Copyright by Jeffrey Michael Grimes 2008 - The University of Texas ...

Copyright
by
Jeffrey Michael Grimes
2008

The Dissertation Committee for Jeffrey Michael Grimes
certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:
The Geography of Hindustani Music: The
Influence of Region and Regionalism on
The North Indian Classical Tradition
Committee:
____________________________________
Stephen M. Slawek, Supervisor
____________________________________
Veit Erlmann
____________________________________
Ward Keeler
____________________________________
Robin Moore
____________________________________
Shanti Kumar

The Geography of Hindustani Music: The
Influence of Region and Regionalism on
The North Indian Classical Tradition
by
Jeffrey Michael Grimes, M.M., B.M.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
December 2008

Acknowledgements
I would like to briefly thank a few individuals for making this project possible.
The first are my parents, Tom and Kay Grimes, who have supported me emotionally and,
as necessary, financially through the dissertation writing process (and earlier, as well).
Next, I would like to thank my mentor and dissertation supervisor Dr. Stephen M.
Slawek. All that I know of Indian music (even the things he didn’t teach me directly) is
due to him, both as my academic adviser and as my long-time sitar Guru. Especially
crucial for the current project, though, has been his unwavering moral and intellectual
support. Dr. Slawek encouraged me from day one to pursue the work I wanted to pursue,
and I cannot be more grateful for this. All of his advisees that he has shepherded through
the process of writing a report or dissertation, I am sure, would say the same. Also, I
would like to thank all the musicians I spoke with while doing the research for this
project. Some had more to say or were more interested in my topic than others, but all of
them were uniformly kind, generous, and hospitable. As many others before me have
pointed out, this is absolutely one of the best aspects of working in South Asia.
I cite every musician and scholar (and musician/scholar) who have contributed
any thoughts or ideas to this project at the end of the dissertation. I would like to mention
a few particular individuals, though. First, I would to thank Dr. Ram Deshpande of
Bombay and Pandit Deepak Choudhury of Calcutta. As I state numerous times in the
following, the most profound and important lessons one can learn regarding Hindustani
music come on a very personal and intimate basis. While I studied with these two
musicians for a relatively short time, I will remain forever grateful for their kindness and
iv

great musical knowledge, which both demonstrated time and time again on each occasion
that I sat with them. Also, I would like to thank Smt. Veena Sahasrabuddhe in Bombay
and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee in Calcutta for putting in touch with these two fine
musicians and teachers. Others who were particularly important in helping me to find
and contact other musicians as possible interview subjects include Dr. Bhushan Nagdive
(of Bombay University), Dr. Neera Grover (of S.N.D.T. college, Bombay), Ishwar Lal
Mishra in Benares, Samarth Nagarkar in Calcutta, and Gaurishankar Karmakar in
Calcutta. Along the same lines, I would like to thank the American Institute of Indian
Studies for their summer Hindi language program and for their nine-month Marathi
program, as the former brought me to India for the first time and the latter to Maharashtra
for the first time. In particular, I would like to thank the entire staff of the Pune A.I.I.S.
office and of the Marathi program while I was there. Mr. Madhav Bhandare, Bagyeshree
Bhandare, Manjiri Bhalerao, Mrs. Kalika Mehta, and Gautam Brahmme were all
incredibly helpful and friendly; I never during the nine months I stayed in Pune (from
9/2002 to 5/2003) had any doubt that their #1 priority was making sure that I had the best
and most edifying experience possible. Similarly, I would like to thank Dr. Vidya
Purandare and her son Rahul who were my host family during that first long trip to Pune
(and with whom I have stayed on each subsequent visit there). I know that whenever I
visit Pune, I will always have friends and a place to stay.
I would also like to thank some friends and colleagues in the U.S. There is no
better moral support than that provided by the people who have gone through or are
going through the same things you are. Deserving of specific mention, though, are
v

Dennis Rathnaw, Andy Hicken, Ryan McCormack, Ian Eagleson, Sidra Lawrence, Justin
Patch, David Diers, Ajay Kalra, Kim Kattari, Javier Leon, Leah Hesla, Molly White,
Ramon Versage, Joyce Chueng, Min Jung-Son, Steve Azcona, and, especially, my guru
bhaaii Peter Kvetko (and I am sure there are more I am forgetting that I should mention).
Outside of the UT ethnomusicology program and school of music I would like to thank
my friends Jason Storey, Daniel Sanchez, and Ken Bodden for being my friends all these
years and for encouraging me to be me (sometimes in the face of prevailing opinion).
Also, I would like to thank my friend and colleague at Indiana University, Bloomington,
Aditi Deo, for acting as a valuable sounding board during the writing process.
Finally, I would like to thank all my committee members, Dr. Slawek, Ward
Keeler, Robin Moore, Shanti Kumar, and Veit Erlmann for actually reading the whole
thing.
vi

The Geography of Hindustani Music: The
Influence of Region and Regionalism on
The North Indian Classical Tradition
Jeffrey Michael Grimes, PhD
The University of Texas at Austin, 2008
Supervisor: Stephen M. Slawek
Abstract
This dissertation explores the influence of regional cultures and, more
specifically, of regionally based and regionally determined aesthetic preferences, on the
Hindustani classical music tradition. The period from the late 19th century up through
the decades following independence in 1947 saw a great deal of change both in Indian
society as a whole and, by extension, within the Hindustani tradition. One of these
changes was a transition in the demographic profile of the average Hindustani performer
from Muslim, essentially low-caste, and hereditary, to Hindu, middle-class, and largely
high caste. The other aspect of this demographic transition, namely that there was also a
shift in the regional origins of the average classical musician from those native to North
India to those native to the two historical regions of Bengal and Maharashtra, has largely
been neglected by scholars, including ethnomusicologists. The primary assumption
informing this study, then, is that, as almost every aspect of Indian culture varies
markedly from region to region (including language, food habits, etc.), the regional
vii

cultures of Maharashtra and Bengal must have impacted classical music as it migrated to
these regions.
I approach this issue in two ways, which I term as the “Inside View” and the
“Outside View.” The first represents a combination of the most common approach
favored by scholars of Hindustani music, a generally objectivist approach that focuses
primarily on biographies of individual musicians and on description and analysis of
specifically musical processes, along with the viewpoint of the average Hindustani
performer. The answers provided by this approach are partial. I complement this view of
modern Hindustani music with the “Outside View,” which examines change in the
tradition through the lens of larger social processes, particularly the influence of the tastes
or aesthetic preferences of audience members native to these two regions, as well as by
other aspects of regional culture, including the impact of semi-classical music genres
native to these regions. As such, I not only demonstrate that specifically regional factors
have impacted the style of classical music practiced in each of these regions, but also
attempt to quantify and describe these changes.
viii

Chapter:
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...….1
1. Possible Objections to the Association of Hindustani Classical Music with
Regional Culture(s)…………….…………………………………………….... 37
A. Hindustani music as a National Tradition: Bhatkhande and Paluskar………..38
B. Regionalism as Regressive……………………………………………………58
C. Regionalism vs. Globalism and Homogeneity………………………………..78
Part One : the “Inside View”
2. Gharana in the 21st Century……………...………..……………………………….96
Gharana defined; Current musicians’ views on Gharana; Gharana as musical style
3. Khyal in Maharashtra ……………………………………………………………..123
Gwalior, Agra, Jaipur, & Kirana; Non-Gharana Stalwarts; Typology of Marathi
Khyaaliya-s
4. Khyal in Bengal……………………………………………………………………..164
Vishnupur Gharana; Calcutta’s historical legacy as India’s “Marketplace of
Music”; Dominance of the Amir Khan/Kirana style; Non-Gharana Stalwarts;
Agra Gharana & the ITC-SRA; Influence of Thumri
5. Tabla in the Regional Context……………………….…………………………….194
Specificities of the Gharana concept in relation to tabla; tabla in Maharashtra:
Munir Khan tradition; Punjab Gharana in Bombay; Tabla in Bengal: Masit Khan
& the Farukhabad Gharana; Some conclusions on modern tabla style: usefulness
of the traditional Purab/Pashchim distinction
6. Dominance of Bengal in Modern Instrumental Music…..……………………….256
Part Two: the “Outside View”
7. Regional Music Genres & The Social Nature of Taste……..…………………….327
A. Thumri: the “Classical” Semi-Classical Genre……………………………...332
B. Bourdieu and the Social Nature of Taste…………………………………....338
C. Rabindrasangiit: The Pinnacle of Bengali ‘Regional’ Music……………….348
D. Marathi Theatre Music and the Push toward Classicism……………………381
E. Conclusion: Newcomers and Inheritors……………………………………..401
ix

8. Regional Musical Aesthetics…………………..…………………………………...422
Conclusion…………………………………………..…………………………………464
References……………………………………………………………………………..473
Vita..................................................................................................................................483
x

Introduction
Region as a Factor in Understanding Modern Hindustani Music
In analyzing any “classical” or “cultivated” music tradition, undoubtedly the most
important (non-musical) factor in shaping the tradition is its source of patronage.
Ethnomusicologists who study these traditions are, in particular, attracted to this side of
the issue as it is this, looking beyond the internal dynamics of the art in order to explain
it, that for many ethnomusicologists defines the discipline or field as such. And of
course, the specifically economic side is what most interests those ethnomusicologists
who work from a broadly Marxist perspective. 1 Further, musicians belonging to the
Hindustani classical tradition (to limit it to those with whom I have personally had
contact) will themselves readily say that, for them, economic concerns prevail over all
others. After all, without making enough money to survive, there can be no music career.
What separates the outlook of these two very broad groups, though, is that these
musicians tend to see economics as the only non-musical factor in their lives and careers
that has any importance other than music. In other words, other variables such as
religion, caste, economic class, ethnicity, regional origin, and, to a large extent, gender,
are regarded as relatively, if not entirely, unimportant. It is clear that this ideology or
discourse is one that has been shaped and influenced by a large number of people over
time and which has its roots both in South Asia and in the West. At this point, though, I
simply wish to point this out, not to explain it, a much more difficult and time-consuming
1 see Qureshi (2002) for a South Asianist example
1

task.
To return to the scholarly side of the equation, their (our) analyses tend to be
much more nuanced and careful, which is not at all surprising, considering that this is
stock and trade of the profession. For musicians, on the other hand, this kind of
discussion is at best a hobby or intellectual sideline. As many musicians have pointed out
to me, their job is to sing or play, not to write or speak. However, scholars of Hindustani
music have often been guilty of their own type of reductionism. Most, as I have said,
focus on the economic base of the tradition, but beyond this, the only other factors seen to
be worth discussing are religion (i.e. the Hindu-Muslim communal divide), and, much
less often, gender. 2 It is one of these neglected factors, the regional origins of today’s
musicians, that I will take as the focus of this dissertation. In placing region and regional
culture in the foreground, my intention is not to disregard the other aforementioned
factors, or even to claim a particularly privileged place for region over the others. Rather,
I intend to prove that region is important in its own right, and, perhaps more importantly,
that it interacts with other economic and social factors as it has helped and continues to
help shape the Hindustani classical music tradition.
To begin to justify why region and regionalism are important for the study
Hindustani music, I briefly to turn the work of Janaki Bakhle whose recent book Two
Men and Music is perhaps the most thorough and lengthy examination of the issue
Hindu-Muslim communalism in the context of Hindustani classical music. While
2 see Masciszewski (1998)
2

