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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DSS Blog Revived!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - III

[Continued from Part II]

7. Khayal and Tarana

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

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

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

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

8. Khusro's Influence on Contemporary Musicians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It features the quatrain Khansahib mentions in his 1956 article:

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

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

9. Bibliography

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

[Concluded]

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Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - II

[Continued from Part I]

4. Khusro and Music Theory

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

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

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

5. Khusro and the Origins of Ragas

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

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

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

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

6. The Qawwali

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man kunto maula,
Fa Ali-un maula

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

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

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

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

[Continued in Part III]

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Amir Khusro and Indian Classical Music - I

Amir Khusro and his Influence on Indian Classical Music

- Abhik Majumdar

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

1. Introduction

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

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

2. The Chishtiyya Sufi Order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Amir Khusro's Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Continued in Part II]

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Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

Honours for Musicians: A History of Bureaucratic Whimsy

- Abhik Majumdar

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

1. Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Antecedents of National Awards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Government as Patron of Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. National Awards and Hindustani Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even among practitioners of the mainstream Khayal genre, shocking omissions abound. These include vocalists Narayanrao Vyas, Vasantrao Deshpande, Vilayat Hussain Khan, his son Yunus Hussain Khan, Rajabhaiya Poochwale, his son Balasaheb Poochwale, Munawar Ali Khan, Gajananrao Joshi, and his disciple Ulhas Kashalkar (arguably the finest vocalist around today); Sarod exponent Radhika Mohan Maitra; and Sitar exponent Balaram Pathak. Vocalist Jitendra Abhisheki and Tabla maestro Allah Rakha were awarded only Padma Shris (in 1988 and 1977 respectively). [Update: Kashalkar received the Padma Shri in 2010]

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

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

5. Awards and the Public Eye

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

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

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

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

6. Conclusion: Music and the Bharat Ratna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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