Pandit DV Paluskar and the Paluskarite tradition

DV Paluskar, through his father, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, belonged to the Maharashtra stream of the Gwalior gharana, founded by Balkrishna Buwa Ichalkaranjikar.

The Gwalior gharana is considered the fountainhead of Khayal vocalism in Hindustani music. It was founded by Natthan Peer Baksh, an eminent vocalist of Lucknow, who migrated to Gwalior in the early 19th century. His grandsons, Haddu Khan and Hassu Khan crystallized the Gwalior style, and achieved eminence at the feudal court.

Amongst the eminent students of Hassu Khan were two Maharashtrian Brahmins, Ramakrishna Dev Paranjpe (Devji Buwa) and Vasudev Buwa Joshi. In succession, both these musicians trained Balkrishna Buwa. According to some accounts, Muhammad Khan, the elder son of Haddu Khan, also trained Balkrishna Buwa. With this intensive training in the art of the gharana, Balkrishna Buwa returned to Maharashtra, and laid the foundations of the Gwalior style in his home state. Amongst the outstanding vocalists he groomed was Vishnu Digambar Paluskar.

PANDIT VISHNU DIGAMBAR PALUSKAR

Vishnu Digambar (1872-1931) belonged to a family of Haridasi-s, a community engaged in Harikatha -- reciting the Hindu epics, giving religious discourses, and singing Bhajans. Haridasi-s were trained in classical music, but their art was subservient to their evangelical profession. Vishnu Digambar’s father was a Haridasi, who enjoyed the patronage and personal affections of the feudal chief of Kurundwad in Southern Maharashtra.

At the age of 15, young Vishnu damaged his eyes in an accident with firecrackers, after which he was pronounced unfit for academic pursuits. The Kurundwad ruler arranged for Vishnu to be trained in music in neighboring Miraj under the tutelage of Balkrishnabuwa Ichalkaranjikar. After more than a decade of rigorous training, Vishnu Digambar launched his career, traveling from place to place demonstrating his musicianship.

 VISHNU DIGAMBAR

Everywhere he went he was generously rewarded for his art, and was even offered patronage by some of the most powerful of princes in colonial India. He turned down the comfortable life of the courts in order to pursue his missionary dream. His compelling concern was to elevate the status of musicians in society. In his era and context, this was possible only by creating a community of musicians, connoisseurs, and teachers, independent of the feudal courts on the one hand, and the world of courtesans on the other.

His mission required a large-scale formalization and institutionalization of music education which had, for long, been managed under highly personalized relationships. This meant the development of a new teaching and evaluation system, a comprehensive documentation of the musical tradition, preparation of teaching materials, and grooming a band of dedicated and competent teachers drawn from non-traditional backgrounds. But, along with all these, his mission required massive funding, because it aimed at attracting those social segments that were, at that stage, either unwilling or unable to pay viable fees. Vishnu Digambar decided to manage every one of these activities personally.

Thus was born the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, a chain of music schools, which is now a full-fledged university, and a major force in ensuring a place for classical music in the mainstream culture. The institution was launched from Lahore, and spread speedily to Bombay, Pune, Nagpur, and several other cities. Vishnu Digambar traveled the length and breadth of the country giving concerts, and diverting all the proceeds to the institution. Predictably, at some stage, the cash requirements of the institution outstripped his funding capacity. In 1922, Vishnu Digambar started constructing a new building in Bombay to house the institution, and soon found himself deeply in debt, with creditors at his doorstep. Despite all the prestige and goodwill he enjoyed, his wealthy admirers could not bail him out because of legal hurdles. He was a broken man when the building had to be auctioned in 1924 to repay debts.

Thereafter, he donned saffron robes, almost gave up performing as a classical musician, and revived his ancestral profession – Harikatha. Though originally a devotee of Lord Dattatraya, he had, by this time, become an ardent follower of Lord Rama, and was much in demand as a presenter of religious discourses based on the Ramayana epic, and songs in praise of the deity.

A musician who could have died a very rich man, finally died a near-hermit, bequeathing to his son only his knowledge, his art, his religious, spiritual and ethical values, and a princely sum of Rs. 100 – in those days, just enough to cover household expenses for a couple of months. But, to the nation, he bequeathed his priceless work as the renaissance man of Hindustani music.

Vishnu Digambar’s son, DV Paluskar, lived a life worthy of his parentage in every respect. His desire to repurchase and donate his father’s ill-fated building in Bombay to the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, however, remained unfulfilled.

PANDIT DV PALUSKAR

Pandit DV Paluskar (1921-1955) is the only vocalist of the 20th century to have achieved national stature by the age of 20, and to secure his place in the Hindustani music Hall of Fame before his death at the age of 35. The prodigious singer was a disciple of Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, and his two protégés, Pandit Naraynarao Vyas, and Pandit Vinayakrao Patwardhan.

DV Paluskar, better known as Bapurao, and sometimes called just “DV”, rose like a meteor on the musical horizon in the sunset years of the Faiyyaz Khan era. He built for himself a formidable reputation and following while sharing the stage with the likes of Bade Gulam Ali Khan, Kesarbai Kerkar, Amir Khan, and Omkarnath Thakur. In his short performing career, he attained a rare combination of stature and popularity.

He was amongst the most successful recording artists of his generation. Starting from 1945-46, and through the 1950’s, his 78 rpm recordings were to be found in every music loving household. His renditions of Bhajans by Kabir, Tulsidas, Surdas, and Meerabai remain, to this day, the standard notation for every verse he sang. His duet in raga Desi with Ustad Amir Khan sung for the film “Baiju Bawra” (1952) made him a household name amongst moviegoers. He did not live to record for Long Playing discs. But, every posthumous release of his radio broadcasts on concert length storage media has been devoured by a hungry market.

Bapurao was the only 20th century musician, with the exception of his father, Vishnu Digambar, to have been revered like a saint. One of Bapurao’s admirers once invited him all the way to Lucknow supposedly for a concert at his daughter’s wedding, with fees settled in advance. On arrival, Bapurao found that there was no concert, and he had been invited merely to bless the couple. Bapurao’s son, Vasant recalls his father’s visit to his school, when he was about eight years old. When Bapurao entered Vasant’s class, the teacher vacated his chair, offered it to Bapurao, and prostrated himself before him. Many years later, Vasant – by then a merchant navy officer -- visited the well-known Kairana vocalist, Malavika Kannan in Calcutta to find photographs of Vishnu Digambar and DV Paluskar at the family altar, being worshipped along with those of gods and goddesses.

DV PALUSKAR IN CONCERT

In these phenomena, we could be seeing a reflection of veneration that his saintly father, Vishnu Digambar enjoyed in society. We could also be witnessing a subtle response to the devotional fervor in Bapurao’s music. But, it was substantially a recognition of the humility, honesty and dignity with which he lived his life. He was incapable of greed, lust, and every kind of pettiness. His life remained unblemished by the licentious lifestyles common amongst musicians in his times. He remained single-mindedly focused on his music,  his obligations towards his audiences, students, and family.

Childhood and grooming

DV Paluskar was the twelfth child born to Vishnu Digambar and Ramabai, after eleven of their children had died in infancy. He was named Dattatraya, as a gesture of gratitude to the family’s presiding deity. In childhood, he was affectionately called “Bapu” and later, respectfully, “Bapurao”.

The first ten years of his life were spent in Nashik, where Vishnu Digambar had built a hermitage. In true Brahminical tradition, Bapu’s training started after he received his sacred thread (1927, age 6). Vishnu Digambar died in 1931, with less than five years of training given to Bapu. For five years thereafter, Bapu was trained by his elder cousin, Chintamanrao.

At the age of 15 (1935), Bapu was sent to Bombay to study with one of his father’s eminent disciples, Pandit Naraynrao Vyas. Soon thereafter, Pandit Vinayakrao Patwardhan, another senior disciple of Vishnu Digambar, who ran the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Pune, took charge of Bapurao’s grooming and shifted the Paluskar family to Pune under his direct care.

With his amazing capacity for hard work, Bapurao’s personality flowered at Pune. While under the care of Patwardhan, he attended school for formal education, studied and taught music at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, gave private tuitions out of economic necessity, received personal guidance from Patwardhan every night, and took occasional lessons with the visiting maestro, Mirashi Buwa, an eminent disciple of Balakrishna Buwa. While doing all this, he also burnt the midnight oil for four hours every day for his own practice, finished editing several of his father’s unpublished books on music and arranged their publication.

He spent seven years at the institution, obtained his Sangeet Praveen qualification (equivalent of a Master’s degree), and continued to teach there till the demands of his career forced him to leave.

In the profession

In 1936/37, at the age of 16, he won the first prize at the prestigious Palnitkar Trophy competition for budding talent in Pune. In 1938, at the age of 17, he exploded upon the music scene as an empanelled artist of All India Radio (AIR), Bombay. Through the chain booking system of AIR, he broadcast from radio stations in all parts of the country. Gandharva Mahavidyalaya branches started inviting him to perform under their banner. These appearances stimulated the demand for his concerts amongst impresarios from all over. By 1940, Bapurao, barely 20 years old, was a musician of national stature. He spent the next 15 years of his life performing and teaching as tirelessly as he had lived his early life.

He had no inhibitions about accepting concert invitations from anyone. He was equally happy performing for major music festivals, small music circles, private gatherings, religious congregations, radio stations or recording companies. For every platform, he had the appropriate repertoire, and on every platform he invariably made an impact with his music.