Bakhle’s work is not musicological or ethnographic, and is strictly historical (unlike the
present study), her reasoning for focusing on this issue in many ways echoes the
importance of the topic at hand, namely region and classical music. Bakhle’s goal in her
work is an “ideological critique” of the recent history of Hindustani music, meaning the
last few decades of the 19th century up to, approximately, the time of independence from
the British Raj. This critique centers on the aforementioned notion that religion is of no
importance in the context of music. Speaking about classical music performances in her
native Maharashtra, Bakhle writes:
I began by noting that it was not easy to compare the development of Indian
classical music with the history of Western classical music because of the absence
of easy separations between the secular and sacred in the former. In
contemporary Indian classical music performances, the milieu is hybrid: it is
neither entirely religious nor genuinely secular…Without the historical
perspective provided by this book, the milieu at the performance could lead to the
easy conclusion that syncretism and secularism had weathered both colonial
influence and the more recent Hindu nationalist storm (2005:261).
Bakhke’s conclusion then is that, in spite of the ideology of religious tolerance held by
musicians and the apparent atmosphere of religious tolerance at current and past musical
performances, the reality is that modern classical music, at least the tradition as shaped by
Bhatkhande and V.D. Paluskar, Bakhle’s two primary targets, is suffused with communal
prejudice (be it direct or indirect), notions of “colonial religiosity,” and in the case of
Maharashtra (the home of both Bhatkhande and Paluskar), “Marathi Chauvinism.”
At another point in her work, Bakhle takes ethnomusicologists to task for the
secondary position accorded to “critical history” in their work. Bakhle explains,
History, within an ethnomusicological domain, often appears as either
background information, a theoretical gesture, or predominantly local, remaining
relatively unconnected to larger historical events. Because ethnomusicological
3

understanding has been structurally founded on a relationship between
interlocutor and ethnographer, a relationship made even more difficult by the fact
the ethnographer’s interlocutor is often his or her music teacher (guru), to whom a
great deal of respect is afforded, this is to a large extent inevitable. What can
sometimes result, however, is insufficiently critical attention to the histories that
musicians and their hagiographers tell (2005:16).
So, while I would like to point out that I disagree with many of Bakhle’s conclusions,
there are important implications contained in the citations above for the present
discussion. To put the matter into more simple terms, Bakhle is arguing that, for a
number of reasons, the performers’ stated ideology of tolerance becomes a sort of
smokescreen which conceals the reality of the situation. This is not to say that, for
Bakhle, religious tolerance is totally absent from the tradition, but in her view the
tolerance modernizing Hindus like Bhatkhande held for Muslim musicians was
ambivalent at best. The corollary to this is that ethnomusicologists have simply repeated
the party line, if you will, of their Gurus. Of course, how this squares with the fact that
many of the musicians that Western musicologists have learned with have been Muslim
is another question. While I myself have studied with music with Gurus both in the
United States and in India and certainly hold these men in high esteem, I have been
careful not to imbibe any of their views uncritically. I would suspect that this is the case
with most Western ethnomusicologists who have learned from Indian Gurus,
notwithstanding the merits of Bakhle’s critique.
To put it in a different way, Bakhle is urging scholars never to take the ideological
claims of any group, classical musicians or otherwise, at face value. This remark would
seem to be especially intended for ethnomusicologists who are “structurally” so
4

dependent on their informants. Keeping this in mind, it becomes easier to understand
why region has never been thoroughly examined as an important variable in
understanding modern classical music. Certainly, the reaction I met most often when I
queried a performing musician in India about the importance of region in the classical
tradition was that, rather simply, it has no importance. I feel there are a number of
reasons for this response, and I will examine these in greater detail in chapter one.
However, one of the most important reasons for this that I could deduce, albeit one that is
not specific to the issue of regional associations or origins, is that musicians feel that
personal background is unimportant in music (as noted above), and that to compare
musicians on the basis of regional origin would inevitably lead to highlighting the
achievements of one group and downplaying those of another, just as if one were
comparing Hindu and Muslim musicians as Hindu and Muslim. This is understandable,
and although I tried to make it clear that this was in fact not my goal, it was difficult to
dissuade many.
Perhaps the more valuable lesson one can take from Bakhle’s work, though, is not
only that the analyst should always interrogate the words and actions of those he or she is
studying, whether we are dealing with historical or current figures. Rather, Bakhle has
demonstrated a more simple but abiding truth through her work. That is that no aspect of
culture, in particular no classical art form, can be assumed to exist in a vacuum cut off
from other influences in society, whether they be politics or film music. Again, this is a
rudimentary lesson, but one that must be repeated because the idea is so strong among
performers that classical music is, in a way, cut off from other such influences. Bakhke’s
5

asic point seems to be that, if religious communalism is present in every sphere of
Indian life, it must be present in classical music as well. One needs only to search for it.
So, while I again do not necessarily agree with all of Bakhle’s assertions, I can orient
myself similarly to the issue I am examining. If region affects every aspect of Indian life
(a point to which I will return), it must affect classical music also. It is my task to argue
how, why, and to what extent region really is important in Hindustani raga music.
It is common knowledge that the homeland of Hindustani music is North India,
and that due to the patronage of the Muslim aristocracy, particularly the Moghuls, the
performers belonging to this tradition have historically been Muslim. That large numbers
of middle-class Hindus began to learn music starting in the last decades of the 19th
century, to the point where they became numerically dominant in the field by the second
half of the last century, is a well-documented fact. Indeed, as in Bakhle’s monograph,
this transitional period has been the focus of a large number of scholarly works. 3 What I
would argue has been neglected in recent examinations of this period in Hindustani
music’s history was that, not only were the newcomers to the field middle-class Hindus,
they were also mostly Bengalis and Maharashtrians (as well as members of some other
regional/linguistic groups, notably Kannadigas). These are groups that historically have
had much different lifestyles, food habits, religious practices, and, most importantly,
aesthetic preferences, than those of the North Indian Muslims whom they succeeded (or
supplanted, depending on your perspective). That these differing tastes and aesthetic
practices must play a role in shaping the tradition in a variety of ways is the core
3 see also Kobayashi (2003)
6

assumption on which this study is based.
Review of Relevant Scholarship
To proceed, I would like now to turn to discussing the concept of region, both in
the Indian context and on a more general theoretical level. Regarding the literature that
deals with region in the Indian setting, one finds that the largest number of studies has
been concerned with the notion of regionalism as a political movement. As the demand
for linguistic states was strongest (and the most intense in terms of rioting and other
forms of violence) in the years after Independence, we find many studies either written in
that period, 4 up to approximately the 1970s, or which focus on that period. 5 As I already
have stated, however, regionalism continues to be a factor in Indian politics, and there is
no dearth of studies from the last 10-20 years. These studies are generally concerned
with regionalisms which develop from notions of marginality, most commonly economic,
but cultural as well. The ongoing unrest in the Northeastern states (Assam, Mizoram,
etc.) is the most common starting point for the more recent of such studies. This is, to a
certain extent, problematic for this particular project as we are, after all, dealing primarily
with two states, Maharashtra and West Bengal, that are in no way marginalized,
economically or politically, in the context of modern India. On the contrary, these are
two of the most prosperous states in India, and Maharashtrians and Bengalis have played
critical roles as leaders in Indian politics and culture since the 19th century. To mention
4 The most notable I have consulted, in terms of strictly academic sources, is Regions and Regionalism in
South Asian Studies: An Exploratory Study; Papers Presented at a Symposium held at Duke University,
April 7-9, 1966. (ed., Crane), which features Bernard Cohn’s piece on region mentioned below.
5 see King (1998)
7

Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore from Bengal and B.G. Tilak and G.K.
Gokhale from Maharashtra would be only to list the very best, most outstanding such
figures from their respective regions/states. And of course, that these two groups
dominate classical music is just another indicator of their cultural strength. 6
Rather, what is needed for this project, without ignoring the powerful but diffuse
influence (speaking in terms of classical music) of political regionalisms, is to look at
regionalism as a cultural concept. Perhaps the most concise and well thought out
discussion of region as a cultural (and political and economic) concept in the Indian
setting is Bernard Cohn’s 1967 essay “Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation
to Modern Indian History and Society.” The argument Cohn puts forth in this essay is, as
he states, “a simple and probably self-evident one – there are regional differences in
South Asia, just as there is a reality to thinking about South Asia as a geographic and
historical entity, or Indian civilization as a cultural unity”(1967:100). More than this,
however, Cohn states that the real question to be asked is, in what (analytical) case does it
make sense to emphasize regional distinctness and/or diversity and in what case should
one underline national or pan-Indian (or even pan-South Asian) unity or similarity? In
other words, Cohn feels that one should go case by case in evaluating whether or not
region or regionalism needs to invoked in any particular analytical context.
As with most studies that deal with region as classificatory tool, Cohn lays down
what he sees the most important factors in defining a region. He lists the most important
6 One could point to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, as an example of an aggrieved, ‘sons-of-the-soil’
movement which very Maharashtrian and Marathi-centric in nature but then we must consider that Shiv
Sainiks (their rank and file members) and Maharashtrian khyaaliya-s come from very, very different social
strata.
8

as “basically non-linguistic phenomena” – namely, historic, linguistic, cultural, social,
and structural factors, and/or the interrelations among these (102). Cohn then takes these
key phenomena and establishes different categories of regions. Thus, an example of a
historical region, “one in which there are sacred myths and symbols, held by significant
groups within the area, regarding the relationship of people to their ‘past’ and the
geographical area,” would be Bundelkhand, now a portion of the modern state of Uttar
Pradesh. A linguistic region, however, assuming that one takes the literary standard of a
language as the determining factor, would likely be a much larger unit such as
Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu, or, if one were to emphasize language families rather
individual languages, North and South India. This nuance, that there are different types
of regions based on different (or sometimes overlapping) criteria which are not always
comparable is among the most important contributions of Cohn’s essay. The more
typical approach to region in India is to establish a more rigid definition of region and
then debate what is or is not a region, and Cohn is one of the few scholars who has not
fallen into this trap when discussing region and regionalism in India. 7
A second contribution of Cohn’s essay to the literature on this subject is his
emphasis on the need to historicize both specific and generally agreed-upon regions (such
as Bengal or Andhra) and the concept of region. Cohn’s first move in this direction is to
set forth an additional three sub-categories of the “historical region”; these are the
“nuclear” region, the “shatter zone” and the “cul-de-sac,” or area of relative isolation.
7 Stein (1967), in a response to Cohn’s piece, takes him to task precisely for not basing his ideas on region
and types of region on objectively observable and quantifiable features, such as language. The strength of
Cohn’s framework, however, is that he takes into account not only the fact regions change over time, but
also that regions are also socially defined and thus subjective in many respects.
9

