Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - V

[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]

Read more...

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - IV

[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]

Read more...

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - III

[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]

Read more...

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - II

[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]

Read more...

Radhika Mohan Maitra: His Life and Times - I

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]

Read more...

Announcement: Prof Kalyan Mukherjea

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.

Read more...