Bapurao’s approach to his life as a musician and teacher was totally devoid of commercialism. He was averse to bargaining for his fees, often gave free concerts, and readily offered fund-raising concerts for worthy causes. Once he had committed a concert for a certain fee, he would never renege on it even if someone else came with a bigger offer for the same day. In an era when accompanists were ill-treated and exploited by lead musicians, Bapurao treated them with respect, and paid them well. Even in his early years, when he taught music for the income it generated, he never bothered about collecting fees from his students on time, and often waived them for students who were going through a difficult period.

His thoroughness and dependability were exemplary. Every letter sent to him was replied by return of post. He replied personally to every letter, either in English or Marathi. In his time, he was a rare musician to have invested in a typewriter to ensure that his letters were neat and legible. He personally addressed every envelope in excruciating detail. He planned his travel well in advance to ensure arrival at every destination a day before the event. Even when unwell, or when climatic conditions were hostile, he delivered brilliant concerts. His consistency rating as a performer was on par with the best in his era.

He maintained a diary in which he entered his planned repertoire for each appearance, in anticipation of concert conditions and audience profiles. He even had standard “sets” of ragas and bhajans, which he would schedule at different venues without risking repetition. There was always scope for last minute changes in response to the situation. And, indeed, these were occasionally necessary.

On one occasion, he found his concert sandwiched between violinist Prof. VG Jog accompanied by Samta Prasad on tabla before him, and the Kathak danseuse Sitara Devi after him. He feared some difficulty in holding audience attention under such circumstances. With his characteristic charm, he persuaded Jog and Samta Prasad to stay on after their concert, and joined them in a duet. Uncharacteristically, he chose a lively madhyalaya piece for the first item. When that was over, Bapurao received a thunderous applause, and then held the audience firmly in his grip until he had finished.

He always had appropriate repertoire for every occasion and every audience. In 1954, he was performing at the Shanmukhananda Society in Bombay. The audience was primarily of rasika-s attuned to Carnatic music, and he was the only Hindustani musician featured at the event. After rendering a Khayal in Yaman, accessible to Carnatic rasika-s as raga Kalyani, Bapurao sang a  kriti in the Carnatic raga Simhendramadhyamam, delivering the text in chaste Telugu – a language he did not know. Faced with such situations at other venues, Bapurao loved performing the famous Muthuswami Deekshitar kriti – Vatapi Ganapatim Bhaje in the Carnatic raga Hansadhwani.

While his radio broadcasts gave him his launching pad starting from 1938, a further boost was given by the release of his gramophone records, starting from 1944. His first 78 rpm release of six raga-s was a sensational success. Later came his Bhajans that made him a household name all over the country – Chalo mana ganga jamuna teer, Thumaki chalata Ramachandra, Payoji maine Ram ratan, Jankinath sahay kare, and Raghupati Raghav Rajaram. Recording company executives were thrilled with his meticulous planning and perfect execution of music for the discs.

In 1951, the famous music director, Naushad Ali, was looking for a voice to sing playback for Baiju Bawra in a film of the same name (released 1952), with Ustad Amir Khan singing playback for Miya Tansen. In the visualized sequence, Tansen is challenged, and defeated by Baiju in a singing contest. Amir Khan reportedly insisted that, he would be willing to lose a singing contest – even in a fictional context – only to DV Paluskar. Bapurao feared the cramping of his style under instructions from a  director. Naushad Ali assured him of total freedom. All his apprehensions vanished when he and Amir Khan established an easy rapport at the first rehearsal. As was his wont, Bapurao wrote down detailed notations for his part, and the immortal duet between the two was recorded flawlessly in one sitting.

With the release of the film Baiju Bawra, and the duet in raga Desi, DV Paluskar achieved iconic status. After that, every concert of his was widely publicized with the billing – “DV Paluskar of Baiju Bawra fame”. At concerts, he was often requested to sing his Baiju Bawra song, but steadfastly refused to oblige, arguing that every piece of music has value only in its proper context.

In 1955, Bapurao visited China with a cultural delegation, and performed in several Chinese cities. After his return in August, he spoke and wrote widely about his experiences of the visit and his impressions of Chinese classical music. Two months later, he succumbed to an attack of encephalitis, an infection he had contracted in China.

Musicianship

DV Paluskar was gifted with one of the finest voices in 20th century khayal vocalism. His was also one of the earliest truly microphone friendly voices to emerge in the post-amplification environment. It had a velvety sweetness, astounding pliability, and effortless agility through more than two octaves. With his powerful, yet gentle vocalization, laser sharp intonation, and confident command over raga grammar and rhythm, he was as well-endowed a musician as Hindustani music has seen in recent history. As described by his contemporaries, Bapurao’s music caused a curtain of peace and tranquility to descend on the hall, creating a “heavenly” atmosphere. His music had a sincerity, nobility and dignity, which were effortless expressions of his qualities as a human being.

Despite his grooming entirely in the Paluskarite stream of the Gwalior gharana, his music had an original spark. He was not a Xerox of any of his Gurus; nor was he an obvious  rebel against his stylistic legacy. He advised his students to study the recordings of musicians of all gharana-s and absorb what appealed to them. In his personal diary, Bapurao expressed reservations about the gharana system in Hindustani music. He was concerned that its stylistic indoctrination might have made the tradition resistant to change. He wondered how all the gharana-s could be brought together and welded into a unified musical tradition.

Like most Gwalior maestros of the era, he was a scholarly musician. But, he performed music as music, and not as a demonstration of scholarship. He greatly admired the music of Faiyyaz Khan (Agra), Anant Manohar Joshi (Gwalior), Omkarnath Thakur (Gwalior-trained original), Mirashi Buwa (Gwalior), Amir Khan (Indore/ Bhendi Bazar), and Bade Gulam Ali Khan (Patiala). He was an enthusiastic learner of Bandish-es, irrespective of gharana source, from anyone who would share them with him. He was an avid collector of recordings of great musicians of all gharana-s, and studied them carefully.  His collection also included a large number of Carnatic music recordings. Had he lived longer, the world of music could have expected to see a more complete flowering of this catholic musical vision.

His concert repertoire consisted largely of popular raga-s, and Bhajans of Meerabai, Tulsidas, Kabir, and Surdas. Judiciously, he also performed some of the “patent” raga-s of the Gwalior gharana, like Khambavati and Malgunji, which were not commonly heard from vocalists of other gharana-s. He had a ready stock of Khayals as well as Kriti-s in a few raga-s of the Carnatic tradition, and performed them with great facility. He performed only Khayals and Tarana-s, and stayed away from Thumree and Tappa-s, both of which were traditionally part of Gwalior repertoire. On rare occasions, and on public demand, he performed Dhrupad and Dhamar with as much competence as Khayal and Tarana.

Except when bound by time-limits, Bapurao’s concerts were planned for a duration of three to four hours. It was common for him to enter the stage to a thunderous applause, which could easily take three minutes to die down. After checking on the tuning of the instruments, he always began with a prayer to his Guru-s. The performance would start with a bada khayal, chhota khayal and a Tarana in a major raga. That would be followed by a Bhajan, and then an intermission. After the interval, he would render a Chhota khayal, followed by a Bhajan, followed by a Madhyalaya bandish, and end with a Bhairavi.

Like every other aspect of his life, DV Paluskar’s music was highly disciplined. His khayal architecture was impeccable, with every movement in its place, and with no blurred boundaries between them. His raga grammar was unimpeachable, and gripped audiences with a sense of immediacy. If his treatment of raga-s lacked contemplative depth or an axiomatic individuality, it is probably because, in Hindustani music, these qualities generally surface around the age of 40, which he did not reach.

DV Paluskar is considered a musician of exceptional, but unrealized, potential. This assessment is fair. The magnitude of his potential cannot, however, diminish the magnitude of his accomplishments. More than 50 years after his demise, his music retains its youthful freshness as well as unique appeal, defying all notions of aesthetic obsolescence. This is sufficient to earn him a place in the history of 20th century music.

(c) Deepak S. Raja 2011

Bhairavi: The global impact of Indian music.

BOOK REVIEW
Title: Bhairavi
Sub-title: The global impact of Indian music
Author: Peter Lavezzoli
Publishers: Harper Collins Publishers India. (2009)
Pgs: 430 (including glossary and bibliography)
Paperback: Indian Price: Rs. 450.00

In its obituary for Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the New York Times quoted Peter Lavezzoli's study on the influence of Indian music in the West, but more particularly, the US. His personal credibility amongst the American intelligentsia must therefore be acknowledged. For this very reason, the infirmities of the present work need also to be considered.

Lavezzoli’s work, perhaps the first of its kind, is an eminently readable and well researched account of the fifty years in which Western music discovered the Indian sensibility. The title “Bhairavi” commemorates the performance of the raga in 1955 by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Chatur Lal on the first ever LP of Hindustani music, recorded in New York, with Yehudi Menuhin’s spoken introduction. Being an American, the author can be forgiven for the subtitle of the book, which virtually equates the US with the world.

Despite the substantial, and historically justified, presence of Pandit Ravi Shankar throughout the book – including the Foreword penned by the maestro -- it is not a biography of India’s supreme cultural ambassador. It is a panoramic historical survey, covering a large number of Western personalities in search of their musical selves through the adoption of Indian approaches to musical expression. In many cases, these journeys coincided with their sojourns through Indian religions and spirituality. This might be a regrettable coincidence because it could have hindered the appreciation of Indian classical music as an organic art form. The author himself is not entirely free from such fuzzy notions, as he frequently describes Indian classical music as “mystic”, “spiritual” and “sacred”, and glibly throws around phrases like “Nada Bramha” and “Nada Yoga”.