These are respectively defined as regions which have retained their identity over time
generally because they are river basins which provide the basis for large-scale,
agriculturally-based civilizations; regions that serve as connections between the nuclear
zones; and regions that, due to geographical features, are left isolated from processes that
affect other regions. While the implications of this further categorization are not so
profound in the case of modern day classical music (as compared to an historical study of
political institutions), it is worth noting how Cohn categorizes the two regions that are
most important for the present study, Maharashtra and Bengal. For Cohn, Maharashtra is
a “nuclear region,” but Bengal is given as a noteworthy example of a “cul-de-sac.” This
categorization has important consequences that I will examine in depth in chapter 8. I
will point out at this juncture, however, that, if nothing else, the history of Hindustani
music in West Bengal and Maharashtra is both the history of contact between North
Indians (primarily Muslim) and Bengalis and Maharashtrians (mostly Hindu) and the
history of attitudes and perceptions that each of these groups hold toward each other and
themselves. The value of Cohn’s observation is that it points to the much different
histories of Bengal and Maharashtra relative to the dominant North Indian culture.
The broader point that Cohn seems to be driving at regarding the history of
regions, however, is that, as much as the scholar should be careful to invoke the concept
of region or nation depending on the relevance of the concept to the specific matter at
hand, regions deserve to be designated as such only if they operate as one, currently or
during the historical period in question. This is, again, in opposition to other scholars
who like to ground their analyses of regions in India on the oldest possible evidence
10

available in attempts to establish the continuity of said region over the course of
centuries. Of course, writing now, almost 40 years after Cohn, there is much less need to
question the antiquity of any particular aspect of Indian culture, as a significant amount
of work has been done that has proven that the tendency amongst Indians and Indianists
to exaggerate something’s age is very much a product of the Orientalist’s predilection to
valorize the past and devalue the present. However, in the world of classical music, this
tendency is as strong as in any other area of Indian culture, so we must always take a
skeptical mindset towards such claims, whether they are on behalf of a gharana, an
instrument or type of composition, or even for the history of classical music in one region
or area. It is to Cohn’s credit that he outlines the processes by which a particular
geographical unit becomes a region, so to speak. For Cohn, this involves the existence of
a “symbol pool,” the historical circumstances in which these symbols can be utilized
(Cohn emphasizes here the conditions created by colonialism, such as the introduction of
printing and mass education), and the emergence of regional elites who can manipulate
these symbols to encourage and develop feelings of regional identification. This idea of
region as a process is quite different from the more objective classificatory concept of
region, where, for instance, Maharashtra is Maharashtra because it is the place where
Marathi is spoken.
Ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin, in his 1993 monograph Subcultural Sounds:
Micromusics of the West, offers a valuable definition of region that in many ways
corresponds to Cohn’s, even while Slobin’s work concerns neither India nor classical
music of any sort. A large portion of Slobin’s book is devoted to establishing a
11

theoretical framework in order to help better analyze and explain different types of pop
music from around the world, particularly the amount of “visibility,” in other words, “the
quality of being known to an audience,” these musics receive (17). In Slobin’s scheme,
there are three levels of visibility, local, regional, and transregional. Concerning his
concept of region, Slobin writes, “Regional musics are less easy to define, since I am
using the term…in an offbeat way. If local can be bounded by a village or valley, then
region, intuitively, is a somewhat larger zone of contiguous territory”(ibid.:18). By his
view, there are still “classic regions” (he gives the mono-ethnic nation states of Slovakia
and Slovenia as examples), but in some cases, much larger areas which comprise several
nations can be a region, as long as they form the audience for the music in question. The
rationale for this, as Slobin explains, is that recordings and broadcasting have greatly
increased the visibility of many types of music, to the extent that the audience for any
music is seldom confined to one country or one region of one country. Another
consequence is that the different geographic units that comprise one of Slobin’s regions
need not be neighbors or even located in the same hemisphere.
An additional factor that comes into play in this context is migration. In the
Indian context, this means, for example, the region that is defined by the audience that
consumes Tagore songs would include not only Calcutta or West Bengal, but also all the
(mostly metropolitan) areas outside of Bengal where there exists an audience for
Rabindrasangiit. Or, to give an example more to the point, I would argue that, if we
consider Maharashtra as a classical music region, then we must include the border
regions that Maharashtra shares with Karnataka, namely Belgaum, Karwad, Darwad, and
12

Hubli, as well as Goa. There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, a large
number of the most important “Maharashtrian” classical musicians, which is to say those
that have been patronized by Marathi-speaking audiences or who perhaps even performed
in Marathi Sangiit NaaTak-s (music dramas), have been natives of what is now Karnataka
state. This list includes, but is not limited to, Bhimsen Joshi (from Gadag), Kumar
Gandharva (from Belgaum), and Jitendra Abhisheki (from Goa). Many others came from
the other, Maharashtrian, side of today’s Maharashtra-Karnataka border, including many
of the pioneers of classical music in Maharashtra such as Balkrishna Ichalkaranjikar
(from Ichalkaranji) and V.D. Paluskar (from Miraj). If I were to adhere more to closely
to Slobin’s emphasis on the audience as a defining factor, then I could out point that these
areas, which are not part of the modern state of Maharashtra, and whether they belong
now to Goa or Karnataka, also included a large part of the audience for Marathi Sangiit
NaaTak-s, at least until the genre fell out of fashion in the decades following
independence.
Contained in the above example are a number of implications regarding my use of
Cohn’s and Slobin’s theories that I feel I should make explicit. First, I do not feel that the
regions that I will be analyzing in forthcoming chapters are necessarily defined by the
state boundaries of modern India, nor are they necessarily mono-ethnic or linguistic.
Yes, the classical scene in Calcutta is composed primarily by Bengalis, along with some
North Indians, mostly from U.P. or Bihar. The scene in Maharashtra, though, is much
more diverse. If we were to exclude Bombay, Maharashtra has a large number of
Kannadigas, Goans, and others from northern and eastern India such as Bengalis and
13

U.P.-wallas (natives of Uttar Pradesh). The point is that, for the purposes of this study,
regions are defined as much by stylistic affinities between musicians, familial and Guru-
disciple connections, and shared aesthetic tendencies, than solely by membership in an
ethnic group, or, as Slobin would have it, which audience supports the music, although I
include this factor as well. A second point to be made regarding my Southern
Maharashtra/Northern Karnataka example, is that, by any criteria, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to define clear-cut boundaries between regions. In the Indian case, not only
are there many overlapping border areas where two languages are spoken side-by-side,
but, as Cohn points out, there are cases where, as with Hindi and Urdu in UP and Urdu
and Telegu in Hyderabad, “two well established and associated cultural traditions” stand
“intertwined and side by side”(1967:106). The point, then, is that, although I have taken
the dominance of Maharashtrians and Bengalis in modern Hindustani music as a starting
point, I am in no way limiting my discussion to musicians that belong to those two
groups. The picture is considerably more complicated than that.
As I have said before, my primary interest in this dissertation is in the aesthetic
tendencies and preferences of Maharashtrians and Bengalis as regionally-based ethnic
and linguistic groups (which are both well-defined and universally recognized in India)
and how these factors have influenced classical musical style as the tradition shifted to
these two regions due to broader economic, political, and historic changes. However, as
we shall see, some of the key figures in determining which styles/stylistic approaches
have become most prevalent and popular in each respective region have been outsiders to
those regions. Outsiders in this sense, I should note, would exclude those who are not
14

ethnically Bengali or Marathi, but are from nearby states or regions, such as Kannadigas
(from Karnataka) in Maharashtra or Oriyas (from Orissa) in Bengal. To name one of the
most prominent examples of such an outsider, Ustad Amir Khan, who hailed originally
from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, has been perhaps the most influential figure in Hindustani
classical vocal music in Calcutta and greater Bengal in the last 40 years (as I will further
explain in chapter 4). Most scholars, I feel, if they were to assign any significance to this
fact would likely either state that the popularity of a distinctly North Indian musician in
Bengal either proves that the tradition is becoming more stylistically homogenous (or
always has been) or proves the universal quality of artistic greatness. However, from my
perspective, what is important about the influence of Amir Khan in Bengal is that his
music struck such a chord, so to speak, with Bengalis, over and above other comparable
figures who were equally as familiar to Calcutta audiences and Calcutta-based musicians
as Amir Khan was.
Keeping this in mind, I should explain how I define each of the regions relevant to
this study in musical terms. Of course, as Cohn has explained, there is little debate when
it comes to the integrity of Bengal and Maharashtra as distinct regions, by whatever
criteria, be it history, geography, language, and culture. Bengal and Maharashtra as
classical music regions, though, are slightly different. They certainly encompass the
modern states of Maharashtra and West Bengal. Beyond this, though, Maharashtra, at
least in these terms, should be seen as including Goa and the Karnataka side of the
Karnataka-Maharashtra border regions (some portions which are still thought by some
Maharashtrians to ‘belong’ to Maharashtra), as significant numbers of performers
15

historically and currently have migrated from these two areas into the musical centers of
Maharashtra. It should be noted that, to a certain extent, Northern Karnataka is more
properly a part of this musical region than is Goa, simply because, as my Goan
interlocutors have attested, there has never been much classical music activity, whether in
terms of performances or educational institutions, in Goa. This is as opposed to key
districts in Karnataka such as Darwad, Hubli, and Belgaum, which continue to be active
(though minor) centers of Hindustani classical music. Maharashtra also, in this sense,
includes the former Maratha-ruled princely states, most importantly Baroda, Indore, and
Gwalior. These cities are now located in the states of Gujarat (Baroda) and Madhya
Pradesh, but there are large communities of ethnic Maharashtrians in each of these cities
that continue to hold on to Marathi customs and the Marathi language, and, more
importantly, maintain ties between themselves and the musical centers in modern
Maharashtra state. I noted this quite clearly in Pune, as a number of performers with
Maharashtrian surnames from these cities continue to go there and to Bombay to perform
and learn. This goes as well for other cities in South India which have large communities
of ethnic Maharashtrians, such as Bangalore and Hyderabad. In this sense, in musical
terms, the Maharashtrian region has not fluctuated a great deal since the 19th century.
Bengal, although a much more clearly circumscribed geographical region, has
changed as a musical region in the last century more drastically than Maharashtra, as East
Bengal, the birthplace and former home of both a number of 20th century musical
legends and a handful of important patronage sites, was partitioned off from western and
northern Bengal by the British Raj and then later permanently severed from the rest of the
16

egion after Independence. Perhaps the biggest difference between Bengal (as in West
Bengal state) and Maharashtra currently, though, is that, besides the fact that Bengal only
has strong historical musical ties with the cities of eastern U.P. and Bihar (and Benares is
now the only proper center of classical music in eastern India that has any classical music
connections with Bengal), Bengal only has one major urban center of classical music
currently, namely Calcutta, while in Maharashtra there is much more activity in the
smaller and medium sized cities, outside of the major centers of Pune and Bombay.
At this point, having discussed the concept of region in a more generally
theoretical fashion, I will move to looking at region as a specific factor in the Hindustani
classical tradition. As I mentioned earlier, the belief amongst most of today’s musicians
is that regional origin is as unimportant as caste or religious background in the world of
classical music. This is not to say that no musicians agreed with my emphasis on looking
classical music through the concept of region, so to speak, because some, for example
Smt. Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar, wholeheartedly agreed that it was a factor in shaping of the
tradition. However, for the majority that rejected this emphasis on region, the one
concession they were often willing to make is that sometimes an artist’s regional origins
do show through in his or her music. Even while this regional flavor was most often
described as defect, 8 it does show, not surprisingly, that most artists are aware of their
and other artists’ regional origins. It may be a negative factor, something to aspire not to
be, but it is there.
8
“If you can make out that someone is a Maharashtrian when they are singing, they are doing something
wrong.” – D. Pandit (interview, 2005)
17

