Ustad Asad Ali Khan Beenkar

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]

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Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - II

[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!

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Remembering Ali Akbar Khan - I

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]

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Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - III

[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!

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Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - II

[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]

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Meeting Bhimsen Joshi - I

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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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