent considerable time in the upper registers and his voice refused to go back to the mandra swaras. I think he attempted the andolit mandra dhaivat once, but could not summon it with any authority. He never revisited the swara. In the subsequent boltaan, there was a brief andolan on the rishabh! There were such excesses galore for the remaining duration of the vilambit.

The general behavioral pattern was along the lines of what had transpired in the Marubihag. Two chhota khayals followed, one in drut teentaal bandish and one in ati-drut jhaptaal bandish (another one!). That was the end of the evening as far as I was concerned. Strains of a Khamaj thumri echoed through the house as we were leaving.

Anand Gopal Bandopadhyay was excellent on the tabla. Even his thekas sounded ever so sweet. His accompaniment was exemplary. Jyoti Goho on the harmonium was quite mediocre. His fingerwork was a little sticky. And was it just an illusion that he first introduced the chhaya of Tilak Kamod in the Desh presentation?

Mashkoor Ali Khan has a cultured voice. His range (especially on the higher side) is very good - he could go to the ati-taar shadaj. But that day's performance betrayed a serious lack of tayyari or at least riyaz.

He attempted a few aakaar taans, but his voice simply wouldn't move, although his head did the requisite oscillations. I think he completed the evening without a single respectable taan! His sense of laya is a little shaky in the vilambit (e.g. he invented the 'chauthaa_ii' in the Darbari baDa khayal). He is a lot more comfortable in the faster laya.

If raagdari is defined as the ability to paint a convincing picture of raaga, he was severly lacking in that department. Perhaps he was just having a bad day, but everything was going wrong and he seemed to be blissfully unaware. If I were to pass judgment based on this performance, he has squandered the heritage of an illustrious lineage.

Review: Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music (2005)

2008-04-09T11:12:00.006+05:30

Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005) 338 + xvi pages

Review by James Stevenson

(an edited version of this article is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the 'Journal of Indian Musicology')

This book had been recommended to me and i was eager to read it. It was though a disappointment and following are the reasons why. I believe this review is coming out in the coming issue of the Journal of Indian Musicology. I don't know about the rest of you but I object to recent history being hijacked by high-flying American academics like the author of this book. I do not belong to their club and do not speak their impenetrable p.c. lingo. I suppose we ignorants do not understand the post-modernist construct or whatever it is called. I made an effort to be generous and appreciative too of the good things in the book.

At the turn of the twentieth century fundamental changes were taking place in the patronage and performance of North Indian classical music. Two Men and Music by Janaki Bakhle provides a critical view of the recent musical past, with a focus on the modernizing work of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936) and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931).

This unpopular musicologist and popular vocalist were responsible for giving “Indian classical music, as we understand and recognize it today, its distinct shape, form, and identity”, according to the author (5). “Bhatkhande tried to classify, categorize, and classicize music, whereas Paluskar worked to cleanse and sacralize it” (8). However, the two men are set up as adversaries whom the author adjudges respectively a failure and a success.

The shift from a declining system of court patronage to one of public performance, and from the control of hereditary Muslim ustads to that of the Hindu elite, is engagingly told in Bakhle’s book. Beginning with the Baroda court of Sayajirao Gaekwad, she provides a fascinating insight into the musicians’ roles in this court, particularly of the pioneering music reformer Maula Baksh (1833-96). The picture presented contradicts a commonly held view on the exalted position of musicians in princely states.

Bakhle follows this up with a chapter on colonial writers, late-nineteenth-century music appreciation societies, and the Marathi theatre. The themes developed in the first two chapters – modernity, colonialism, nationalism, religiosity, communalism, and institutionalized teaching – are pursued in the following chapters on V.N. Bhatkhande and V.D. Paluskar. Biographies of two musicians, Abdul Karim Khan and his daughter Hirabai Barodekar, conclude this social history of North Indian classical music.

Bakhle deserves praise for making a new body of literature available to scholars, for asking critical and sometimes uncomfortable questions, and for demonstrating that Hindu nationalist sentiments and the “cleansing” of music played an important role in the modernization process. While the appropriation of music by the Hindu bourgeoisie is convincingly documented in Two Men and Music, I feel that it is built on shaky historical foundations and some wrong assumptions. Let me give three examples.