The book was first published in the US in 2006, and appears to address a western audience. The glossary appended to the book, for instance, provides notes on Indian musical genres such as Dhrupad, Khayal, and Thumree, but ignores Western genres such as bebop, rock, pop, reggae, bluegrass, ragtime, funk, jazz, modern jazz, free jazz, electronica, hip hop, ambient music, trance music, fusion etc. These omissions will bother Indian readers who are not well-versed in Western genres of popular music.

Lavezzoli, an American vocalist, drummer and author, studies Dhrupad vocalism and the Tabla in India. He undertook the present endeavor to explore what it was about Indian – primarily Hindustani – music that attracted western musicians. The book pursues the theme through elaborate biographical notes, riveting descriptions of their landmark performances and recordings, and interviews with several important personalities.

The book does a thorough job of documenting the contribution of the powerhouses on both sides – Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Alla Rakha, Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Pran Nath amongst Indian missionaries, and Yehudi Menuhin, Zubin Mehta, Philip Glass, John McLaughlin, George Harrison, Mickey Hart, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and John Coltrane amongst the receptive Western influentials. Beyond this first generation of cross-cultural pioneers, the book also does justice to the roles of the subsequent generations of musicians who have shaped new genres of multi-cultural music.

Amongst the interviews featured in this book, I liked the one with percussionist Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, who debunks the idea of  “World Music”. Of the many interviews I have read of Pandit Ravi Shankar, the one he gave Lavezzoli will qualify amongst the most candid.

The author’s understanding of Indian classical music is as rudimentary as the adoption of its features by Western musicians. According to the book, Indian music is primarily about tonality (a fixed scale base), improvisation based on scales or modes, bending the notes in executing the melody, using the Tanpura or other types of drones, executing melody on Indian instruments, and a cyclical approach to melody and rhythm. The very foundation of Indian classical music -- the archetypal character of ragas – finds no place in this configuration of features. According to the author, the raga is merely  “a specific melody in Indian classical music, based on a scale or a mode, but with a unique pattern of movements”. Even the notion of “Rasa” has been excluded from this explanation, though covered by a separate entry in the glossary.

The author is often on slippery ground when he deals with music. A few examples: Disregarding history, he observes that  “the Karnataka  music of the Hindu temples mutated into North Indian Hindustani during the reign of Akbar, when Muslim styles and instruments tempered the Vedic character of music” (Pg. 413). In  my study of books on Hindustani music -- whether by Indians or aliens -- I have yet to come across a more ill-informed and confused observation. An eyebrow must also be raised when he calls Malkauns “one of the most difficult ragas to master” (Pg. 129). He speaks of  “composing ragas” in a wide range of rhythmic cycles (Pg. 70), when, in fact, he means  “composing bandishes”.

Lavezzoli also has considerable difficulty with Indian languages and names. In his chapter on Ustad Alauddin Khan and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, he often refers to his subject as, simply, Khan or Khansahib, making you wonder which of the Khans he is speaking of. He mentions “The Ali Brothers” (Pg. 232) without being specific, unaware that the subcontinent has produced two famous pairs of Ali Brothers – Nazakat and Salamat Ali, and Amanat and Fateh Ali. His translation of the raga name “Chandra Dhani” as “Moon over the capital” (Pg. 91) makes you wish he had consulted either a Hindi dictionary or a competent musician.

The book evades significant issues -- the profundity and durability of the phenomenon it is tracking. Implicitly from Lavezzoli's work, the Indian sensibility emerges as a dalliance, adding variety to the African, Middle Eastern and South American flavors with which American musicians were already flirting before they discovered India. From the point of view of Indian musicians, the process has created a lucrative Western market for their talent, to be encashed while India remains the flavor of the season.

The phenomenon has now shaped an entire generation of Indian musicians – primarily instrumentalists --  who remain so busy in the US and Europe that they no longer need Indian audiences either as a market, or as validators of their art. In collaboration with Western musicians, they now perform hybrid genres of music globally, and do so far more profitably than pure Hindustani music would be at their levels of musicianship. This phenomenon should ring some alarm bells because music is akin to food, and quickly adapts itself to the tastes of its consumers.

One of the popular jokes in China today is that -- thanks to American influence -- the Chinese no longer recognize the "Chinese" food being served to them in China. A similar situation now confronts Indian audiences of Hindustani classical music.

The pioneers of Indian music movement in the West took their initiatives with the utmost respect for the profundity of the art they were promoting. But those, who hopped on to the gravy train, were tempted to market instant Nirvana to Western audiences, and a Bonsai of a banyan tree to Indian music lovers.

Nobody cares about the “de-culturation” of Indian classical music. Even if somebody did care, there is nothing he can do about the artificially undervalued Rupee, which makes it all happen.

(c) Deepak Raja  2010

The Sitar: from nowhere to everywhere in 300 years

The post-independence era is now acknowledged as the Golden Age of instrumental music in the Hindustani tradition. A large part of the credit for this goes to the Sitar and to sitarists. The instrument entered the mainstream as an heir to the medieval Rudra Veena to later become its rival, and finally, its survivor. Its journey to the pinnacle of Hindustani instrumental music has taken about 300 years.

The Sitar is a long-necked fretted lute of the plucked variety. Instruments of this variety have been observed in Mesopotamian figurines as early as 2000 BC. Later manifestations of this variety are the Greek Pandoora, and the Arabian Tambour. This family of instruments is believed to have come to India from Central Asia.

The emergence of the Sitar has long been attributed to the 13th century. Latest researches however establish the instrument as a recent development. The first reference to the Sitar [1739] names a   Khusro Khan, who was an expert Sitar player, and, most likely, a brother of the legendary musician, Niamat Khan [Sadarang] in the court of Emperor Mohammad Shah “Rangile” [1719-1748]. Apparently, this Khusro Khan spent some years in Kashmir, acquainted himself with the Kashmiri Sehtar, and brought it to Delhi.

Until its arrival at the Delhi Court in the early 18th century, the Sitar was an unrefined melodic instrument, evidently used in orchestration supporting singing and dance performances.  Its use may have been restricted to a strumming role akin to that of a banjo. Though this continued into the 19th century, the Sitar had, by then, also emerged as solo instrument capable of executing well-defined melodic passages.

By the late 19th century, the sitar had become a phenomenon, attracting a large number of professional and amateur musicians in various part of the country, and acquiring a place in the Courts of princes. The instrument had assumed most of the physical features and tuning systems of the modern sitar, though not its present day acoustic sophistication or melodic capability. It had developed an idiom of its own, inspired initially by the Rudra Veena, but responding constantly to changing aesthetic values.

These developments were obviously accompanied by changes in the design and construction of the instrument – a process that has continued in later years as musicians have wanted the instrument to deliver music of progressively greater sophistication, and to offer a wider variety of stylistic options.

Stylistic lineages of Sitar music

The notion of a gharana is not as well defined in Sitar music as it is, say, in Khayal vocalism. However, distinctive stylistic lineages – called “Baj” – identified in 1990 at the ITC-SRA Seminar on the Sitar are a good indicator of the various claims to stylistic  distinctiveness.

RAVI SHANKAR

(a) The Maihar gharana [also referred to by some as “Maihar Senia” gharana]. The nomenclature refers to Maihar, the town in Madhya Pradesh, which its founder, Ustad Allauddin Khan, had made his home. The “Senia” suffix refers to the tutelage of the founder with Ustad Wazir Khan of Rampur, who was a descendant of the legendary Mian Tansen at the court of Emperor Akbar. The foremost sitarist of this lineage is Pandit Ravi Shankar.

VILAYAT KHAN

(b) The Etawah gharana [also referred to as the Imdad Khani gharana]. The nomenclature is traced to the town of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, which was the original home of Ustad Imdad Khan, the originator of the sitar and surbahar style of the lineage. At the turn of the 20th century, the foremost exponent of the gharana’s style was Ustad Vilayat Khan.

(c) The Jaipur Beenkar/ Sitar gharana. The nomenclature refers to a lineage of Rudra Veena players from Jaipur, who evolved and propagated a Rudra Veena-biased style of sitar playing. The last significant performer in this tradition was Bimal Mukherjee [1930-1996].

(d) The Bishnupur gharana. This nomenclature refers to the town of Bishnupur in Bengal, which emerged as a major centre of music in the latter half of the 19th century. At the turn of the 20th century, the most distinguished exponent of this lineage is Pandit Manilal Nag.

HALIM JAFFAR KHAN

(e) The Indore gharana. The nomenclature refers to a group of Rudra Veena players, sitarists, and vocalists who had settled in the erstwhile principalities of Indore, Dewas, Jawra, and Jabalpore in Madhya Pradesh. At the turn of the 20th century, the most significant sitarist of this tradition is Ustad Abdul Halim Jaffar Khan.

MUSHTAQUE ALI KHAN

(f) The Senia gharana: The nomenclature refers to the descendants of the legendary Mian Tansen, who call themselves “Senia-s”. Of the various Senia streams of sitar music, the only one active at the turn of the century was the one hailing from Benares. The last significant performer of this style was Ustad Mushtaque Ali Khan. His important contemporary disciples are Debabrata Choudhary and Netai Bose.

(g) The Lucknow gharana: The gharana, also called the Lucknow- Shahjehanpur gharana, is essentially a lineage of Sarod players. But, it has also produced distinguished Sitar players such as Ilyas Khan [1924-1989], Waliullah Khan [1890-1951] and Yusuf Ali Khan [1877-1962]. By the end of the 20th century, the gharana reported no significant musicianship.


Sitar styles today

Amongst the major instruments, the Sitar has been singularly fortunate in producing two giants in the same generation – Ustad Vilayat Khan [Etawah] and Pandit Ravi Shankar [Maihar] -- who created entirely distinctive musical worlds around themselves. Though seven Gharana-s of Sitar music were identified as recently as 1990, several of them are already devoid of a significant presence on the concert platform.