If we move back sometime in history, well before days of the British Raj, we find
that there has always been an awareness of region, or at least of center and periphery, in
the Hindustani tradition, centralized as it was until the mid 19th century. 9 In my
interview of Dhrupad singer and Benares Hindu University faculty member Dr. Ritwik
Sanyal, he pointed out the shashtric (and thus ancient) concept of desh-kaaku, the
regional flavor of a musician’s vocal style (personal comm. 10/2005). The most direct
and thorough discussion of region in Hindustani music in the corpus of
ethnomusicological literature, whether it be the ancient, medieval, or modern context, is
Richard Widdess’s article “The Geography of raga in Ancient India”(1993). 10 Here
Widdess opens with a discussion of the processes by which classical music has
assimilated musical material, in this case melodic material, since he is dealing with ragas
from folk and tribal traditions. In this context Widdess notes, “Ragas and other modes
have been named after peoples and regions ever since the earliest recorded stages in the
evolution of modal theory and practice in South Asia”(36). The bigger question,
however - why was this the case? - is precisely what Widdess seeks to answer in the
remainder of the article. The majority of Widdess’s evidence is drawn from the ancient
theorist Matanga’s Brhaddesi, a work likely produced in the late first millennium AD
which is “the first [treatise] to acknowledge the essentially localized character of practical
music”(ibid.:39). In this treatise the important distinction is made between maarg music,
9 I intend here to demonstrate that there has been a notion of center and periphery in Indian classical music
since well before the Muslim Era. I do not feel that by doing so, I am indulging in the tendency, noted by
ethnomusicologist Ashok Ranade, to try to trace certain aspects of the music back to ancient times when
the history of the subject in question is almost certainly much shorter.
10 Widdess also includes most of this material from this piece in his monograph Ragas of Early Indian
Music: Modes, Melodies, and Musical Notations from the Gupta period to c.1250 (1995).
18

music that leads to the discovery of universal truths and enlightenment, and desii music
which is regional and more secular in nature. 11 The task that Matanga had set for himself
was to develop a system of classification that would accommodate both the core maarg
repertory and the newer desii music. The raga names that Matanga includes in his
classificatory system is the evidence that Widdess draws in order to reach some
conclusions about what this naming practice really signified. In the case of those ragas
that are named for regions or inhabitants of certain “cultured provinces,” Widdess finds
that the names given are probably genuine in the sense that the melodies really did come
from those places, thus lending credence to the notion of regional interchange at this
point in history. Leaving these aside, though, the picture becomes cloudier. This is
because, first, many ragas are named after “tribes and low-caste social groups,” groups
whose music likely would have been entirely disregarded by the more “civilized,” courtly
culture that supported and maintained the classical tradition in the central Ganges valley
region. As Widdess writes, “One cannot imagine that the music of such peoples would
have been taken any more seriously by the educated urban elite of ancient India than by
that of modern India”(44). Second, as further regional melodies, called bhaashaa-s, or
dialects, were integrated into the theoretical system (and the desii ragas became the
central portion of the classical repertoire) we not only find more tribal names, but also
names of more exotic regions, which were likely not in regular contact in any sense of the
word with the Ganges valley region. While noting that this discussion is merely
“speculative,” Widdess concludes that the map produced by these early raga names is not
11 See McNeil (1992) for an extended discussion of the Maarg-Desii paradigm.
19

a literal, but, instead, a conceptual map. That is to say, ragas were perhaps given these
exotic names because the belief held at that time (and held by many still today) was that
all knowledge was given by the Hindu creator deity Brahma at the beginning of time,
meaning new innovations were to be viewed only as “discoveries.” Thus, new melodies
were to be considered as the products of exotic lands or peoples because their actual
novelty, if acknowledged, would undermine this philosophy.
Widdess’s work is valuable to the present discussion for several different reasons.
On the one hand, Widdess presents evidence that there very likely was some regional
exchange of melodies between the Ganges valley and neighboring areas as early as the
late first millennium A.D., if not earlier. Equally as important, though, is that Widdess
provides the historical basis of a notion that lives on today - that there is a central, core
area that is the home of the tradition while other areas are perceived as being peripheral,
and to a certain extent marginal, in the realm of classical music. Again, this a point to
which I will later return, but I would like to note the durability of this notion, considering
that in the modern period, say from the turn of the 20th century. forward, the Ganges
valley, or even the broader area stretching from Delhi to Gaya, Bihar, is the center of the
tradition only conceptually, not in actuality. It is important that I mention in this context
that many scholars would object to this move of turning to ancient sources in order to
explain a basically modern phenomenon. Dr. Ashok Ranade is one scholar among many
who have argued against this need to establish the antiquity of a current practice when it
is unnecessary to do so. As Dr. Ranade told the assembled gathering at the 2005 ITC-
Sangeet Research Academy, “one should only go back as far as is necessary to address
20

the question at hand.” I would agree with this, to the extent that, quite clearly, many
Indian musicologists have been influenced by the Orientalist notion that everything of
value which is Indian happened or was created in ancient times, and everything today is,
at best, a corrupt, degenerate form of what happened in India in the ancient “Golden
Age.” However, unlike many of the more revisionist historians of India, I accept this
Orientalist bias as a very real aspect of Indian culture, regrettable as it might seem to
some. Similarly, I believe that ideas contained in Sanskrit musical treatises continue to
exercise a certain influence over modern musicians, and this center-periphery idea is one
portion of that influence. This is again speculative, but it certainly makes sense because
now, as much as at any point in history since the establishment of the Mughal Empire,
musicians are being drawn from the ranks of educated, generally high-caste Hindus,
many of whom take these ancient works quite seriously. Senior vocalist Dinkar Kaikini
is clearly among this number, as he communicated to me his belief in the origins of
Hindustani raga music (as he calls it) in the Sama Veda (interview, 2005). In other
words, pointing out the Orientalist basis of an idea (which is always a subjective
evaluation) does not in any way erase its existence, as some would have it.
The one other study outside of Widdess’s work that deals with region and
Hindustani music in a meaningful way, as I see it, is Allyn Miner’s monograph Sitar and
Sarod in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries (1993). Unlike Widdess, however, (but very much
like most other studies that deal with region in Hindustani music to any extent) Miner
does not foreground region or regionalism as an important factor in her analyses. Rather,
based on a variety of primary sources from the period, primarily music instructional
21

manuals, Miner discusses the evolution of both the construction of and the respective
repertories of the sitar and sarod in the period in question. One of Miner’s means of
organizing her data is to discuss how instrumental music developed in specific regional
centers, such as Lucknow, Benares, Rampur, Jaipur, etc. What emerged from these
centers in the latter part of the 19th century, as Miner rightly notes, were two broad
streams or styles of sitar playing (this applies to sitar only, as sarod is more thoroughly
eastern-based). These two styles of sitar were designated as the Purab Baaj, or Eastern
style, and the Pashchim Baaj, or Western style. 12 Gottlieb (1993), among others, has also
noted the very similar east-west stylistic division (also known in Hindi as Purab-
Pashchim) present in the style of the paired tabla drums, the primary percussion
instrument used in accompaniment of Khyal and sitar and sarod music. I will examine the
validity of this broad, bipartite division of style in more detail in my respective chapters
on tabla (chapter 5) and instrumental music (chapter 6). To a certain extent, Maharashtra
has become the west and Bengal the east in terms of classical music. However, these
older divisions (which, by their names and respective locations, again point to the Delhi
region as the historical center of the tradition), are also limited in certain ways. Most
notably, to give one example, in instrumental music, the distinction has become
meaningless, as Bengalis now thoroughly dominate the field and the vast majority of
instrumentalists in Bombay (the only true current center of instrumental music west of
Delhi) are ethnically Bengali and North Indian.
Beyond these studies, however, most other studies of Hindustani classical music,
12 Cohn argues that, in terms of the largest number of variables, an east-west split is at least as logical in
understanding India as a whole as is the conventional north-south division (1967:19).
22

ethnomusicological or otherwise, deal with region in a limited and often tangential
fashion, if at all. Wade, in her landmark monograph Khyal: Creativity Within North
India’s Classical Music Tradition (1984), discusses a large number of Marathi Khyal
singers (which could not be avoided in a work on the history of Khyal), and discusses, in
a general way, the crucial linkages between Marathi Brahman singers and the traditional
Ustads (maestros) of Khyal. However, she assigns no further significance to this
transition, other than, once again, that it was a transition from Muslim to Hindu.
Interestingly, in her introduction to her chapter on the Gwalior gharana (stylistic
school/lineage), Wade writes that, “Gwalior again became a focal point in the history of
Hindustani vocal music when in 1726 the territory came under the rule of the Rajput
house of Scindia”(36). The designation Rajput is not entirely incorrect in this case, as the
Scindias no doubt filled the same political and military role as the Rajputs had and
operated in the same broad geographical region (and were also Hindu), but the Scindias
were in fact Marathas (the soldier/agricultural caste native to Maharashtra) – their
surname was originally Shinde, one which is very identifiably Maharashtrian. This
distinction is not crucial for Wade’s study, to be fair, but it does obscure one of the more
obvious (but not indisputable) reasons why Marathi Brahmans would so frequently
choose distant Gwalior as a destination among all the different princely states in the late
19th century that had a significant and well-known tradition of patronizing some of the
finest singers in all of India.
Besides this type of approach, there are other studies that deal with traditions of
Hindustani music that are geographically bounded, but these studies almost always deal
23

with traditions based in urban centers. Thus, Hamilton (1989) deals with sitar music in
Calcutta, Kippen (1988) examines tabla playing in Lucknow, Neuman (1990) examines
the social organization of Khyal singers, along with saarangii and tabla players in Delhi
itself, etc. Of course, many of these studies (including those of Kippen and Neuman) are
located within the North Indian region (in Uttar Pradesh) and are considered ‘traditional’
and historically significant centers, so a discussion of regional tendencies or differences
likely would not suggest themselves in such contexts. However, even Hamilton, while he
both discusses the fact that Calcutta is a relatively new center for classical music and that
many musicians have migrated there from outside Bengal in the last century, and
summarizes the history of Calcutta and some of its unique and uniquely Bengali cultural
features, he makes no explicit connections between the style of classical music practiced
in Calcutta and Bengali culture per se.
To these studies that either (like Wade) deal with region briefly in a broader
discussion of the history of the tradition or specific genres or musicians or focus on
traditions based in specific urban centers, could be added those that deal with an
essentially regional phenomenon (or simultaneously regional and national), but
consistently argue that these phenomena are of national import and/or are representative
or parallel to processes that take place in other regions. Bakhle’s aforementioned
monograph Two Men and Music (2005) (which deals with Maharashtra and
Maharashtrian musicians and music reformers) and McNeil’s Inventing the Sarod (2004),
are two examples, although McNeil’s study, which covers the history of the sarod, does
deal with a much larger cultural zone than just Bengal (even if Bengal has been the most
24