1. With today’s knowledge it is hard to maintain that North Indian music was an unmarked practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (4). Although Bakhle complains about a paucity of sources (16), there exist numerous treatises and books on Hindustani music that tell us a great deal about musicians, musical practices and repertoire. Using such Persian, Urdu and Hindi sources, Allyn Miner and other scholars have demonstrated that major changes took place took place in the world of music during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Indeed, it was not the period of colonial rule that marked the beginnings of music’s transformation, but the late Mughal period. It was then that courtesan singers dominated the musical scene, the vocal genres khayal and thumri rose to prominence, and instruments such as the sitar, sarod and tabla emerged. In other words, it was not a new “classical music [that] emerged in a period of colonial modernity” as Bakhle claims (15), but a new social context with new patrons and audiences to support it.

2. Was Captain N. Augustus Willard – an early-nineteenth-century authority on Hindustani music – a Christian ideologist with a missionary zeal (55-62)? Willard was neither a typical colonial writer, nor a captain in the British army as Bakhle takes for granted. He was an officer in the service of the music-loving ruler of Banda, Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Bahadur. As a Eurasian who had probably spent most of his life in India, and as “disciple” of the music scholar Hakim Salamat Ali Khan from Benares he should be considered a native writer, not a colonial writer.

Willard and his famous precursor William Jones were responsible for the notion that Indian music had declined, and there is no doubt that Bhatkhande used their thoughts for his own agenda. The mid-nineteenth-century Muslim scholar Hakim Muhammad Karim Imam shared the opinion of Willard that “most native performers of this noble science are the most immoral set of men on earth”.

In Karam Imam’s view, the musicians who taught or accompanied dancing girls were “crazy idiots” who put “even the devil to shame”. Bakhle singles out a few passages and speculates that colonial religiosity played a constitutive role in the making of Indian music’s modernity (95-95, 257). This says more about Bakhle’s own agenda (and her selective reading) than Willard’s “Christian moral outrage”. In my reading, Willard was a positivist and a staunch secularist, like Bhatkhande.

3. Bakhle avoids the topic of baijis and tawaif. She wrongly assumes that these courtesan singers and dancers were low-caste, disrespectable prostitutes who played a peripheral role in the music world. According to her, and thanks to Bhatkhande and Paluskar, “a space was created that women were able to use to enter the public cultural sphere” (11-12, 258). In fact, courtesan singers had always been in the forefront.

As classical and light-classical singers they were far more visible (and audible) than their ustads, not only in the courts but also at public ceremonies and celebrations. At the turn of the twentieth century, Gauharjan was perhaps the most famous North Indian vocalist. The enormous volume of recordings of courtesans produced in the early decades of the twentieth century, and the continued prevalence of their music reaching its zenith of popularity in the 1950’s and 1960’s with Siddheshwari Devi and Begum Akhtar, suggests a failure of the forces of “cleansing” despite the concurrent striving for respectability.

A far more complex and nuanced picture of Hindustani music in the last three centuries has emerged in recent years. But like many autodidacts, Bakhle seems disinclined to build on the work of others, particularly the work of Charles Capwell and Micheal Rosse who deal with the same period and similar topics. Instead, she presents her own, rather straightforward picture of North Indian classical music reclaimed by Hindu nationalists from Muslims through a process of sacralization.

On the one hand, she overlooks the continuity of traditions with Hindu religious connotations comfortably continued by Muslim musicians at the Mughal and other North Indian courts – most obviously in the repertoire, dominated throughout by sacred inspiration and themes. On the other hand, Muslim musicians – male and female – continue to participate comfortably in the public classical music domain. Contrary to the impression given by Bakhle, bhakti-oriented music in the form of bhajans (sometimes seen as a virtuous alternative to thumris) has had no significant impact on the modern classical repertoire.

Writing on Bhatkhande, she calls him “one of Indian music’s most contentious, arrogant, polemical, contradictory, troubled, and troubling characters” making him sound like one of India’s Most Wanted (99). I don’t find her summary of his life and work to support her provocative judgment, and even the negative portrait she presents does not show a “tragic figure”, “flawed secularist” and “failed modernist” (97) – heroic visionary would be more appropriate.

Certainly Bhatkhande’s notation system ingenious in its simplicity has rendered any others, like Paluskar’s, obsolete. His that system of raga classification and his standardization of ragas are some other contributions that have gained common currency in music circles. His Kramik Pustak Malika, the six volumes of 1800 collected vocal compositions, is a work monumental in scope unchallenged as the reference book of North Indian vocal music. Bakhle’s familiarity with the subject is open to question as she states erroneously that the songs were originally composed in Marathi and translated into Hindi (126).

