On January 16, 2004, two months before his father Ustad Vilayat Khan’s demise, I was talking to Ustad Shujaat Khan about his perceptions of his life in music. He had, by then, achieved considerable success as a performing musician in the US, and had begun to make his presence felt in the Indian market. During our conversations, he made some interesting observations.
“Having achieved prior success abroad has helped me immensely in dealing with the Indian market. Whatever success I have in India today has been achieved with my self-esteem intact… Having done well abroad has also helped me musically -- allowed me the time to liberate my Indian presence from the towering shadow of Ustad Vilayat Khan’s music. Had I been more dependent on Indian audiences for my livelihood, the market may have forced me to become a Vilayat Khan clone… I cannot cease to be Vilayat Khan’s son and disciple any more than I can cease to be myself. But, I don’t want to be coerced into reaffirming my lineage at every concert, and in every raga.
“With the passage of time, of course, an entirely new generation of listeners has emerged. To them, Ustad Vilayat Khan or Pandit Ravi Shankar or Ustad Ali Akbar Khan – though they are all alive – are only as real as Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru. These audiences are willing to accept me for what I am. So, from every angle, my prior success abroad has worked well for me.”
Two points merit highlighting. First, that he was facing two distinct generations of audiences – the established Vilayat Khan audience, and the emerging audience which did not relate to Vilayat Khan’s idiom. Second, that he could build a successful career in India only by liberating his music from the Vilayat Khan idiom, and addressing the nascent generation of music lovers.
Young India
At the time when these observations were made, Shujaat’s remarks were astute. (See Graph). In the year 2005, the median (average) age of India’s population was 23.8 years. Half of India’s population was below 24 years of age. Though no longer getting younger, even today India is a young nation, and the proportion of youth is large enough to attract a musician.
Over the years, his efforts helped him build a successful contemporary idiom upon the foundations of Vilayat Khan’s musical language. A few others of his own generation, and the next have also made apparently successful departures – though stylistically different -- from the orthodox (early 20th century) idiom.
Their deviant/ revisionist idioms have their own generational logic, and their success validates it. But, the other half of the population, which their music perhaps excludes, has neither disappeared, nor is it likely to disappear. In fact, India is now ageing at the rate of about 3.5 years every decade. This has implications for the musical culture because culture is the product of a complex interaction between co-existing generations.
These interactions are changing society constantly, and music is also changing in response to them. The changes remain imperceptible for long periods, until society has changed substantially enough to demand newer modes of cultural expression. When such visibly new modes appear, and replace older modes, they are described as “Paradigm Shifts”.
Interpreting the generational logic
To understand how this generational logic has worked in the Sitar world, I selected 24 significant Sitarists, and estimated their appeal for present-day (as in May 2021) YouTube audiences. The sample of 24 musicians used for this study is listed – by the year of their birth – in Table 1 at the end of this study. The sample covers a wide spectrum of gharana styles, and a span of 60 years. Pandit Ravi Shankar (born: 1920) to Niladri Kumar (born: 1979).
I have written extensively on the limitations and usefulness of publicly displayed YouTube audience measurements for research purposes. I use the data because it is better than nothing, and I interpret it as being indicative rather than authoritative. The usable indicator derived from this data is “Views per month”. Because of the question mark hanging over data quality, I call this an “Audience Engagement Factor” (AEF). This AEF can be computed for each published recording or for aggregates of recordings grouped together/ classified on different parameters.
The Audience Engagement Factors have been computed for the selected 24 Sitarists, using their top-35 YouTube uploads by accumulated viewership, as in the first week of May, 2021. The sample is limited to Sitarists above 40 as on the date of study. Only recordings of Raga-based music (along with accepted semi-classical and light music) in the solo performance format have been considered. Duets and orchestral presentations have been excluded.
Shujaat’s observations, which triggered off this enquiry, make our focus amply clear. We are attempting here to understand a historical process, and not to rate individual Sitarists. Individuals are merely observable manifestations of history.
For this purpose, we are using a data source and a measurement tool that is far from perfect. The computations themselves are a snapshot of a historical process as viewed on a particular day and, therefore, unstable. The personalities in the snapshot and their relative significance can change dramatically within a short time. But, our reading of the historical process may be more stable. (See graph)
This graph plots the Audience Engagement Factors for 24 Sitarists against their year of birth. The plot shows that contemporary audiences have a high preference for the music of Sitarists born between 1960 and 1980. But, the highest preference belongs to a Sitarist born in 1920, with Sitarists born in 1924 and 1030 also commanding sizeable audiences. From this, we may infer that though newer modes of expression have attained a substantial following, they have not yet re-invented the Sitar idiom sufficiently to render the older modes obsolete or irrelevant.