The future of stylistic diversity seems in question. The strength of homogenising forces is already evident in the fact that the Vilayat Khan style is proliferating much faster amongst professional sitarists than the Ravi Shankar style. The cultural environment, too, is not particularly conducive to the flowering of sharply differentiated styles.

Musical attitudes and stylistic tendencies are no longer acquired either exclusively, or even predominantly, through the traditional system of personalised apprenticeship and aesthetic indoctrination. Low cost access to recorded music has demolished all barriers to the acquisition of musical skills and practices. A market of sub-continental, and even global, dimensions appears to reward music conforming to the dominant models. As a result, Sitar music of the foreseeable future could be stylistically less – rather than more – diverse than Sitar music of the present.

© Deepak S. Raja 
For a comprehensive discussion on the Sitar and eight other major instruments, refer to the author’s book: Hindustani Music Today DK Printworld Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi. 2011.

Bihagda and Khokar: What's the difference?

Bihagda is a rare raga of the Bihag family. It is a raga of considerable antiquity, described in several mediaeval texts, and bears a close resemblance to raga Behag/ Byag of the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition. Bihagda is known to have been performed, in recent years, only by vocalists of the Jaipur-Atrauli and Agra gharanas. It is, however, identified more closely with the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, with its commonly recognized form corresponding to the raga as performed by Jaipur-Atrauli vocalists.

Multiplicity of nomenclature is unusual in rare ragas. Diversity of treatment under the same name is more frequently encountered. Bihagda seems to be an exception to this general pattern. It has come to be known by another name – Khokar or Khokhar. Currently, and in the present context, both names refer to melodic entities performed by Jaipur-Atruali vocalists.

In popular misconception, Bihagda has come to be identified with the bandish “Pyari pag haule”, while Khokar is identified with a different bandish “Aaj ananda mukhachandra”. This distinction remains unsupported either by logic or by evidence. A melodic analysis of Jaipur-Atrauli’s so-called Khokar confirms its identity with Bihagda. There exists a recording of Kesarbai’s with the so-called Khokar bandish (Aaj anada mukhachandra), which she announces as Bihagda. Dhondutai Kulkarni, who has studied with five Jaipur-Atrauli maestros, confirms that both the bandishes cited above have been taught to her in Bihagda.

The available documentation of  Khokar/ Khokhar (Subbaro, B. Raga Nidhi, Vol. III, 4th impression, 1996, Music Academy, Madras), probably from a different gharana, bears no resemblance whatsoever to either Bihagda or the so-called Khokar performed by Jaipur-Atrauli vocalists. The Khokar nomenclature for a Bihagda clone in the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana is, therefore, mysterious, and pregnant with avoidable confusion.

Subbarao (Ibid.1996), describes two types of Bihagda.

Type 1: S G M P N D S/ N D P M G R S
Type 2: S G M P N D S/ S N P – G M P D n D P  -- M P G – RS 

Type 1 listed by Subbarao, was recorded by Mallikarjun Mansur (EMI/HMV:STC:851004), and has been performed by Alka Dev, a disciple of Madhusudan Kanetkar of Jaipur-Atrali gharana (Concert in Ahmedabad, December 3, 1994, unpublished). This variant poses a sharper problem of differentiation of Bihagda from Bihag. This may be the reason why this version is even rarer than the common twin-Ni version (Type 2 above).

Type 2 listed above, which deploys komal (flat) Ni in the descent, is the most commonly encountered raga form. The pakad (identifying phrasing) of this variant is: GM/ PDnDP/ GMG or PMPG. Authorities have identified Ma and Sa as the vadi-samvadi (dominant and sub-dominant) swaras of the raga, though only hesitantly and on the grounds of differentiation between Bihag and Bihagda. In practice, however, Bihagda appears to revolve around the same Ga-Ni axis, as Bihag does, too.

Bhatkhande (Bhatkhande Sangeet Shastra, Vol. I, 5th Edition, 1991, Sangeet Karyalaya, Hathras) mentions a third variety of Bihagda which permits Re and Dh in the ascent, the former being used only in the higher octave, and the latter being used only in the middle octave. This variant has not been heard in recent times.

With reference to Bihag, Bihagda has some noteworthy features. Bihagda always uses Re subliminally in the descent as in Bihag. But, Dh, which is always subliminal in Bihag, is used subliminally as well as explicitly in Bihagda. Tivra Ma, used in the contemporary Bihag, is not used formally in Bihagda, although a touch of the swara has been observed in some recordings. When encountered, it is used in a racy movement, and never in the signatory Bihag fashion (P-M^-G-M-G).

Being a rare raga, Bihagda’s survival depends largely on the appeal and success of a handful of bandish-es. The defining paradigm of Bihagda, and its crucial discrimination from Bihag, is possible by a survey of recent recordings. For the analysis of the chalan (skeletal phraseology) of the raga as detailed below, I have relied only on available recordings featuring the common twin-Ni version, as performed by Jaipur-Atrauli vocalists.

Chalan:
N S G/ G M/ G M G P/ G M P D n D P or G M n D P/ G M P N S’ or G M P S’/ N S’ N DP/ P D N P D M P G/ G M n D P/ P M P G/ G RS


The recordings are: Kesarbai Kerkar (Pyari pag haule), Kesarbai Kerkar (Aaj ananda mukhachandra), both unpublished, Mallikarjun Mansur (HMV/EMI: STCS: 850730), and Dhondutai Kulkarni’s recording (India Archive Music, NY).

(c) India Archive Music Ltd. New York
The finest recordings of Raga Bihagda have been produced by India Archive Music Ltd., New York. 

Hirabai Barodekar: The voice that could cure a sick man

Hirabai Barodekar (1905-1989) was amongst the most distinguished and popular Hindustani vocalists of the 20th century, and almost certainly the most melodious female voice heard in recent times. She was the eldest daughter of the Kairana gharana founder, Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan, but trained primarily by her father’s associate and Kairana co-founder, Ustad Abdul Waheed Khan. She exploded upon the scene while the giants of the pre-independence era still ruled the concert platform, and remained amongst the most respected vocalists thereafter, sharing the stage with the likes of Ameer Khan, Bade Gulam Ali Khan, and Kesarbai Kerkar.

In a busy career spanning over 45 years, Hirabai captured the hearts of millions with her renditions of Khayal, Thumree, Natya Sangeet, Bhava Geet, and Bhajans on the concert platform, in the regional theatre, through radio broadcasts, and through commercial recordings. Even after her voluntary retirement in 1973, she accepted the position of a Resident Guru at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy, which she served until 1976. 

Accessibility was the cornerstone of her music. She arrived on the scene at a time when classical music was just emerging from the era of aristocratic patronage, during which it had lost its touch with the mainstream culture. By the time of her arrival, the missionary work of Vishnu Digambar had begun to make knowledge of music widely accessible to all segments of society, and the radio and the gramophone had begun to deliver classical music into people’s homes. Her music was a product of the cultural revolution that was taking place in her times. She delivered the highest quality of classical music in accessible packages, and helped it gain a place in the mainstream culture. Hirabai’s career, however, represents a cultural revolution in several other respects. 

Hirabai entered the regional theatre as a singer-actor at a time when there had been no plays with a mixed caste of men and women for 90 years (1843-1929). Audiences were entirely male, and men performed female roles and also sang in female voices. With her entry, women started performing on stage, and female audiences started growing. The quiet revolution she wrought was similar in the classical music segment. 

Until she arrived on the scene, professional female singers (or dancers), who performed in public, carried a stigma of a low-brow culture. Their art was ostensibly designed only for male titillation, and they got paid in proportion to their feminine charms perhaps more than their artistic accomplishments. In 1925, Hirabai became the first female vocalist ever to present a ticketed concert in an auditorium, with audiences paying for her art, and men and women from genteel society feeling free to participate in the cultural process.

In both the contexts of direct interface with audiences, Hirabai made female musicianship respectable with her art, and impeccable conduct. On the concert platform, she was always conservatively dressed, and moderately adorned with jewelry. She conducted herself with dignity and without the feigned modesty commonly encountered in the musical culture of the era. Her public persona, her music, and her personality were in perfect congruence with each other. Her music exuded peace and warmth, as much as her relationships did. If her music was an elixir of tranquility, it was so because, as a person, she was totally above greed and competitive anxiety. She performed her music, and conducted her life in the same manner -- with quiet confidence devoid of arrogance or intimidatory intent. 

Despite the accessibility of her music, Hirabai represented formidable musicianship. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Hirabai’s junior amongst Kairana vocalists, said: “She is an outstanding exponent of  Kairana vocalism. Especially, her command over swara, laya, and tala. Her music is a fitting reply to those who allege that Kairana vocalism has only swara and no laya or tala. Gifted with a voice without any blemishes, once she begins singing, she enchants with every vocal expression at her command.” Ramkrishna Buwa Vaze, her teacher for a while, said: “Hirabai’s music can make a sick man feel healthy”. 

In recognition of her contribution to music and the stature she had earned, Hirabai was honored by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1965, and awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 1970. 

Childhood and grooming

 ABDUL KAREEM KHAN

Hirabai Barodekar was the second of the five surviving children of Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan, and his disciple, Tarabai Mane, who took on the Muslim name of Tahira Bibi upon her marriage to him. Hirabai (named Champakali at birth), along with her elder brother, Suresh Babu (named Abdul Rehman at birth), were initiated into music in early childhood. By the time Suresh Babu was 7 and Hirabai was barely 4, the proud father, Abdul Karim Khan began showing off their prodigious talent by making them perform short duet items at his own concerts in different parts of the country. 