In advancing the communal angle of modernization and attributing motives to Bhatkhande’s modernizing agenda, Bakhle has relied on selectively chosen private correspondence and inferences that are unlikely to withstand scrutiny of a much broader polemic, which involved many eminent musicians and musicologists – arguments not presented by the author but continuing in the present-day.

Bakhle has not given credit to the musicological contributions and success in pedagogy of Bhatkhande’s followers. Many important singers and composers of the last century spent time at the Marris College under S.N. Ratanjankar’s guidance in the two decades of its heyday; among them Kumar Gandharva, Balasaheb Poochwale, D.T. Joshi, Chinmoy Lahiri, Dinkar Kaikini, Sumati Mutatkar, V.G. Jog, K.G. Ginde, and S.C.R. Bhat. Some of these have been well-known authorities and teachers who have taught thousands of students.

Outside this circle acknowledging their debt to Bhatkhande have been musicologists like Thakur Jaidev Singh. The curriculum developed by Bhatkhande and Ratanjankar has been adopted by all the universities with departments of North Indian music. Even now in any discussion of music, Bhatkhande’s name inevitably appears. Clearly, his legacy does not seem a failure, except for the hoarding of important resource material concerning Bhatkande by some of his followers. This is unfortunate, and perhaps the author’s highlighting her difficulties in obtaining this material will result in some re-thinking by those people.

Bakhle also seems to regret that Bhatkhande did not accept the possibility of an Indo-Persian hybrid origin of North Indian music (214), or that he did not include South Indian music (133) or do more to help Muslim musicians participate in his modernizing agenda. In other words, he was not politically correct in conformity with today’s post-modernist and post-colonial theorizing. These are among the author’s most contentious conjectures unlikely to be taken seriously by musicologists.

The polemical portrait painted by Bakhle of Bhatkhande is far removed from the usual hagiography, and thanks to her book his prickly, arrogant personality will not soon be whitewashed from history. While the importance of Bhatkhande and Paluskar is undeniable, presenting them as arbiters of modernism in the national context is overstated and leaves the musicians on the sidelines of history. To put it bluntly, Two Men and Music is another Great Men history, in spite of the fact that the two men are framed in a nationalist context and their weaknesses are exposed. For this and other reasons, Bakhle’s book is likely to provoke much debate and criticism, although many may find the cumbersome academic prose difficult to digest.

Notes:

1 Whether the situation in Baroda can be used to generalize on the concurrent situation of musicians in other courts is debatable, considering a wide variety of experiences in dozens of princely states and zamindaris.

2 Allyn Miner, Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1993; rpt. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997.

3 Bakhle thinks that khayal rose to prominence in the twentieth century (6).

4 And he did not publish his work in 1793 but in 1834.

5 Joep Bor, “The Rise of Ethnomusicology: Sources on Indian Music c.1780 - c.1890”, Yearbook for Traditional Music 20, 1988: 51-73; “Three Important Essays on Hindustani Music”, Journal of the Indian Musicological Society 36-37, 2006: 5-14.

6 N. Augustus Willard, A Treatise on the Music of Hindoostan: Comprising a detail of the ancient theory and modern practice, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1834; rpt. in S.M. Tagore, ed., Hindu Music from Various Authors, Varanasi: Chowkhamba, 1965: 29.

7 Govind Vidyarthi, trans., “Melody Through the Centuries”, Sangeet Natak Akademi Bulletin 11-12, April 1959: 14, 19.

8 Suresh Chandvankar, ed., “My Name is Gauhar Jan”, 2002.

9 Charles Capwell, “Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta as a Component in the History of a Secondary Urban Center”, Asian Music 18 (1), 1986: 139-63; “Sourindro Mohun Tagore and the National Anthem Project”, Ethnomusicology 31 (3), 1987: 407-30; “Marginality and Musicology in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta”, in Comparative Musicology and Anthropology

Resources

2008-02-21T15:36:00.013+05:30

There are so many interesting music-related resources on the net that if even a selection were to be added to the sidebar like a conventional blogroll, the blog itself would look stunted in comparison. And yet we feel easy access to these resources is important. So here we resort to a natural compromise - we collate the links, classify them into separate categories, and then add them to a dedicated post on resource. This page is intended to be updated regularly.