Aesthetic obsolescence is built into the character of Hindustani music. If an art-form is vibrant, it should be able to reinvent itself constantly/ repeatedly/periodically to retain or enlarge its audience. Though statistically insignificant, the slope of the trend line in the above graph may seem unhealthy to some. The phenomenon warrants a finer view.
The Sitar audience cannot be viewed as an undifferentiated homogenous mass, especially because the instrument has a large international following. So, it may be reasonable to interpret this graph as a picture of three co-existing audiences which may, or may not, represent different generations. One is the audience of Ravi Shankar/ Vilayat/ Nikhil (born: 1920-1930). The second is the audience of Shahid/Shujaat (born: 1958-1960), and the third, on the horizon, is the audience of Niladri Kumar (born: 1979).
Our “landmark” musicians highlighted on the graph, and named above, represent different generations. The method of the generations is a useful tool for understanding cultural change and paradigm shifts.
Philosophers and economists have contributed to the idea that the periodicity of paradigm shifts in all fields is closely linked with generational transitions. Economic conditions are important because they affect the prevailing worldview in a society. I have detailed a few relevant contributions to this field in my earlier essays. I summarize the gist of the most important contributions here as a backdrop to the analysis of the data compiled for the present essay.
The method of the generations
In his epic work, “Man and Crisis”, the influential Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega Y Gassett, defines a generation as a “Community of date and space”, which signifies the sharing of an essential destiny.
“A generation is an integrated manner of existence or, if you prefer, a fashion of living, which fixes itself indelibly on the individual… The concept of age is not the stuff of mathematics, but of life. Age, then, is not a date, but a zone of dates”.
This forms the basis of his division of individual life-spans into distinct phases of interaction with the world, and of history as the “dynamic system of attractions and repulsions, of agreements and controversy” between the various co-existing generations.
The sum total of Ortega’s argument is as follows: Human life is meaningfully divided into five stages of 15 years each. As a reflection of this, the face of the world changes in some ways every fifteen years. The 30-year period between 30 and 60 is the historically most significant period in the life of each generation. Hence, he regards a period of 30 years as constituting a generation. This seems reasonable because, by the age of 30, a person has almost certainly become a parent. According to him, historic (paradigmatic) changes can be expected to surface every 60 years, because the conditions governing the lives of the grand-child generation have nothing in common with those governing the grand-parent generation.
Based on the Ortega argument, it appears reasonable to look for significant changes in any field of human activity at intervals of 15, 30, and 60 years. Economists, looking at the cyclicity of business activity from various angles, have come to broadly similar conclusions.
Amongst various reputed formulations of economic cycles, the Nikolai Kondratieff formulation (1925) is considered the most authoritative because of its multi-dimensional perspective and statistical validation, and most useful from the cultural angle. His formulation is based on a comprehensive analysis of economic, demographic, monetary, technological and political factors between 1790 and 1920. Kondratieff has estimated an expansion-contraction cycle of 50-60 years, which subsumes three sub-cycles of 17-20 years each.
Relating data to theory
Considering the high-points on our graph, it becomes evident that (i) Shahid Parvez and Shujaat Khan are born, respectively, 38 and 40 years after Pt. Ravi Shankar, (ii) Niladri Kumar is born 19 years after Shujaat Khan, and almost 60 years after Pt. Ravi Shankar. This is a study of generations, and not of individual Sitarists. The named personages are only data-points on a graph. These data-points are neither intended, nor sufficient, for identifying the named Sitarists as historic personalities.
Our data broadly confirms a long cycle of 50-60 years, and sub-cycles of 17-20 years. Our data-set itself covers a period of only 60 years, or one mega-cycle as postulated by theorists of history. This obliges us to look at shorter durations (sub-cycles) for interpreting our Audience Engagement results.
The analysis of the sample by dates of birth reveals a mean of 1950, with a standard deviation of 17 years. The sample allows us to consider 5 sub-cycles (half-generations) of 17 years each. Considering the various theoretical constructs, this is a defensible way of looking at Audience Engagement Factors.
What, then, can be said about the much talked-about paradigm shift taking place in Sitar music? The final barrier will be crossed either when two generations of listeners who grew up with Ravi Shankar/Vilayat Khan/Nikhil music depart, or a new generation of Sitarists succeeds with a substantive enough re-invention of the Sitar to push the present Gods of Sitar into history.
Sixty years have passed between the arrivals of Ravi Shankar and Niladri Kumar, and neither of these developments is on the horizon. Is it, then, possible that the paradigm shift in Sitar music is already happening, but in a territory that we do not classify as “classical” music? Do we need a different data-set to understand the situation? Do we need a better way of interpreting the same data? Or, do we need better theory?
(C) Deepak S. Raja 2025
© Deepak S. Raja, May 2021