important region for the cultivation of the sarod from the early 20th century forward).
The term “regional exceptionalism” is often bandied about in academic studies of Indian
culture, particularly by left-wing intellectuals like Bakhle or Partha Chatterjee (to name a
non-musicologist). It is always used in passing by such writers and is offered in such a
manner that the reader, evidently, must only assume that this is both something negative
and something so apparently obvious that it can be taken for granted. Part of this, as I
will argue in chapter 1, is that there is a general tendency on the part of members of the
social and cultural elite in post-independence India to feel, at best, ambivalent about the
value and importance of region relative to the larger nation. It is also, though, a rather
clear attempt on the part of these scholars to increase the significance of their analyses, a
sin which most academics are guilty of at one point or another in their career.
Research and Methodology
The research on which this study is based was done over the course of two trips to
India. The first trip was made so that I could take part in the American Institute of Indian
Studies’ Year-Long Marathi language program in Pune (which actually spanned nine
months from August 2002 to May 2003). Although this program was the primary
purpose for my visit and certainly occupied most of my time during that period, it was
also my first time to visit either of the two regions that were to serve as the geographical
foci of this study. This period was invaluable because, not only did I get to learn the
language from scratch in the historical capital of Marathi culture, I was also able to spend
ample time observing both the musical culture of Pune as well as the larger Marathi
25

culture (and particularly the Brahman culture dominant in Pune), both of which have
proven useful for the present study. In 2005, I returned for my official period of research.
My time during this ten month period (from February to December 2005) was divided
between Bombay and Calcutta; I spent five months in the former city and four in the
latter. These two cities, then, served as my home bases. I also, though, spent significant
time in several other important cities in classical music terms, including Delhi (10 days),
Benares (10 days), and Pune again (3 weeks). I should also note that during my visits, I
made an effort to see as many historical, cultural, and/or religious sites as possible in
order, to again, increase my general understanding of these two regions. Thus, during my
visit to Pune, I made brief visits to Kolhapur, Miraj, Pandharpur, Aundh, Aurangabad,
and Jalgaon, as well as to a number of sites in the immediate vicinity of Pune, such as
Alandi, Dehu, and Saswad. This was supplemented by visits in 2005 to Shirdi, Satara,
Akkalkot, and Gangapur (an essentially Maharashtrian pilgrimage site in Karnataka).
While in Calcutta, I made visits to Vishnupur, Srirampur (a historical settlement now
located in the Calcutta suburban area), and Darjeeling.
My research consisted of three broad activities. First, I made an effort to attend
as many musical performances (and occasionally performances of dance and theatre) as
possible in order both to familiarize myself with the performers that were active during
this time span in Pune, Bombay, and Calcutta and to begin to grasp the stylistic
tendencies of these performers taken as a group. As I explain in chapter 1 (and as I have
already mentioned), a number of my interlocutors, particularly the Marathi musicians I
met with in Bombay and Pune, were resistant to the idea of discussing Hindustani music
26

in the context of region. Thus, it often proved quite useful in the interview setting when I
was able to point out a particular and clearly observable tendency of, for example, not
only Marathi singers generally (or musicians belonging to similarly defined
regional/linguistic groups), but also of members of particular gharanas and stylistic
lineages. Along these same lines, I also made a concerted effort to build up a library of
recordings of musicians relevant to this study, both current and historic. This includes a
number of recordings I myself recorded during live performances in India, but the lion’s
share consists of widely available commercial recordings that I purchased at each of my
stops in 2002-2003 and 2005. All the recordings that I utilize for the purposes of musical
analysis are recordings of this type. Considering that this study focuses on vocal music
and instrumental music in Bengal and Maharashtra, the second broad source of data for
this study came from my one-one-one lessons with reputable musicians that, I felt, were
representative of each region. Thus, as Bengalis numerically dominate the field of
instrumental music and Maharashtrians Khyal vocal music, I learned sitar with Pandit
Deepak Chaudhury (a well-known senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar) in Calcutta
and vocal music from Dr. Ram Deshpande (a disciple of Ulhas Kashalkar, V.R Athavale,
and Yashwantbua Joshi) in Bombay. Beyond the fact that I was able to learn Hindustani
music firsthand from these two top-ranking musicians, 13 I also was also able to spend a
good deal of time with each of them conversing about a variety of subjects, both music
and non-music related. In this regard, Deepakda and Ramji complemented each other
well, as not only is one a Bengali sitarist and the other a Marathi singer, they belong to
13 My vocal music lessons were particularly crucial for the present study, as I am a life-long instrumentalist
who had only briefly studied vocal music in any context prior to 2005.
27

distinctly different generations of musicians, as Ramji was 38 during my visit (only seven
years my senior), while Deepakda is elder to him by some 20 years.
My primary source of data for the present study, though, is the 50 odd
ethnographic interviews I conducted mostly during my official period of research in 2005
(although a handful were done in Pune in 2002-2003). My subjects for these interviews
included scholars, music critics, and connoisseurs who were not active performers, but
the vast majority (approximately 45 of the 50 I interviewed) were. The views of current
performers are especially critical in this particular case, for two broad reasons. The first
is that, as explained above, secondary sources (in both English and the two Indian
languages of which I have working knowledge, Hindi and Marathi) that deal with
Hindustani music in the context of region and/or regional culture are greatly limited. Of
course, as this project has a substantial historical component, a number of historical
accounts (including biographies) have proven useful. Even then, though, it was the
opinions, views, and theories of my informants which guided me in understanding how
this body of history, including both general political information and history and history
specific to the Hindustani music tradition, had impacted the music and its performers.
The second reason for the crucial importance of my interviews is that my focus is not
only on musical style but also on understanding how and why musicians make the
creative and stylistic choices that they do. As I will reiterate at several point throughout
the following chapters, it is through such choices that musicians reveal their regionally-
based aesthetic preferences, much as audiences make their preferences known by the
performers whose performances they attend and/or whose recordings they purchase.
28

In terms of who I interviewed, there is certainly a profile that was more or less the
same for almost all the performers I met with in Pune, Bombay, and Calcutta. Most of
the musicians I interviewed were either faculty members at a music college or university
or had strong interest in scholarly research, and, as such, had perhaps authored book-
and/or article-length studies on various aspects of the tradition. Also, the vast majority
were middle or upper economic class Hindus who were fluent in English, 14 though, as in
the case of my two music teachers, my interlocutors represented several different
generations and several different regional/ linguistic groups besides Bengalis and
Maharashtrians alone. This relative homogeneity in terms of the demographic profile of
my interlocutors was largely due to the manner in which I arranged my interviews.
Briefly, my primary method was that after each interview, I would ask my interview
subject if he or she could put me in touch with other performers and/or scholars who
might have something informative to say about my topic. As a result, I was most often
put in touch with English speakers who had academic and scholarly backgrounds. Some
might object that I have not included the views of any musician who was a hereditary
performer or even simply a Muslim. However, I would argue that, even though I had not
foreseen that this type of “scholarly musician” would be the ideal interview subject for
my research, they indeed proved to be the right people to help me with my pursuit. Most
of my interlocutors, particularly those who were the most sympathetic to my research
goals, seemed to feel rather strongly that those musicians who were not of a scholarly
mindset would not be interested in talking about such an abstract and subjective topic,
14 My only interview conducted in an Indian language (in this case, Hindi) was with senior vocalist Pandit
Yashwantbua Joshi in Bombay, and I was assisted in this case by two of his English speaking disciples.
29

and my brief experience interviewing such musicians certainly bore out the truth of this
view. In terms of the issue of religious community, I should make it clear that I neither
avoided interviewing non-Hindu musicians, nor do I discount their importance in terms
of the history of the tradition or in the current period. However, it also should be noted
that there are very, very few native (i.e. ethnic) Bengalis or Maharashtrians who are both
Muslim and a practicing musician. To the extent that such musicians are present in the
cities I visited, however, I will apologize now for inadvertently overlooking them and/or
their views.
The other aspect of my interviews that I should note here is the actual questions
that I asked. These tended to revolve around four or five broad topics: family and
musical background; the importance of gharana for modern Hindustani music; regional
semi-classical genres and their influence on classical music; how audiences differed in
the major cities in each region; and, more generally, how region or regional culture has
impacted classical music. In terms of the last of these, I often would directly ask my
interlocutors if they felt that there was anything distinctly Maharashtrian or Bengali about
the style of music as practiced by performers in those two regions. However, as many of
my interlocutors, as noted, were resistant to talking about region and classical music in
such general terms (although for several of my interviewees, this broad question was
enough of a starting point), I would point out the relative disparity of instrumentalists
versus vocalists in Bengal as compared to Maharashtra and vice-versa as a starting point
for our dialogue. Eventually, again due to the frequent skepticism I encountered when
explaining my research topic to potential interview subjects, I began using this
30

observation as the starting point for the entire interview. Along these same lines, I should
note that my questions about each musician’s musical and family background, in a certain
sense, were neutral questions, as each individual could talk about their own experiences
and personal history as they chose, without me forcing them to, for example, determine
or argue whether their experiences were typical or not typical for a Bengali or for all
Indians who study classical music. By looking at all my different interlocutors’ answers
in this area, I could then discern certain patterns, including some regional tendencies.
At the same time, though, while this was the broad framework that I tried to
follow in every interview, each one was fairly different. The power dynamic between a
researcher such as myself who, at least during my period of fieldwork, represents him- or
herself as a student in the West and a student of the tradition as well, is a much different
situation then when a western researcher is dealing with a member of a disenfranchised or
economically disadvantaged group, however defined. That is, there were many times
during my interviews when my interlocutor was in sole control of the conversation and I
was simply expected to listen. Without being unfair or cynical, I think it is fair to say that
most of the performers I met had, for lack of a better term, some sort of agenda they
wanted to pursue, and it was more or less a foregone conclusion that they would be
discussing this topic at some point in the interview, irregardless of my line of
questioning. Mostly, though, this was not a problem because I, like most researchers,
was as much interested in what each person wanted to say as I was getting very direct
answers to my preconceived questions. Indeed, the best and most revelatory observations
I was given by my interlocutors came totally by surprise and were not direct answers to
31

any specific question I had asked. Beyond these differences which came about due to the
direction each interviewee chose to go with their answers, I also, as noted, tinkered with
my batch of questions as I went along. Most notably, I stopped asking directly about my
interlocutors’ perceptions about audiences in different cities, as I was consistently getting
uninformative answers. Also, though, I began to tailor my questions better to suit each
individual, as I began to understand that certain musicians were not likely to answer
certain questions.
I should also note at this point that I see my informants’ ideas and observations as
the framework for the analyses I will offer in the following chapters. To the extent
possible, I have allowed what they have told me to guide the way I have organized and
presented my material. As such, each chapter is based, in a sense, on one common (or, in
the case of the last chapter, chapter 8, uncommon) approach to understanding Hindustani
music in the last 100 years. The only exception to this is my first chapter, which seeks to
explain why so many of my informants were resistant to discussing Hindustani music in
regional terms. Since so few such interviewees were both willing and able to explain this
resistance, I have had arrive some answers strictly based on my own observations. All
the other chapters, though, use ideas from my interlocutors as at least a jumping off point.
Of course, ultimately, the final product here is mine and mine alone, as I only I determine
what is included or not. At any rate, I believe it is essentially an ethical responsibility
(for myself if not for others) to, to the extent possible, give a voice to those individuals
who have taught me about the tradition and have generously helped me to find some
answers to the questioned I have posed. I understand, as in Bakhle’s case, the value of
32