Hirabai’s early life in music was full of turmoil. According to some accounts,  her father wanted to reorient his pubescent  daughters towards a "respectable" life as householders rather than continue training in music. Hirabai circumvented this restriction by overhearing the training being given to his male disciples, especially her brother, Suresh Babu. Thereafter, while Hirabai was in her early teens, she had to face the consequences of parental discord. Her mother, Tarabai quit the Ustad's home, with their five children in tow, to start a new life in Bombay. To make a complete break from the past, she scrapped the family’s Muslim names, and adopted her maiden surname (Mane) for her sons, and Barodekar, the generalised description of the Maharashtrian community in Baroda, as the surname for the daughters. 

It was an era of growing demand for music education, and music schools were coming up all over Maharashtra. In order to support the family, Tarabai opened a music school, where she and her eldest son, the 17-year old Suresh Babu were the main teachers. They also taught Hirabai. In addition, Hirabai was tutored, for short periods, by Mohammad Khan of the Agra gharana, and Ramkrishna Buwa Vaze, the Gwalior-trained original. But, Tarabai had to worry about giving her children the quality of training worthy of Abdul Kareem Khan’s lineage. The solution emerged through her friendly neighbors, Zohrabai and her daughter Munnibai, who were disciples of Ustad Abdul Waheed Khan, a kinsman and close associate of Abdul Kareem Khan. Zohrabai persuaded Abdul Waheed Khan to teach Suresh Babu and Hirabai.  

Abdul Waheed Khan, though an affectionate father-figure to the promising teen-agers, was a tough taskmaster. His training was grueling, with each raga being taught for six months, with no concessions for boredom. Hirabai was a quick learner, and a hard-working disciple. The mentor himself acknowledged that Hirabai could master in a year what others would take four years to grasp. 

  

 ABDUL WAHEED KHAN

In 1922, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, the renaissance man of Hindustani music, invited Hirabai and Suresh Babu to perform at the annual day of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya. The 17-year old Hirabai excelled and her performance and sent ripples of excitement through the music community at the arrival of a great new voice. Her mentor, Abdul Waheed Khan, took it badly as she had performed without his permission. Soon thereafter, Hirabai and Suresh Babu were invited to play roles as singer-actors in musical theatrical productions. Abdul Waheed Khan saw this direction as unbecoming of a high-brow lineage of musicians, and terminated the training of Hirabai and Suresh Babu. This was the year 1922, just about four years after they had commenced training with the Ustad.

In the profession

Starting from 1923, Hirabai began a hectic concert schedule, traveling widely with Suresh Babu as companion and Harmonium accompanist. In the same year, she launched her career as a recording artist which was to deliver almost 200 recordings to a hungry public over the next 45 years with the three major recording labels – HMV, Odeon, and Columbia. She continued to work sporadically in the regional theatre, while she traveled the lengths and breadth of the country charming audiences. 

In 1924, Ustad Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana organized a major musical event in Bombay, and invited Hirabai and Suresh Babu to perform. Once again, the two gave brilliant performances, obliging Alladiya Khan to pay handsome compliments to their talent and grooming. In 1937, Kesarbai Kerkar, the Empress of the concert platform, recommended Hirabai for invitation to the prestigious All India Music Conference in Calcutta, and took pride in introducing a new star. These endorsements added immensely to her reputation, and her concert career maintained its upward graph. 

Lured by the buoyancy of the Marathi regional theatre, and her children’s talent for musical productions, Tarabai launched a drama company in 1929 as an adjunct to the music school she ran, so that all her children could be gainfully employed. Hirabai and Sureshbabu were assigned stellar roles. In this venture, Tarabai had the solid support of some of the finest musicians amongst theatre personalities of the times – Govindrao Tembe, Bal Gandharva, Master Krishnarao, Sawai Gandharva, and Vinayakrao Pathwardhan. The company produced three plays – Sanshay Kallol, Sangeet Saubhadra, and Sadhvi Mirabai. The plays featured superlative music, and were tremendously successful. But, the venture itself wall ill-fated.

Audiences started thinning as the era of talkies dawned. In 1933, the company downed shutters, with the family deeply in debt. Lawyers advised the declaration of insolvency and reneging on the debts. Hirabai refused, and took on the entire burden of debts pledging her professional earnings towards redemption. She swore thereafter never to work in the theatre. 

That resolution was not easy to maintain. In 1944, ten years after she decided to quit theatre, her close friends and associates, Bal Gandharva and Master Krishnarao, persuaded her to revive her old play, Sangeet Saubhadra. The play was a thundering success, often starting at 10 pm and ending at dawn, with each song having to be sung several times on public demand. Thereafter, she accepted roles in Marathi films, and acted in three of them – Swarna Mandir, Pratibha, and Sant Janabai. Only the last one did well. After the failure of her films, she said goodbye, once and for all, to theatre and films. 

In the mean while, in 1929, barely two years after the launch of the Indian Broadcasting Corporation (later, All India Radio), she began broadcasting her music. Through the “chain-booking” system of the broadcasting company, she performed on all stations in the country, from Kashmir to Calicut. Radio executives have lost count of her broadcasts over her 45-year broadcasting career; but do recall that her acceptance rate for radio bookings was close to 100%. In 1977, at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of All India Radio, Hirabai was honored by the Prime Minister of India as a stalwart broadcaster. 

The stature, respect and affection Hirabai enjoyed amongst audiences and musicians alike was enviable. In 1946, the ultra-conservative Harballabh Sangeet Sammelan of Jallandhar, broke its 50-year convention of inviting only male musicians, and invited Hirabai to perform. At another prestigious music festival in Calcutta, KL Sehgal, the legendary singer-actor, interrupted her performance and walked up to the stage to present to her as many as 12 gold sovereigns gifted by members of the present audience in gratitude for her music. In 1947, when India gained independence, Hirabai was invited to broadcast the national song “Vande Mataram” at midnight of August 14-15. 

For the better part of 45 years, until she put aside her Tanpura in 1973, Hirabai Barodekar was everywhere – on the concert platform, on gramophone records, on the radio, and in the regional theatre. Hers was one of the busiest careers amongst the musicians of her era. She lived with her travel kit ready at all times to respond to an invitation to perform anywhere in the country. She traveled willingly at short notice, by whatever means of travel was available, irrespective of discomfort, and remained indifferent to the level of hospitality she received from her hosts. Economics was, no doubt, the driving force. She was the bread-winner for a family of 25 dependents, including those of her siblings – especially after her brother, Suresh Babu died in 1952. She earned well, lived simply, redeemed the debts of her mother’s theatre company, remained a gracious hostess throughout her life, and had enough to retire in modest comfort. 

Musicianship 

Hirabai Barodekar’s repertoire covered five genres of music – Khayal, Thumree, Natya Sangeet, Bhava Geet and Bhajans. On rare occasions she also sang Ghazals. She was an unquestioned master of the Khayal and Natya Sangeet, though some of her Bhava Geet and Bhajans also became very popular. Almost two-thirds of her commercial recordings belong to the Khayal and Natya Sangeet genres. Her Thumree repertoire, too, had its admirers. Connoisseurs of her times, however, felt that, she did not have the temperament to do full justice to the seductive character of the genre. Her discerning contemporaries also believed that her involvement with the theatre did a lot of good to her competence as a classical vocalist. The acoustics of play houses in her times (devoid of amplification) trained her to throw her voice with a controlled consistency of timbre and volume – a great asset in the context of concert hall electronics. The demands of theatre music perhaps also helped her avoid the “more educative than entertaining” tag of her Guru, Abdul Wahid Khan.  

Hirabai was aware that her formal training had been too short to justify her pedigree, and remained passionate about learning as much as she could from any obliging source. She routinely invited great musicians to perform at her residence, and learnt from them anything that caught her fancy. She had a close association with the scholar-musician, Vasantrao Deshpande, from whom she received guidance in classical  music as well as Natya Sangeet. Through one of the wealthy patrons of that era, she became friends with the celebrated Thumree singer, Gohar Jan, and learnt several Purab style Thumrees and Ghazals from her. The legendary Natya Sangeet singer, Bal Gandharva, was her friend and colleague in the theatre. From him, she learnt many of the songs from his plays, and performed them widely in her own style. 

Her classical repertoire was limited to the common and mature ragas preferred by Kairana gharana vocalists – ragas like Yaman, Bhoop, Shuddha Kalyan, Marwa, Malkauns, Multani, Basant, Miya Malhar, Todi and Bhairavi. When audiences requested her to sing a raga she did not know, she honestly admitted that she did not know it. It never bothered her that she did not have the esoteric repertoire that many vocalists of her era flaunted as hallmarks of musicianship. Under the most challenging conditions, she could melt the hearts of her audiences with what she knew. 

Hirabai was a brilliant concert planner. She had an intuitive grasp of what repertoire would work with specific audiences. Unless placed under time constraints, she could hold audiences enthralled from 10 pm to 4 am, a common requirement of musicianship in her times. She could handle the occasional unpleasant surprises of the concert situation with great composure. At one festival in Calcutta, Hirabai’s cousin Roshanara Begum, scheduled to perform ahead of her, was in a nasty mood. Roshanara decided to wind up her own concert with Bhairavi, conventionally the last raga of an evening. Concert hosts were embarrassed by this affront to Hirabai’s stature by Roshanara. Hirabai was unperturbed. She went up to the stage, tuned her Tanpuras, and started raga Maru Bihag exactly as she had planned, and had the audience eating out of her hands in a few minutes. 

Like Kesarbai amongst her seniors, Hirabai maintained a stable relationship with her accompanists. Her ensemble always consisted of Baburao Kumthekar on the Sarangi, Shamsuddin Khan on the Tabla and Rajabhau Koske on the Harmonium. The stability of these relationships contributed immensely to the rapport between the musicians, and to the harmonious and effortless delivery of music.  