(NB: By and large, links within each category have been listed in alphabetical order)

Blogs:
Anahata
Aneesh Pradhan's Blog
Deepak Raja's World of Hindustani Music
Qaul:Qawwali & Indian Classical Music
Running Gamak: Warren Senders's Blog
Shabda Baan: Shubha Mudgal's Blog

Discussion Forums:
"Debating Shastriya Sangeet" - Our Comm on Orkut
RMIC on Google Groups
Chandrakantha Forums

Notable Articles:
Partha Chatterjee, "The Last of the Titans" (Obituary: Ali Akbar Khan)
Arunabha Deb, "What is it about this Place?" (Music in Dharwad)
Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, "Music Then and Now"
Uday Krishnakumar, "Understanding Tyagaraja"
V N Mavin Kurve, "An Ustad's Legacy" (Bade Ghulam Ali Khan)
Arindam Mukherjee, Dola Mitra, "Avarohan" (Calcutta's noted instrument-makers on the decline)
R Ramachandran, "A Legend is Born" (Obituary: Allah Rakha)
Samanth Subramanian, "The Shehnai's Fading Lilt"

Reference Resources:
Rajan Parrikar's articles on SAWF
Rajeev Patke's 78 RPM Discographies
Yousuf Saeed's Pages on Amir Khusrau
Karl-Michael Schneider's HMV India Listing
Seattle Indian Music Academy
Shadja Madhyam
Toronto Gharana

Downloads:
Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya (mostly digitised HCM LPs, also music from other parts of the world)
Henry's Archive (mostly commercial releases, some unreleased stuff as well)
Oriental Traditional Music from LPs & Cassettes (contains some unpublished tracks also)
Patrick Moutal's Pages - Audio, Video (lots of 78s, mostly lo-res)
Raga Blog (commercial releases, including some hard-to-find stuff)
Sangeethapriya (vast CCM collection, some HCM)
Sarangi.info (huge collection, mostly lo-res)

Performers' Homepages and Tribute Pages: (interesting ones only)

Past
D V Paluskar: A Tribute
Kumar Gandharva Home Page (Sunil Mukhi)
Toronto Gharana Amir Khan Memorial Page
Ustad Amir Khan (S Jayasrinivasa Rao)

Present
Sudhindra Bhaumik
Arnab Chakrabarty
Gundecha Bandhu
Ulhas Kashalkar
Arijit Mahalanabis
Nachiketa Sharma

Commercial Ventures: (interesting ones only)
Sudeep Audio
Underscore Records

Miscellaneous: (not directly linked to music)
FoodScapes from Below - offbeat food and travel
Lalita Larking
Bahadur Shah Zafar - resources on the emperor

Authors

2008-02-20T19:08:00.015+05:30

Arnab Chakrabarty	-	DSS Posts	Website	MySpace	Wikipedia
Arijit Mahalanabis	-	DSS Posts	Website	SIMA
Abhik Majumdar	-	DSS Posts	SSRN
Kalyan Mukherjea	-	DSS Posts	Wikipedia
Ashish Sankrityayan	-	DSS Posts	Website
James Stevenson	-	DSS Posts
Chetan Vinchhi	-	DSS Posts

2008-02-19T16:26:00.059+05:30

A Tribute to Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar

Ustad Asad Ali Khan Beenkar

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay
          Part I, Part II, Part III

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan
          Part I, Part II

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi
          Part I, Part II, Part III

DSS Blog Revived!

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music
          Part I, Part II, Part III

Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

The Hoax of the Century
          Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage
          00 Prefatory Note
          01 Overview
          02 Legal Issues
          03 The System and the Small Guy

Swear on My Love, My Beloved

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times
          Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

Announcement: Prof Kalyan Mukherjea

Review: Deepak Raja, Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition (2005)

Random Thoughts on Composers

Review: Mashkoor Ali Khan, New Jersey Concert (1999)

Review: Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music (2005)

Rules and Instructions

Mission Statement

Rules and Instructions

2008-02-18T05:08:00.009+05:30

This post serves two purposes. The first is self-evident. Certain types of posts are welcome, certain types are not. Flame-wars are fun, no doubt. But after a point one tends to outgrow them, at least pointless ones. Rambling, slipshod or perfunctory posts are not welcome either.

Secondly, every publication aims for a degree of formal consistency. Format-related factors such as headings, sub-headings, and the use of bold and italics, should ideally remain constant across articles. Moreover, this blog uses javascript widgets to enhance reading ease; these have their own format requirements. So the second purpose of this post is to acquaint contributors with these details.