more critical studies which seek to interrogate every action and every statement of each
and every musician, either currently or historically, thus not taking for granted that every
utterance is what it appears to be on the surface. This is particularly true if, as Bakhle
argues of Hindustani music scholarship, few if any such critical studies have ever been
attempted. At the same time, though, I also feel that there is much to be recommended
about an approach which is based on sympathy and respect, particularly in a tradition
such as this one where interpersonal relationships and a sense of mutual trust are so
crucial if one is to have meaningful dialogue, which, of course, is not every researcher’s
intention.
Chapter breakdown
I have divided the following into two broad sections, with chapter 1, in which I
discuss the reasons why some were to resistant to discussing the tradition in terms of
region, working in essence as an extended introduction. The first larger section
corresponds to what I term the “Inside View,” which, as I will explain in greater detail in
the next two chapters, is something like the common sense view of how the tradition has
progressed and changed over time. Considering that a number of my interlocutors were
academics, some even holding college or university posts, it should not be surprising to
find a correspondence between this common sense view and the objectivist mode which
is so typical of Indian musicology. Most importantly, this translates to a belief that,
among other things, musical structure is the only proper concern of academic studies of
the tradition, that vocal music is the only or most pure form of Hindustani classical
33

music, and that the only factor external to the tradition which has any real impact on the
tradition is economics, not in any theoretical sense, but to the extent that, for example,
financial needs may force a musician compromise the amount they can practice or teach
or even compromise their artistic integrity by deliberately playing to the less discerning
members of the mass audience. By this view, the only story to be told about the
migration of musicians from North India to Maharashtra and Bengal is that in the past,
patronage was available in the courts of North India, and now it is available in the ‘major
metros,’ the most important of which are Bombay and Calcutta, and due to this, these
musicians subsequently propagated their style in their new region and built up a base of
listeners and followers there. Based on this view, then, in chapters 3 through 6, I
examine the tradition in this light, discussing the history and current musical scene in
Bengal and Maharashtra in terms of whom my interlocutors saw as the most important
and influential musicians and lineages of musicians in each region. Thus, in chapter 3, I
discuss Khyal in Maharashtra; in chapter 4, I look at Khyal in Bengal; chapter 5 concerns
traditions of tabla playing in both regions; and chapter 6 discusses in instrumental music
in Bengal and, to a lesser extent, the dearth of instrumental music in Maharashtra.
Chapter 2 serves as introduction to this larger section, where I discuss the gharana
concept, as so many of interlocutors explained the scenes in each region in terms of
gharana-based styles. In each chapter, I attempt to make some generalizations about the
most common musical styles in the case of each genre in each region.
In the second broad section, which consists of two chapters, one quite lengthy, I
examine the tradition in terms that only a handful, if any, of my interlocutors suggested.
34

This is the “Outside View,” an approach that understands the changes that have occurred
in the tradition in the last century to be the result of broader and perhaps more abstract
forces or influences, be they social, cultural, economic, political, or otherwise. And, of
course, as Bernard Cohn has made clear, region intersects with all these factors in a
number of ways. More specifically, then, in chapter 7, I look at the what I, again based
on my informants’ observations, see as the key respective semi-classical genres in each
region in order to determine how these genres have interacted with and possibly even
influenced, directly or indirectly, the classical tradition in that region. To this extent, I
am staying true to my goal of basing my analyses on explanations provided to me by
practicing musicians. However, in this same chapter, I depart from my interlocutors’
views as radically as at any point in this study. This is as I will use Pierre Bourdieu’s
work on the social nature of taste in order to better understand the aesthetic preferences
of Bengalis and Maharashtrian audiences and, by implication, musicians as well, in light
of economic class, caste, and the distinctive histories of each region. Finally, in the last
chapter, number 8, I will attempt to tie together all the observations and generalizations I
make in the preceding chapters regarding stylistic tendencies and aesthetic preferences,
and explain them in light of a metaphorical comparison between the respective
landscapes of Bengal and Maharashtra on one hand, and the language and musical styles
present in each region on the other. This metaphor, as I will explain, was originally
suggested to me by tabla player and sitarist Nayan Ghosh of Bombay. However, while
he did an admirable job of quickly explaining what he saw as the most important
correspondences between these different realms, so to speak, I will draw on the work of
35

James Fernandez, Robert Plant Armstrong, and Charles Keil in order to further tease out
the implications of this metaphor.
36

1. Possible Objections to the Association of Hindustani Classical Music with
Regional Culture(s)
When we take a bit more in-depth look at why the musicians who were my
interlocutors so frequently denied the importance of region in their music specifically or
in Hindustani music generally, we find a few recurring themes amongst their beliefs
about their own personal background, regionalism, and the nature of the tradition itself.
The etiquette of Hindustani performers, namely their aforementioned hesitation to speak
about other artists in a fashion that even approaches criticism in a public or semi-public
context, is one of the most important factors. As with any generalization, this does not
apply to every performer, or even everyone I spoke with, but it is true of the vast majority
of artists. This hesitancy leads us to another factor, one that no one I interviewed openly
stated, but one that I will argue is crucial in this context – that regionalism is a regressive
force in Indian politics and society and one that is generally the province of marginalized
groups, i.e. those of low caste or low economic class. Beyond this, there is a very
strongly held, though again rarely stated, belief amongst almost all members of Indian
society who are familiar with Hindustani music that it is primarily a national tradition
with consistency, continuity, and coherence that cuts across regional or state boundaries.
Third, there is the notion that modernity and/or globalism have worked as a
homogenizing forces in Indian music and culture generally to the extent that classical
music has not only become more standardized across India but even has started to lose its
37

distinctness relative to other types of music, popular or otherwise. 15 I will discuss each of
these three themes in turn, starting with the idea that Hindustani music is a national
tradition.
A. Hindustani Music as a National Tradition: Bhatkhande and Paluskar
Undoubtedly, no two historical figures have done more to establish Hindustani
music as a national tradition than have the aforementioned musicologist Vishnu Narayan
Bhatkhande and the aforementioned Guru, music promoter, performer, and activist
Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. 16 This is not to say that many others, whether affiliated with
one of these two or not, have not played a role in nationalizing the tradition, but certainly
these are the two men most often credited for achieving this goal. Along these lines, it is
important to note that Bhatkhande and Paluskar began their respective careers at a time
when the movement for Indian independence was rapidly growing and nationalist
feelings were on the rise. As Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy writes,
Art music in India began to outgrow its associations with professional performers
and the leisured classes, and began to reach the middle classes largely as a result
of the Nationalist movement in the second half of the 19 th century. The
indigenous performing arts, especially music and theatre, began to be recognized
as cultural symbols of the movement. Bengal and Maharashtra were the two
primary centers of this new vision (1993:276).
In the case of both Bhatkhande and Paluskar, there seems to have been an underlying
belief that music had degenerated since the beginning of the colonial period, both in
terms of the lifestyle and morals of the performers and their patrons and in terms of more
15
No one I spoke with who voiced this opinion would say exactly how it had changed or what features it
had absorbed from outside of the tradition, however.
16
Kobayashi (2003) is one of the few studies that discuss other early 20th century ‘music reformers’
besides the ‘Two Vishnus.’
38

strictly musical criteria. Of these two notions, the latter is more easily refuted. As
various recent studies have proven, 17 the music of the latter half of the nineteenth century
in no way paled in comparison to the periods that preceded or followed it. Rather, it was
demonstrably a period of high technical achievement and great innovation in the field of
classical music. More arguably, it was also the period when the Hindustani tradition took
its modern form musically, leaving aside political debates or public perception.
However, there is perhaps a bit more truth to the former of the above two ideas, that the
performers and patrons of the music were a degenerate, immoral class by then current
standards. The reason for this is hard to dispute. During the latter half of the 19th
century, the British Raj set about reforming the system of land tenure in India, removing
the hereditary aristocracy from power (along with dismantling many royal darbaar-s, the
primary context for musical performance), and placing control in the hands of a new class
of landlords, the zamiindaar-s, who in essence were nouveau-riche, and not educated in
the nuances of classical, raga-based music. 18 From a musical standpoint, this is
important, as these patrons demanded a lighter, less esoteric type of performance idiom,
but not crucial as, again, technical standards remained high and musicians continued to
cultivate more rigidly classical genres of music (particularly those performers who were
able to find patronage in one the of the princely states). However, it does seem that
practices such as alcohol and drug use took place in this new milieu, along with the
transition of the tawaaif from high-class royal courtesan to something more closely
17 such as Miner (1993) and Kippen (1998)
18 There was also an established class of Mughal appointed landlords, also called Zamindars, who held their
positions prior to the advent of British power, but most during the 19 h century gained their position due to
the re-organized British system of revenue assessment (see also chapter 7).
39

esembling a common prostitute. I want to be very careful in making these statements, as
I am well aware that so many of these developments took place because of both the
ideological and practical influence of the British. Certainly the degraded status of the
courtesan was due as much as anything to the Victorian morality inculcated by the
colonial government post-Mutiny in the second half of the 19th century. The point to be
made, though, is that a rather wide gap had opened up between the beliefs of the
emerging Indian middle classes on one side and the performers and especially the patrons
of music during this period.
For all the above reasons, the performer of classical music him- or herself had
very low social status in the eyes of Indian society at large at this time. And, when we
examine historical accounts of Vishnu Digambar’s (henceforth VDP) life, we find that it
was his own realization early in life of this low status that ostensibly spurred him on to
take up what became his life’s work. VDP was born in the princely state of Kurundwad,
on the Maharashtrian side of the modern day Maharashtra-Karnataka border to a low
economic class Brahman family. The hereditary occupation of VDP’s family was
kiirtankaar or haridaas, which B.R. Deodhar defines as “a person who goes about giving
religious discourses comprising recitations of poetry and devotional songs” (1993:133).
However, as VDP was, by all accounts, an exceptionally bright student, and until he
suffered an accident (involving firecrackers) at the age of fifteen that greatly
compromised his eye-sight, he was likely headed for a different career than his forebears.
This limitation prevented him from doing any serious reading or writing and put him on
the path of becoming a singer, albeit a classical singer, after all. VDP came under the
40

tutelage of the raaj gaayak (chief court singer) of the court in nearby Miraj. This was the
well known khyaaliya (Khyal singer) Balkrishnabua Ichalkaranjikar, considered by most
to have been the premier classical performer in Maharashtra at that time. VDP quickly
noticed the low status accorded to Balkrishnabua and other musicians both by the general
public and, more importantly, by the ruler himself. This was all the more apparent to
VDP, as he not only was from a Brahman family, but also had been a childhood friend of
the son of the ruler of Kurundwad, and had also quickly become a favorite of Balasaheb
Patwardhan, the then ruler of Miraj. The accounts of B.R. Athavale and Ram Avtar
place special emphasis on one example of the poor treatment doled out to Balkrishnabua,
which had a particularly dramatic effect on young the VDP, and which occurred at the
end of VDP’s time in Miraj. This occurred when VDP and Balkrishnabua had gone for
an evening stroll together. During this stroll, Balasaheb happened to pass in his carriage.
Upon seeing the pair, he asked the young singer to join him in the carriage, but did not
extend the same offer to Balkrishnabua (Athavale 1967:9). However, as Bakhle rightly
asserts, it was the general preferential treatment VDP had received, along with
Balkrishnabua’s resentment toward this special treatment, that had likely spurred on
VDP’s eventual departure from Miraj. More specifically, VDP very likely had a fear of
being called on by Balasaheb to sing after Balkrishnabua in the darbaar, which would
have been a great insult to the venerable singer (Bakhle 2005:142).
It was after setting out from Miraj, ending up first in Baroda and eventually in
Lahore, Punjab, that he started pursuing his goals in earnest, chief among them “to make
North Indian classical music available to the developing middle class audience..”
41