The most significant facet of Hirabai’s musicianship was her voice. In recent times, no other voice has inspired as much poetry and poetic prose as did Hirabai’s. Leading litterateurs of her times compared it to the soothing glow of the sky on a full-moon night. Hers was a voice soaked in honey, and yet crisp enough to enable the crystal clear execution of her musical ideas through two octaves. In the pitch-precision and intonation department, she was arguably the only female vocalist of the century who could hold a candle to the legendary perfection of her father, Abdul Kareem Khan. In addition to nature’s gift, her voice was a product of assiduous cultivation. No matter how late in the night she had retired, she never missed her pre-sunrise exercises for keeping the voice in fine fettle. She routinely practiced for four to five hours a day, irrespective of where she was. 

Despite the diversity of her repertoire in terms of genres, her music in each genre was faithful to its esthetics. Her Khayals retained their formal aloofness, and were never in danger of becoming Thumrees. Nor did they ever drift towards the more entertaining stylistics of Natya Sangeet. Despite the variety of influences on her style, Hirabai’s Khayals were her own, and yet bore the unmistakable stamp of melody-dominant Kairana vocalism. Hers was disciplined music, but without the academism of Abdul Waheed Khan. Hers was intelligent music, without ever becoming a display of either cleverness or scholarship. Her intellect was deployed, instead, towards refining the aesthetic sensibility that guided her music. Her music thus acquired a universal appeal, appreciated by the laity as well as connoisseurs. 

Even her admirers admitted that her music lacked daring experimentalism and the element of surprise evident in the vocalism of, say, Kesarbai Kerkar. Hirabai’s music was a reflection of her personality, which was essentially conservative, mellow, warm and affectionate. Her father’s music was steeped in Karuna Rasa (the sentiment of pathos). Her Guru, Abdul Waheed Khan’s music was very cerebral. Hirabai’s musical personality belonged to the territory of Shanta Rasa (the sentiment of peace and tranquility) and Vatsalya Rasa (the maternal sentiment). 

The architecture of her Khayal presentations was flawless, corresponding to the two-tier Kairana structure with an alap followed by tan-s. Her alap was amongst most celebrated alaps of her era. She constructed it like an exquisite string of pearls, carefully evaluating every phrase for its beauty, and stringing it meticulously to create a well-knit melodic experience. The most widely admired facet of her alap was her ascent to the upper-Sa in the antara. The ascent was so astutely constructed that, the reposeful arrival at the upper-Sa became an ecstatic experience. Amongst her seniors of the era, Kesarbai’s antara-s were equally valued. But, there was a difference. Kesarbai made the audiences’ jaws drop in marvel. Hirabai’s anatara-s, instead, penetrated their consciousness, and sent them into a trance. Hirabai’s virtuosity in the tan-s department was no inferior to that of her major contemporaries. But, unlike them, she constructed and rendered them with simplicity and warmth that were innate to her personality, rather than to intimidate.  

Despite her classicism, and the passage of time, Hirabai's music shows no signs of aesthetic obsolescence and retains its appeal to this day. One of the tragedies for later generations of music lovers is that very little of her music has been published on concert-length media, and very few of her concert recordings are in circulation amongst archivists. The most inexplicable aspect of this reality is that All India Radio, the holder of the largest Hirabai archive spread over her entire performing career, has ignored her in its programme for the commercial release of their musical assets. 

 (c) Deepak S. Raja 2011

Discography. (78 RPM)
Courtesy: Shri Suresh Chandvankar
Society of Record Collectors of India
Please visit: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellpatke/Miscellany/hirabai.htm

Other published recordings:
ECLP 2275  Raga Multani, Raga Yaman 1962
PMLP 3018  Facets of Kirana Gharana  1988

Zia Fareeduddin Dagar -- “The university system has done damage to the artistic traditions”

Ustad Zia Fareeduddin Dagar spoke to Deepak Raja about the Dhrupad Kendra, Bhopal, on October 6, 1998

 By 1980, I had virtually settled down in Austria. I was running Dhrupad classes in Austria and France. Once, during a visit to India, one of my disciples, the filmmaker, Mani Kaul came to me and pleaded with me to provide the background score for a film he was making on Madhya Pradesh. I was reluctant initially, but I could not refuse Mani Kaul. So, I got involved.

During the making of the film, we spent over two months in Madhya Pradesh, a lot of time in Bhopal In those days, Shri Arjun Singh was the Chief Minister of MP. Cultural development was one of his passions. It is because of him that the magnificent Bharat Bhavan cultural center developed in Bhopal. At that time, the Secretary to the Department of Culture in MP was Shri Ashok Vajpayee, who later went to Delhi as Jt. Secretary, Department of Culture in the Central Government. I spent a lot of time with Vajpayeeji during those days, and we developed a great deal of respect for each other. Thereafter, I returned to Paris to resume my teaching there.

A few months later, I got an offer from Shri Vajpayee to start a government-supported Dhrupad School in Bhopal. By that time, I had become sufficiently cynical about the value of government patronage to the kind of work a serious musician wishes to do. I brushed the proposal aside as just one more of those well-meaning ideas.

By co-incidence, I was visiting the Cannes Film Festival, and there I happened to meet up with Ashok Vajpayee and Mani Kaul, and some other leading figures in the field of art. During the days we spent together, Ashok Vajpayee prevailed upon me to accept the invitation to move back to India and set up the Dhrupad Kendra in Bhopal. Immediately upon his return to India, Vajpayee announced the formation of the Dhrupad Kendra.

We formed a committee to supervise the activities of the Kendra. It had Dr. Premlata Sharma, Pandit Kumar Gandharva, Mani Kaul, my elder brother (the Late Ustad Zia Moiuddin Dagar) and others.

We decided on a training period of four years. Some committee members were skeptical. They thought it was too short. I told them that it was my responsibility to produce first-class performing musicians, and I knew what I was doing. The results are there for everyone to see. In post-independence India, no other institution, with government or corporate funding, has been able to produce comparable results under a Gurukul type institution.

We had a heated debate over the stipend for the disciples. I argued that we are not giving fellowships to mature musicians. We are giving pocket money to students. I insisted that, during their training, we do not pay amounts which permit them to seek distractions. We got the first batch for a stipend of Rs. 350 per month in 1981. Recently, it has been enhanced to Rs. 700, which is reasonable considering the inflationary pressures. Higher stipends could have been obtained from the Academy’s budget; but we might have failed in our mission. I think our tight-fisted policy on stipends has made a major contribution to the success of the institution.

Our selection of students is also unorthodox. We do not limit our selection to people who have a good grounding in music. We have our share of such students, of course. But, we have also accepted students who could not tunefully deliver a film-song on the day of the interview. After a year of training, such students are not doing very much worse than those who came with degrees in music. We are looking for dedication more than anything else, and that spark of creativity. Shaping the raw material is my task, and I know how to do it.

There is also another angle to this. Students, who come to us after maturing in the training of other gharanas, find it difficult to re-orient themselves to our style. Therefore, we try to ensure that the background of our students does not interfere with the process of shaping them into competent Dhrupad musicians.

My students reside in their hostelry, and report for taleem at 4.30 in the morning every day of the year. They go back around 11.00 at night, and return the next morning, again at 4.30. We started the institution with five students in each batch of 4-years duration. Recently, the number of students has been increased to eight, four from families domiciled in Madhya Pradesh, and four from outside the state. We are now into the fifth batch.

We do not have any rigid rules about age at the time of admission. Most students come to us around the age of eighteen. We accept students even upto the age of twenty-eight or thirty, if we feel that they will be able to absorb the taleem.

In a significant departure from the past pattern, we have recently accepted Ph.D. graduates from Benares Hindu University. In this case, the consideration was that, at BHU, they have been trained by Prof. Ritwik Sanyal, one of my disciples. Therefore, the gharana orientation is not a major issue. These students are seeking further training because their earlier education has been governed by the academic prescriptions of the university environment. The performing art belongs to a different world altogether.

The majority of our students are boys. We also accept girls. We have produced some very fine singers amongst ladies. However, the Indian social environment does not normally permit ladies from cultured families to pursue a career in music after marriage. Therefore, considering our mission, this is one part of our success, which is mixed with regret.

My institution has a big name: Dhrupad Kendra, under the Ustad Allauddin Khan Music Academy. But, it is not an institution in the conventional sense. By way of staff, there is me, a sweeper, and a gardener. And, then there are students. That is all. The administrative work is handled by the Music Academy. Establishment expenses, and stipends for students are paid out directly from the Academy. I think we have achieved something because we are not run either like a university, or a government institution or a music academy.

I firmly believe that the university system has done damage to the artistic traditions – not only in music, but also in the other fine and performing arts. Take for instance, painting. Our universities have turned out a lot of very good painters in the oil paint medium. But, they are all functioning without roots in an artistic tradition, because India has no oil-painting tradition. Therefore, I say that, in the university system, you may promote technique, but not tradition. Tradition requires a firm grounding in the past. University education in the fine arts cannot fulfil this requirement.

I am not arguing that government funding for the arts is worthless. Nevertheless, I will argue that if it forces art education to divorce itself from the living tradition, it is achieving nothing worthwhile. In fact, on a national scale, the investment that is being made in art education is producing nothing by way of perpetuating the living traditions. In stark contrast to the university system, the Dhrupad Kendra has proved that it is possible to make government support productive, when it works within the traditional system of art education. I am sure even the Dhrupad Kendra model can be refined and improved. But, the basics must remain rooted in the living tradition.