The blog rules derive largely from the comm rules, with some modifications:

The blog is not a forum for the mere expression of opinion. That's what the comm is meant for. Here we seek longer, more in-depth posts.
Please take care to not to write slipshod English. Chatroom and SMS languages are a no-no.
Do not use this blog for self-aggrandisement, or posting links to sound files, unless otherwise relevant to, say, your post, or some ongoing discussion and so on.
Please refrain from making personal attacks. Communal, racist and casteist remarks will not be tolerated.
You are requested to be moderate in your tone. Please do not use foul language unless it becomes absolutely necessary.
Moderators reserve the right to reject, edit or delete posts.
Contributors are requested to follow the instructions set out below.

Mission Statement

2008-02-16T22:52:00.006+05:30

At first sight it is difficult to appreciate why Hindustani music is in doldrums. It is accessible to the masses today as it had never been before. The advent of democracy squeezed it out of palaces and stately homes, while radio, television and commercial recordings have disseminated it across regional, social , and economic boundaries. And yet it is manifest that our musical traditions are in serious trouble. While new entrants disappoint, many established performers are content to let pyrotechnics substitute for in-depth introspection of aesthetic values. Star progeny of indifferent to downright abysmal musical competence are marketed as geniuses. And all this occurs without much protest, which is perhaps the most worrisome portent of all.

Much of this is linked to the deep paradigm-shifts at multiple levels that Hindustani music is undergoing today. While royalty and feudal nobility, the traditional sources of patronage, have given way to governmental and now corporate institutions, the Gharana system of pedagogy is slowly being replaced by aesthetically homogenised and sanitised music 'schools', university departments, and other bodies of formal instruction.

While the older institutions were far from perfect, they at least functioned. This cannot be said of their successors, not a single one of them. And at least one very significant factor is common to the failure of them all, namely an abrupt decline in informed critical appreciation. In patronage, in pedagogy, and just as much in the audience. Maharajas and Nawabs are famous for foisting their own idiosyncrasies on hapless musicians, but they had to at least pretend to a level of learning. Neither the bureaucrat nor the business executive aspire to even this pretence. They don't even feel the need to do so, as long as their wheeling-dealings and profit margins are satisfied. It is a portent of the times that the petty government official and the corporate apparatchik, the two custodians of our glorious musical tradition, display a level of arrogance even the royalty of yore baulked at.

Vishnu Digambar Paluskar created his Gandharva Mahavidyalayas to produce Kaansens, individuals equipped to appreciate if not produce great music. In this, his efforts have been a signal failure today. Students memorise and reproduce reams of note-sequences without the slightest idea what they are there for. Worse, some institutions even stifle critical appreciation. When the bureaucrat and the executive push a third-rater (star-progeny?) as the next genius, they expect us to accept their claims without demur. To that end, to fabricate public opinion, even the media contributes through 'embedded' music critics.

It is imperative that every effort must be made to revive a culture of informed critical appreciation if our music is to remain a living entity. To this end, some of us set up the 'Debating Shastriya Sangeet' (or DSS) community on the networking site orkut. com, expressly with a view to fostering uninhibited but constructive discussion on music-related issues. This blog is an extension of this effort. It houses longer articles usually but not necessarily leading from debates that have originated in the DSS comm. Readers are encouraged to post feedback, and also contribute articles themselves if they feel strongly about an issue, and provided certain broad parameters of quality, relevance and decency of expression are satisfied.

Debating Shastriya Sangeet

A Tribute to Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar

Ustad Asad Ali Khan Beenkar

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - III

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - II

The Bishnupur Gharana: An Interview with Pandit Sujit Gangopadhyay - I

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - II

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - I

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - III

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - II

Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - I

DSS Blog Revived!

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - III

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - II

Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - I

Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

The Hoax of the Century - IV

The Hoax of the Century - III

The Hoax of the Century - II

The Hoax of the Century - I

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - III: The System and the Small Guy

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - II: Legal Issues

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - I: Overview

NCPA and the Sell-out of Heritage - Prefatory Note

Swear on My Love, My Beloved

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - V

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - IV

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - III

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - II

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - I

Announcement: Prof Kalyan Mukherjea

Review: Deepak Raja, Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition (2005)

Random Thoughts on Composers

Review: Mashkoor Ali Khan, New Jersey Concert (1999)

Review: Janaki Bakhle, Two Men and Music (2005)

Resources

Authors

Contents

Rules and Instructions

Mission Statement