(Jairazbhoy 1993:277). VDP went about this in several ways, but his basic idea was to
create a completely new scenario in which respectable (by VDP’s standards, of course)
middle class children, especially girls, could learn, perform, and/or listen to classical
music without having to compromise their moral or ethical beliefs. The first step, then,
was to create an institution for learning classical music where students could learn music
without being subject to the capricious and often unreasonable demands of the hereditary
Ustad (or Guru, in VDP’s case) of the time who asked much from their students in the
way of household chores and other menial tasks but often gave very little actual taaliim. 19
VDP’s first college opened in Lahore in 1901, under the name Gandharva
Mahavidyalaya. A second, much larger branch was opened in Bombay in 1908. These
schools flourished over time (though the Lahore branch was closed after partition in
1947) and grew into a system that has endured to this day, in spite of criticisms that such
institutions have never produced a first-rate performer of note, which is likely due to the
relatively short length of time required to obtain a degree. As all of VDP’s biographers
note, he laid special emphasis on developing a system of notation which could be utilized
in the process of teaching music in his GMVs. VDP was hardly unique in his fervent
desire to develop such a system, 20 but in this context I should emphasize that VDP
desired to make clear, correct notations of all the ragas taught in his college, so students
could learn the correct form of a raga or composition, again in contradistinction to old-
school performers such as his own Guru who, it seems, often refused to divulge important
19 Taaliim is the Hindi word for education or instruction.
20 Others notable figures who attempted to develop systems of notation for Hindustani music include
Sourindro Mohun Tagore and Bhatkhande.
42

details of what they were teaching (for ex., the name of the raga) and sometimes even
passed on misinformation to their disciples whom they felt were unworthy of the
knowledge the master regarded as his sacred inheritance from his own Guru or Ustad.
As Bakhle mentions, this again is no doubt due to the many difficulties VDP encountered
in learning with Balkrishnabua (2005:141). One last innovation of VDP, one that
obviously has been crucial to the growth and development of Hindustani music post
1947, was to begin organizing ticketed public performances of classical music, the first of
which occurred in Gwalior in 1897 (Bakhle 2005:144). Although the evidence is not
conclusive, it seems VDP was the first to initiate this practice. 21
While VDP certainly encountered some difficulties and hardships in his lifetime,
primarily of the financial kind, 22 it is hard to argue that he was not largely successful in
his aforementioned goals of raising the status of classical musicians in the eyes of the
general public and of creating a standardized system of music education which allowed
students to learn in a context free from the stigmas associated with the hereditary
musicians of the day. We can quantify VDP’s success in a number of ways, perhaps not
the least of which is Bakhle’s own grudging admission of his success (grudging
considering her Marxist/deconstructionist agenda). Certainly, as I have mentioned, the
most important aspect of VDP’s success is that his network of music colleges continues
to thrive and grow to this day. The influence of these colleges is no more apparent than
in Pune where it seems that every amateur performer, every teacher, and even several of
21 van der Meer (1980) gives partial credit to Gwalior gharaanedaar vocalist Rehimat Khan for this
development, as he had created a type of music “based on direct emotional response” which would prove to
be more palatable for new middle class audiences (155).
22 Paluskar was in debt nearly all of his life.
43

the professional performers, have either learned at GMV or from a graduate of a GMV
and betray this influence through the obvious Gwalior flavor in their singing. Likewise,
if we expand our scope and take both Bombay and Pune together, one can easily see that
an equal number, if not a majority, of prominent, professional vocalists in these two cities
are female. 23 When summing up VDP’s accomplishments, Bakhle speaks of his
“cooptation of the public sphere” whereby he was able to combine “religious instruction
with musical education”(2005:177). Certainly, VDP introduced a number of Brahmanic
rituals and other Hindu trappings into his system of music education, particularly his
emphasis on the Guru-Shishya Paramparaa, which resembled the style of instruction of a
Sanskrit paaThshaalaa (or school) more than the method of instruction favored by
hereditary Muslim Ustads. However, I take exception to one aspect of Bakhle’s
argument here, namely that VDP was not only agentive of but largely responsible for this
combination of reformed, nationalist Hinduism and classical music. In my view, VDP
was as much a product of the times as he was a visionary. In other words, VDP had a
ready made audience for his brand of ‘Bhakti nationalism,’ particularly in his home
region of Maharashtra, and would not have been as successful (or successful at all)
without this audience. Reviewing the historical accounts, including Bakhle, it is hard to
dispute that VDP did not receive support and encouragement at every turn, whether it
came from the public, from nationalist leaders, or even from the aristocracy in
Maharashtra, the Punjab, and elsewhere.
23 A list of notable female singers from or based in Pune or Bombay would include, among others, Kishori
Amonkar, Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Aaarti Ankalikar-Tikekar, Ashwini Bhide-
Deshpande, and Manjusha Kulkarni-Patil.
44

Considering VDP’s nationalist credentials, we find that more than anything else,
he nationalized music by associating music with nationalist causes, most famously by
performing the nationalist song Vande Mataram at the meetings of the Indian National
Congress from 1915 forward (Athavale 1967:52). Along these lines, Bakhle recounts
what she refers to as “the second mythic story about him”(2005:165). Briefly stated, this
was when, at the I.N.C. session in Kakinada in 1923, VDP refused to abide by the rule
that singers should perform without the accompany of instruments, a compromise rule
that had been put into effect in response to a controversy surrounding Parsis performing
music outside mosques in Bombay, much to the displeasure of Bombay’s Muslim
community. VDP also maintained ties with both the Sanatan Dharma and the Arya
Samaj, organizations that battled each other on many doctrinal accounts but shared an
enmity towards proselytizing religions like Islam and Christianity, during his time in the
Punjab. In more strictly musical terms, though, VDP’s contribution was to somewhat
standardize musical instruction, primarily because, overtime, so many students have gone
through GMV training, and as a result, share a basic orientation toward factors such as
musical style and the use of VDP’s system of notation. It is V.N. Bhatkhande, however,
that made much more of an effort to unify the theory and practice of Hindustani music,
and it is to his life and work that I now turn.
In comparing the respective nationalist agendas of Paluskar and Bhatkhande, we
find several similarities, among other things, the belief that classical music in the
emerging nation of India would best be propagated through institutions (rather than
45

through the traditional one-on-one style of instruction employed by hereditary
musicians), and a desire to develop a practical system of notation for Hindustani music.
However, perhaps the most basic common denominator was that both conducted their
efforts at reform on a national basis. In early 20th century India as much if not more as in
the India of today, great prestige has been accorded those who have chosen to venture out
of the comfort zone of their home town or region in order to pursue professional goals.
The hardships encountered in doing so were all the greater for Paluskar considering that
he could hardly speak Hindi or Urdu when he chose to begin his work in the Punjab.
However, once we go beyond the surface level, we find many more differences than
similarities between the ‘Two Vishnus.’ While contrasting the two and their agendas and
methods, Bakhle explains rather succinctly their chief difference – “Bhatkhande wished
to nationalize music; Paluskar wanted music to be nationalist”(2005:177). In other
words, Paluskar wanted to make Hindustani music a symbol of the nation, while
Bhatkhande wanted to shape Hindustani music into one unified tradition which was both
standardized and systematized. This notably included the belief that the Northern and
Southern (Carnatic) classical traditions should be reformed and, in essence, combined to
form one tradition, an idea which, judging from autobiographical accounts, was never an
issue for VDP.
Bhatkhande, like Paluskar, was a Maharashtrian Brahman, albeit one born and
raised in the rapidly modernizing British colonial capitol of Bombay, rather than in the
semi-feudal context of Kurundwad. Unlike Paluskar, though, Bhatkhande’s father was
employed by a local business man. Bhatkhande was exposed to music from an early age
46

as his parents were music lovers, and he eventually took to studying the sitar.
Particularly crucial for Bhatkhande’s musical education was the Gayan Uttejak Mandali,
a Parsi run music appreciation society which Bhatkhande joined in 1884 while in college.
Ratanjankar writes,
As a member of the Gayan Uttejak Mandali, Vishnu [Bhatkhande] had the
advantage of listening to the performances of great artistes like
Tanras Khan, Inayat Hussain Khan, Natthan Khan, Ali Hussain Khan Beenkar.
Besides, he started collecting traditional and authoritative
compositions of music: Dhrupads, Horis, Khayals, Taranas, Thumris, etc. from
Ustads who were in the service of the Gayan Uttejak Mandali (1967:9)
This passage hints at the interest which later became an obsession for Bhatkhande,
collecting and notating classical compositions with a view toward establishing
standardized, demonstrably correct (on the basis of textual evidence if possible) forms of
both individual compositions and of ragas themselves. While there is no dramatic
episode from Bhatkhande’s life, a’ la Paluskar, which explains his great interest in textual
authority, it seems quite understandable given Bhatkhande’s caste background, his legal
training, as well as certain Western ideas current at the time, such as the belief in the
infallibility of science and the value of logic and rationality. Further, while Bhatkhande’s
parents apparently feared for some time that his study of music might lead him astray, to
the extent that he initially learned and practiced the sitar without their knowledge (Nayar
1989:46), the social status of musicians was never the issue for Bhatkhande that it was for
Paluskar. His chief concern was instead that the classical tradition could not survive
without a standardized, textually-based body of theory that would guide musicians and
ensure the future survival of the tradition.
Bhatkhande’s work consisted of roughly four broad activities: research, which
47

included both a thorough study of primarily Sanskrit texts as well as several national
tours conducted to seek such out texts and other musicians and scholars who might be
able either to recommend texts to Bhatkhande or perhaps even help to elucidate them; the
writing of a number of musicological works, primarily in Sanskrit and Marathi; the
organization of music conferences; and the promotion of music institutions, both as a
founder (of two colleges) and as an advisor to others. Bhatkhande did pursue a career as
a lawyer for sometime, and whatever influence his training might have had on his of way
thinking, it was undoubtedly crucial to his efforts as a musicologist, as he was able to live
off of his legal earnings for the latter half of his life. Bhatkhande conducted three major
tours, to South, East, and North India, in 1904, 1907, and 1908, respectively (Nayar
1989:68-69). While there were some highlights for Bhatkhande on his fact-finding tours,
including his meeting with a sympathetic Raja Sourindro Mohun Tagore in Calcutta, for
the most part, they would have been a failure in terms of what he had set about to do
initially, which was to draw definitive links between the theoretical systems propounded
in the ancient texts and the current musical practice of Bhatkhande’s day. Rather, his
experiences on his tours proved conclusively to Bhatkhande that no such links could be
found between ancient theory and current practice, something he seems to have suspected
much earlier. It was at this point that Bhatkhande began to conceive of the Hindustani
tradition as a modern one, dating back perhaps two hundred years (Bakhle 2005:106). 24
This realization was key for Bhatkhande because he then shifted his focus from
connecting the music of the pre-Muslim past with the music of his day to instead
24
Bakhle attributes this to his meeting with Subbaram Dikshitar, an authority on South Indian music
(2005:105).
48

formulating a new body of theory which would accurately describe current musical
practice, no mean feat considering the variety of approaches practiced by members of the
various gharanas. 25 To be able accomplish this task, musical practice had then to be
standardized, which in turn meant convincing performers to make changes in their
gharana-based, often idiosyncratic approaches. Kobayashi links this desire for
standardization to the influence of Western concepts of science, particularly influential at
the time in colonial India:
To be agreed upon, the theories or explanatory models must be standardized, and
practitioners should use them systematically in the same manner. Likewise the
music reformers [such as Bhatkhande] aimed to “systematize” Hindustani
classical music. That is, they called for constructing a “system,” which was
organized by rules that govern all ragas and talas, and, therefore, also defined all
ragas and talas. Such a “system” would work as an explanatory model, which
everybody hopefully would accept (2003:61)
It was precisely in order to achieve this standardization, that Bhatkhande began
organizing his All-India Music Conferences (AIMC). In all Bhatkhande organized six
conferences, 26 which were held in various cities, such as Rampur and Lucknow, and
mostly sponsored by one or another wealthy, aristocratic patron of classical music. At
each of these conferences Bhatkhande gathered together some of the leading lights
amongst performers of the Hindustani tradition in order to expose them to a wider
audience than had been possible prior to this time, but also so that they could engage in
debate with him and with each other regarding the idea of standardization of musical
practice. Kobayashi discusses Bhatkhande’s methods in the context of the first AIMC:
25
Gharanas developed distinct musical styles in order differentiate themselves from other, competing
lineages of musicians.
26
Nayar (1989) lists five conferences and one ‘Interim’ conference.
49