If this Dhrupad Kendra idea had not taken shape, I and my elder brother, Ustad Zia Moiuddin Dagar, would have continued to train students anyway. So, our work as trainers was not made totally dependent on government funding. Because of government support, I started doing in Bhopal what I would have otherwise been doing in Bombay or Paris or Vienna. And, partly because of government scholarships, we attracted some very promising students. However, I am not sure that equally promising students might not have gravitated towards our training, even without the meager stipends government is paying them. .

In the ultimate analysis, what you need most is an Ustad wanting to teach, and disciples keen to learn. These are the factors which enable a performing art tradition to perpetuate itself.

In a government-supported system, there is a permanent danger of political and bureaucratic processes interfering with the momentum of the efforts. So far, the Dhrupad Kendra has been able to protect itself from this danger. I must, however, confess that I have had my share of frustrations, and have even come close to resigning. I have stayed because I could demand the freedom to do my work, and fulfil my obligations.

As long as the present equation between the Dhrupad Kendra and the government remains, the work we have started will continue. When I am no longer on the scene, I am sure that one of my own students will take over the Guru’s position. After all, that is the way the Parampara has always worked.

I know that Dhrupad musicians will, henceforth, find it more difficult to sacrifice full-time performing careers for a Guru’s position. There is also a non-commercial aspect to a Guru’s self-denial. All the hours that he spends in teaching, are denying to him the satisfaction of his own musical needs – of singing for his own pleasure, and working on his own development as a musician. For an accomplished musician, these are not small sacrifices. Yet, I nurture the fond hope that one of my better students will be willing to give at least half as much of himself to this Gurukul as I have done for over 16 years.

Reproduced, with the publisher’s consent, from “Perspectives on Dhrupad”, edited by Deepak Raja, and Suvarnalata Rao, published by the Indian Musicological Society, Baroda/ Bombay. 1999

Patadeepak: Can it be called a raga?

Patadeepak is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. On the only recording available, Sharafat Hussain Khan of Agra gharana introduces it as an “old” raga. However, it remains undocumented by any recent authority, starting from Bhatkhande in the first quarter of the 20th century, upto Manikbuwa Thakurdas in the 1990’s. I have checked with some of the biggest archivists, and find that no other recordings of the raga – published or otherwise -- are known to exist. Circumstantially, however, it would appear that two of Sharafat’s seniors from the lineage, Vilayat Hussain Khan and Jagannath Buwa Purohit, may have performed the bandish recorded by Sharafat, even if only rarely. The raga has not been heard in recent years from any musician of the Agra lineage.

Swara material: S R G M P D n N 
Ascent: S G M P/ G M D N S’ Descent: S n D P/ M P G/ S R S

The skeletal phraseology (chalan) of the raga is documented on the basis of the Sharafat recording, the only one available.

S N. D. N. S
N S M G or P. N. S G
S G M P
P M P G
M D n S’ N S’ or M P N S’ or G M D N S
S’ P or S’ D n P
D M P G
G P M P G
S R S

SHARAFAT HUSSAIN

For connoisseurs of Hindustani music, this raga represents an intriguing blend of familiarity and novelty. In its phrasing strategy, the raga appears to tread a precarious line between members of the Bihag and Bilawal families. According to Purnima Sen, Sharafat’s disciple, Patadeepak is a combination of five ragas, with Deepak of the Bilawal scale being the main component. The other elements, according to her, include Hameer, Bangaal (also a rare raga), Savani, and Chhaya (rarely performed in its pure form).

The major parameters of raga grammar are difficult to pin down on available evidence. However, the phrase string P-M-P-G/ S R S would appear to constitute the raga’s melodic signature. The identification of the vadi (primary dominant) would favour Ga, with the samvadi (secondary dominant) remaining indeterminate. The centre of gravity of the raga is in the purvanga, with considerable importance to melodic action in the madhyanga (mid-octave region).

 In the Sharafat recording I studied, the Madhya laya Ektal bandish is the hero of the Patadeepak rendition.

The lyrics express a fundamental idea in Indian culture – the sanctity of a disciple’s relationship with his Guru – and does so in simple and transparently sincere verse. It also incorporates the poetic signatures of three Agra stalwarts -- Prem Piya (Faiyyaz Khan), Pran Piya (Vilayat Hussain) and Gunidas (Jagannath Buwa Purohit)-- and has a melodic-rhythmic structure entirely devoid of cleverness, though not without grace. This combination of features could have been designed to keep the raga in circulation, at least amongst the followers of the Agra lineage. Sharafat’s rendering of it, with a reverential spoken introduction to this bandish, validates this intention of the composer.

The entire rendition revolves around the melodic contours of the bandish, in most cases also following the sequencing of phrases. To this extent, this would seem to be a classic example of traditional Agra vocalism, which uses the bandish as the primary vehicle of raga presentation. The issue is, however, slightly more complex than this. Ragas acquire their "raga-ness" as a result of a progressive exploration of melodic potential through wide circulation, and over several generations. Until this process has attained reasonable maturity, the "raga" cannot provide an abstract  framework for regulating the improvisatory process.

This would appear to be the case with Patadeepak. Despite its claimed antiquity, it conveys the impression of being not much more than a song. Because of this, the safest route to presenting it is to remain within the boundaries defined by the bandish. Sharafat recognises this reality, and introduces his rendition as that of a bandish (and not a raga), making only a casual reference to the raga being “old”, without even naming it. Considering the obscurity of the raga, he may have assumed that the name would not have meant anything even to the connoisseurs in his audience.

(c) India Archive Music Ltd., New York.

Pandit Kumar Gandharva: The ultimate rebel of Hindustani vocalism

Pandit Kumar Gandharva (1924-1992) was easily the most original, and the most controversial Hindustani vocalist of the 20th century. His music elicited extreme reactions – either fanatical adulation or outright hostility. But, his musicianship was never in doubt. By the time he breathed his last, he had been decorated with the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, the Kalidas Samman, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and a Fellowship of the Akademi.

Kumar Gandharva was the ultimate rebel, l'enfant terrible, of Hindustani music. His music bore no obvious resemblance to that of any 20th century vocalist. He defied the structural norms of khayal presentation, created new ragas, new bandish-es, and new styles of voice production and handling melody. His music was refreshing, aggressive, dramatic, and overpowering. But, it was also elusive and mercurial. At the end of his performance, nothing remained for assessment or analysis. The originality of his music could even have launched a new gharana, had he maintained a semblance of architecture in its presentation.

Vamanrao Deshpande, his most sympathetic critic, considers Kumar Gandharva the chief romanticist of Hindustani vocalism. As an artistic movement, romanticism emphasizes the soliciting, rather than merely eliciting, of an emotional response as the primary effort of music. To this extent, Deshpande considers Kumar Gandharva a forerunner of Kishori Amonkar and Pandit Jasraj.

Childhood and grooming

Kumar Gandharva was born Shivputra Siddaramappa Komkalli at Belgaum in Northern Karnataka. Because he exhibited prodigious talent for music, the spiritual head of the Lingayat community renamed him at the age of six. Kumar’s father, Siddaramappa, was a follower of the Kairana maestro, Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan, and a close friend of Panchakshari Buwa, one of the most influential musicians of Northern Karnataka. Kumar thus grew up in an atmosphere steeped in music.

Young Kumar was an avid listener of 78 RPM records of classical music, and developed an uncanny knack for memorizing and reproducing the recordings of great masters, faithful to the minutest detail. He did these with deep respect for the quality of the music, and not in the spirit of mimicry or caricature. This talent of his was demonstrated for the first time on a major platform in 1936 at a music festival, with some of the most influential patrons and leading musicians in attendance. Kumar sang for barely 30 minutes, but created an incredible impact on the music community. The 12-year old was himself stunned by the shower of praise and gifts that greeted him as he stepped off the stage.

PROF. BR DEODHAR

Convinced of his promise, Prof. BR Deodhar (1902-1989) took charge of Kumar’s grooming, and virtually adopted him as a son. With his modern worldview, Prof. Deodhar proved to be an ideal mentor, and the Deodhar School of Music, an ideal environment for Kumar. Though a Gwalior-trained vocalist and a disciple of Vishnu Digambar, Prof. Deodhar had dedicated his later life to accumulating and disseminating musical knowledge. In earlier years, he had been a pioneering composer and orchestrator of music starting from the silent era in which film screenings were accompanied by live orchestra. He composed music for several films, crossing over into the era of talkies. Ultimately, disillusioned with the film world, Prof. Deodhar concentrated on his school and his academic pursuits. His contribution as an author and musicologist was phenomenal. His school was a major centre of diverse musical activity in Bombay, where the leading musicians of all gharana-s gathered to perform and discuss music. It was in this eclectic environment that Kumar Gandharva’s musical personality was nurtured.

For eleven years, (1936-1947, age 12 to 23) Prof. Deodhar taught Kumar the music of the Gwalior tradition, but allowed him to evolve his own approach to music, unburdened by the aesthetic indoctrination of any gharana. According to some accounts, Kumar was – either during this period or later – also coached by the Bhendi Bazar gharana stalwart, Anjanibai Malpekar. After about five years of training with Prof. Deodhar, Kumar started performing, and began acquiring a following. But, he was still plagued by artistic uncertainty. He had renounced the security of gharana-based music; but did not yet have a grip on music that he could call his own. His search for originality was triggered off soon thereafter by a life-threatening crisis.

In 1947, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It took him about five years to triumph over the disease, which he did by the sheer power of his will. During those years, he was forced to live in the drier climate of Dewas (MP), virtually bed-ridden and forbidden to sing. In virtual exile, he had the opportunity of thinking deeply about music, and indeed, about life and death. At Dewas, he also began responding to the folk music of the Malwa region, and started documenting the songs he heard. As they grew on him, he could extract from them their melodic personalities, and discover their rules of melodic patterning. In later years, many of these melodic frameworks were to become the cornerstone of his musicianship.

His battle against tuberculosis had not only given him new poetic and melodic material to work with, but also an unorthodox way of delivering it. The illness had left him with weak lungs, and a voice with limited tonal range The fluidity of his voice production had also suffered.. (According to some accounts, he also underwent a major surgery which left him with just one lung to work with – a belief he publicly refuted.) By the time he began performing again, his music had totally transformed itself, and Hindustani music discovered the most original vocalist of the 20th century.

Musicianship 

Kumar Gandharva’s musicianship is celebrated for its wide repertoire, as much as it is for its other qualities. He presented a wide fare of khayals in common raga-s, rare and complex raga-s, raga-s created by him, thumrees, taranas, tappas, bhajans, modern poetry, and natya sangeet. Some critics believe that his greatest contribution was to the maturation of the bhajan, to which he gave, for the first time, the character of a distinct genre on the classical music platform. While views differ, it is acknowledged that he infused each raga, and each genre, with his own distinctive interpretation.

An important part of his musicianship was the creation of new raga-s, inspired by the folk songs of the Malwa region which he studied extensively. He argued that all raga-s have folk origins, and that an unlimited resource of “raga-ness” is waiting to be excavated from the vastness of the folk tradition. From such explorations, he created (“discovered”) several ragas – Madhsurja, Ahimohini, Saheli Todi, Beehad Bhairav, Lagan Gandhar, Sanjaari, Malavati, and Nindiyari, to name a few.

Kumar Gandharva combined his fertile melodic imagination with an exceptional poetic sensitivity. In the bandish-es he composed, he achieved a perfect compatibility between the lyrics, the melody and the rhythm. When performing with poetry composed by others, he was brilliant in exploiting its musical function, without doing damage to its literary function. His involvement with poetry went far beyond his interest in classical music. His renditions of devotional poetry penned by Kabir, Surdas, Tulsidas, Tukaram and Meera Bai, and his compositions of modern Marathi poetry by BR Tambe, are considered amongst the highest artistic achievements of his career.

Another distinguishing feature of his music was his unique style of deploying his voice, characterized by short bursts of energy, unpredictable silences, and dramatic variations in timbre and volume. This was partly necessitated by physical debility. But, he had also cultivated it for achieving the impact he wished to make. He regarded the communication of emotional values (Rasa) as the principal function of music. He enriched the experience of rasa in his music by utilizing silences, and systematically manipulating timbre and volume.

Kumar Gandharva was a thinking musician with a well articulated ideology as the foundation of his unorthodox music. Not surprisingly, he never achieved the popularity of his more orthodox contemporaries. But, though smaller, his following was fanatical. It consisted of connoisseurs involved with musical knowledge and keen observers of new trends in the practice of music. His admirers are mainly residents of Suburban Bombay, Pune, and Northern Karnataka. These communities have also been the most prolific nurseries of talent in Hindustani vocalism. Expectedly, therefore, the younger generation of professional vocalists from these communities admits to having been greatly influenced by his style.

He nursed these communities of admirers with imaginatively conceived, carefully planned, and brilliantly executed theme concerts. Amongst his most memorable concerts were his “Seasonal series”, (Geet Varsha, Geet Hemant, and Geet Vasant), “Triveni” presenting his compositions of the poetry of Kabir, Surdas and Meerabai, “Mala Umajlele Bal Gandharva” comprising his reinterpretation of Bal Gandharva’s Natya Sangeet renditions, “Tulsi – Ek Darshan” and “Tukaram – Ek Darshan”, rendering verses from Ramcharit Manas, and Abhanga-s of Sant Tukaram, “Tambe Geet Rajani” featuring the modern poetry of BR Tambe, composed by him, and a theme concert featuring Thumrees, Tappas and Taranas. A few of these thematic selections were also published on discs.

To the delight of his more serious followers, he published “Anoop Raga Vilas” (1965), a substantial collection of his bandish-es, including many in “Dhun Ugama Ragas” – ragas he had discovered through the analysis of folk songs of the Malwa region of MP. The Foreword to the publication was written by Vamanrao Deshpande, an eminent musicologist of his generation.

Kumar's discography is a good reflection of his popularity and diverse repertoire. Between 1962 and 1965, Kumar released twelve Bhajans on six 78 rpm records. Between 1963 and 1988, he released nine Long Playing discs of classical music which included several ragas of his invention, and six Extend Play records of Marathi Natyasangeet, Bhavageet and Bhajans.

Amongst romanticists of the post-independence era, Kumar Gandharva’s path was thornier than that of the other two – Kishori Amonkar and Jasraj -- because his rebellion against the tradition was more comprehensive. Kumar dispensed with the aloofness as well as the architecture of Khayal vocalism. He was therefore a difficult musician for his contemporary audiences to handle. Kishori Amonkar and Jasraj, on the other hand, deviated on the aloofness factor, while respecting the architectural features of khayal vocalism. Their music was therefore more accessible, and gave romanticism a respectable place in the tradition. Kumar Gandharva deserves his place in history not only as a romanticist pioneer, but also as a radical who forced the khayal tradition to re-examine its moorings, and consider alternative models of musicianship.

(c) Deepak S. Raja 2011

Shubhendra Rao -- "The soul remains Indian; but we cross a few boundaries"

Shubhendra's e-mail of July 1,2004 to Deepak Raja



SHUBHENDRA & SASKIA RAO

My father was a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar since 1949, much before I was born. He remained one of his closest disciples and in our house in Bangalore where I grew up, Guruji (Pandit Ravi Shankar) was worshipped as God! Even as a very young child, I was supposed to have shown my talent in music and could sing all the notes even before I could speak. I would even sing film songs in musical notations!!! This talent was noticed by Guruji too and he tested me when I was 3 years old by singing many complicated Taans which I could easily notate in swaras. Not being too strong physically because of my age and not being able to hold the Sitar in its normal position, I would hold it like a South Indian Veena (perhaps seeing my mother practice).

My first memory of my life is also of that day when Guruji, Alla Rakhaji came home to see my grandmother and have dinner with us. The year was 1968 and I was 3 + a few months at that time. My father asked me to play for Guruji which I did. They were very impressed and I have vivid memories of Guruji telling me that I should hold the Sitar in the normal position from then on and practice.

My father was my first Guru and he was very methodical in his teaching--stressing a lot on the exercises and different compositions that he had learnt from guruji. What others found difficult like meends, gamaks came easy for me and every year, whenever Guruji visited Bangalore for concerts, he would check my progress and give a few suggestions. My first lesson from him directly was in the year 1973 in Mysore where he sat with me for more than an hour and taught me Raga Bhairav, teaching me some chalans, meends and a beautiful sargam. Whenever Guruji had master classes for his senior students, my father would record these lessons and the first thing we would do together when he returned to Bangalore was to write down the notations and I could practise it the next few months. I still remember once when he returned from Benaras and there was this difficult Taan in Bilaskhani Todi which Guruji himself had said was very difficult and I could pick it up very fast just by listening to it once from a cassette.

From 1977 onwards, Guruji started calling me to different places like Bombay, Delhi and other places to teach me, either alone or with a few selected students. Then, I could get to spend 10-15 days with him and he would sometimes teach for 7-8 hrs in a day!!! At the same time, he asked me to play in his compositions and recordings that he would do. The first opportunity for me to sit and play with him on stage was in 1983 when I played with him in Delhi in Siri Fort along with 3 senior students of his. At this point, I was the baby in his group of students since I was just 18!!!

It was in 1984 that he asked me to move to Delhi since he had plans of staying in Delhi more and more. I jumped at this opportunity and even though I had 2yrs still left to finish my college, I left everything and moved to Delhi. The next 7-8 yrs were years of practice and learning and absorbing the music. Sometimes, teaching would be at midnight when he felt like it or at 7 in the morning. Even though he would go out on tours, I continued to stay in the house and practice as much as possible. I started playing with him on stage regularly from 1984 onwards and many times, he would take ragas that I had not previously learnt and talas that I had not practiced. Next day he would then sit with the same raga and we would go through it in a detailed way.

The insight he has given me into this music---the spiritual feeling to approach it with---Raga clarity and strict adherence to the raga without taking any liberties with the raga--the different moods of different ragas---everything I have absorbed from him. His humility towards the music is something I have seen and taken with me.

Performing career

I did play a few concerts when I was young--in some youth festivals or competitions but on Guruji's advice, I stopped performing completely till 1987 when an organiser in Bangalore sought Guruji's permission for me to play in a major youth festival. Since then, I have been performing regularly all over. Some of the major music festivals are Shankar Lal festival in 1993 and 1995, Saptak festival many times, Harvallabh Sangeet Mahasabha, Dover Lane Music Conference and others.

My first international visit was to Moscow when Guruji asked me to play in his creation--Inside the Kremlin. My first solo tour internationally was in 1993 to North America and since then, have been performing all over the world every year. I have played in some major music festivals like WOMAD and also collaborated with some non-Indian musicians like Chinese instrument called Pipa played by Gao Hong, Jazz Flutist James Newton---have composed music for ballets. I am also working closely with my wife Saskia who has modified and adapted the Cello for Indian Classical music. We compose and play together special pieces for the Sitar-Cello. Our music is what you could call an extension of Indian classical music because the soul remains Indian but we cross a few boundaries. These compositions have been received with great acclaim internationally.

(c) Deepak S. Raja
The finest recordings of Shubhendra Rao have been produced by India Archive Music Ltd., New York.  IndiaArcMu@aol.com