At the 1916 All-India Music Conference, Bhatkhande had hereditary mastermusicians
sit on the stage, in a semicircle. An empty chair was placed
by each artist for Bhatkhande to sit and ask the questions. He asked each singer
to sing a certain raga and took notes on analytical aspects such as
scale, stressed notes, typical note combinations, and so forth. Bhatkhande
repeated the exercise for each musician, compared the obtained data, and
announced the largest common denominators. These largest common
denominators, Bhatkhande suggested, should be accepted as the standard forms of
each raga. In other words, Bhatkhande announced the most commonly used raga
scale, and proposed that the scale should be considered the standard. Those who
used variant scales were asked to conform (2003:61-62).
It was through this process that Bhatkhande began to arrive at his new theoretical system
designed to describe modern musical practice. His writings were an elaboration on this
new system, culled from his debates with musicians, his study of the older treatises, and
the knowledge he had gleaned from his painstaking efforts over the years to collect as
many ‘authentic’ compositions as possible. 27 As Nayar explains, his Shreemallakshya
Sangeetam was an outline of the theory which had he laid out in greater detail in the four
volume work Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati (System of Hindustani Music) and illustrated
in his other works such as Lakshan Geet Sangraha and Kramik Pustak Mallika (1989:98).
Undoubtedly, Bhatkhande is revered by modern day musicians and musicologists
as the greatest modern theorist of Hindustani music, if not the greatest ever. However, as
Bakhle explains, many of Bhatkhande’s achievements and successes have turned out to
be hollow victories at best. His efforts at institutionalized education in classical music
collectively have to seen as one of his greatest failures. This failure, as with VDP’s
successes, can be measured in practical terms, for example that Marris College in
27 Bhatkhande famously had to use his wits in order to collect compositions form traditional musicians, for
example, by becoming a disciple of Nawab Hamid Ali, so that the latter would compel his chief court
musician, Wazir Khan, to share some of his gharana compositions with Bhatkhande.
50

Lucknow (later re-named Bhatkhande Sangeet Vidyapith) “confronted virtual
bankruptcy” three years after it opened and remains financially troubled. However,
perhaps the bigger failure is that the philosophy of the college has strayed so far from
Bhatkhande’s personal and professional ideas, such as scientific objectivity and
secularism. As Bakhle states, Bhatkhande likely would have been quite dismayed to see
“his future students and supporters paying homage to his memory by garlanding his
photograph with flowers and laying beside it a stand of agarbatti (incense) before doing
namaskar to his painting…(2005:135). However, as Bakhle also notes, the more
disappointing legacy of Bhatkhande’s work has been the absence of scholars who have
followed in his footsteps according to his methods and scholarly orientation. 28
For the purposes of the present discussion, what should be emphasized is that
Bhatkhande never succeeded in creating a standardized body of theory which was or has
been accepted by musicians as a guide for their performances. This is both because
Bhatkhande’s theories were in many cases contrary to modern performance practice and
also because the majority of gharaanedaar musicians had no real interest standardizing
their performances. As all the above writers make clear, Bhatkhande always saw
gharanas as an impediment to his agenda, and thus failed to gain the support of many of
the notable musicians of the day. 29 As Daniel Neuman persuasively argues in his classic
study on hereditary classical musicians in Delhi, The Life of Music in North India,
gharanas arose in the middle of the nineteenth century in response to wide societal and
28
One exception to this generalization would be current day ethnomusicologist Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy.
29
Kobayashi mentions the Khyal singer Krishnarao Shankar Pandit as one example of such musicians
(2003:61).
51

cultural changes, primarily improvements in communication and transportation.
Gharanas served the dual purpose of controlling musical knowledge, as membership in a
gharana was determined by membership in a family of musicians, and of giving these
musicians a distinctive musical identity, a necessity when musicians began traveling
extensively and performing before audiences not familiar with them or their music
(Neuman 1990:168-169). Keeping this in mind, it is not surprising that many musicians
would have objected to Bhatkhande’s attempts to smooth out the differences in style that
made them distinct from other musicians from other gharanas. This objection would
have held even if the demand for standardization was limited only to certain key aspects
of performance such as how ragas are interpreted, for example which notes are used, a
position held by Bhatkhande’s closest disciple and biographer, Srikrishna Ratanjankar
(Kobayashi 2003:63). Whatever misgivings Bhatkhande (or Paluskar) had about the
secrecy of gharaanedaar Ustads, their possibly objectionable lifestyles, or their religion,
the reality is that the Hindustani tradition was coterminous with gharanas before and
during the ‘Two Vishnus’’ lifetimes. As such, Bhatkhande’s efforts not only to change
the perception of the public regarding classical musicians, as Paluskar did so
successfully, but to change the way that Hindustani music was performed were always
doomed by this refusal accept to gharanas as central to the Hindustani tradition.
To conclude this section, it is important to gauge, to the extent possible, the
impact of Bhatkhande and Paluskar on the thinking of current musicians about the
tradition as a whole. To be sure, the most tangible legacy of Paluskar has been the
continuing activities of the system of music colleges he founded. Of course, as I have
52

already mentioned, music colleges in India of whatever ilk have never produced a first
rate performer of note. In Paluskar’s defense, he was well aware of this fact and not
terribly concerned about it. As he famously stated, his colleges were meant to produce
‘Kansens,’ not ‘Tansens,’ 30 in other words devotees and supporters of music who would
further Paluskar’s ideology rather than concertizing performers. In these terms, Paluskar
was, again, very successful. However, as we are primarily concerned with performing
musicians, the legacy of both Bhatkhande and Paluskar is much harder to determine. As
stated above, a great number of musicians in Maharashtra have direct links to Paluskar
through teacher-student relationships, however many links in the chain there might be
between a particular musician and Paluskar himself. The biographical information I have
collected from my interlocutors in the Bombay and Pune areas certainly bears this out,
although I can hardly argue that the 20 odd musicians I spoke to can be considered a
representative sample. And, the fact remains that whether or not any of the musicians I
interviewed had any training in a music college, or any one-on-one training from a music
college graduate, each one of them received the bulk of their training in a Guru-disciple
relationship with a professional musician who him- or herself had learned from a Guru or
Ustad in the same fashion.
What I argue, then, is that Paluskar’s and Bhatkhande’s greatest impact on today’s
performers is an almost purely ideological one. In the most general sense this means that
today’s musicians typically believe that Hindustani music is a national tradition and
should properly be viewed as such. The fact that the majority of today’s performers
30 Tansen is the singer revered as the greatest in the history of Hindustani classical music. ‘Kansen’ is a
play on Tansen based on the Hindi word for ‘ear,’ kaan.
53

(certainly all that I interviewed) are not from the part of India where the tradition
originated can only serve to reinforce this notion. After all, how could Hindustani music
in any way be Maharashtrian or Bengali when it was born and nurtured for some 2000
years in North India? That being said, it is also hard to argue that any of today’s
performers have been inspired in any very specific fashion by Bhatkhande or Paluskar, or
can be seen to be carrying out or continuing with either of their missions or agendas,
other than in the loosest of senses. During the research I conducted for the present study,
the only reference any of the musicians I interviewed made to Paluskar or Bhatkhande
was when D.K. Datar, the well-known violinist of Bombay, mentioned that he was
related to Paluskar. I never asked about Paluskar or Bhatkhande directly, but considering
that I discussed in detail with almost all of my interlocutors the broad issue of how
classical music had taken root in Bengal and Maharahstra from the 19th century forward,
it is telling, I feel, that the ‘Two Vishnus’ were never mentioned, particularly by any
Maharashtrian musician. Leaving aside explicit references, the one example of
particularly Bhatkhandian or Paluskar-esque thinking I recorded came from Mita Nag,
the daughter of the famous Vishnupur gharana sitarist Manilal Nag. This was when she
mentioned that although the Vishnupur gharana traditionally had cultivated variant
versions of standard ragas, for ex. Purvi or Vibhas, these days the Vishnupur musicians
perform the standardized versions of such ragas. MN stated that the reason for this is that
when they play outside India, foreign listeners “get very often confused” when they
present these variant raga forms (interview, 2005). Thus, as Bhatkhande had desired,
these musicians have standardized their repertoire (to a certain extent) in order to present
54

a united front, if you will, to foreign listeners. Certainly there are echoes of
Bhatkhande’s work in the experiments carried out by such musicians as Ravi Shankar
and Zakir Hussain, where they have attempted to incorporate elements of Carnatic music,
such as Southern ragas or the taani-avartanam 31 into their presentation of North Indian
classical music. 32 Even Shankar, though, staunch nationalist that he is, has never
campaigned for the end of stylistic differences between gharanas or between the Carnatic
and Hindustani traditions. Shankar does mention Bhatkhande in his 1968 book My
Music, My Life, and I feel that his brief discussion of Bhatkhande is, again, telling.
Shankar mentions Bhatkhande in the context of an explanation of the classification of
ragas in the Northern tradition writing,
At the turn of this century, an attempt was made by VN Bhatkhande, the noted
musicologist, to recodify the system. He proposed an order consisting of ten
thats, or primary scales, and this order has gained fairly wide acceptance. I
myself, however, as well as a number of other musicians, do not feel that these ten
scales adequately accommodate a great variety of ragas, for there are many ragas
that use notes not contained in these ten thats. We therefore think it is more
reasonable and scientific to follow the old melakarta system of the South, because
it can sustain almost any raga, no matter how unusual its ascending and
descending structures (1969:21).
Perhaps it is a bit ironic that Shankar would compare the southern melakaarta system of
raga classification to Bhatkhande’s system, because as Bakhle attests, Bhatkhande’s
attempt to create such a system was largely inspired by the order and precision he saw in
Carnatic music generally. The point to be made, though, is that Shankar obviously
respects Bhatkhande as a scholar of music, but at the same time politely discusses the
31 Taani avartanam is the percussion section solo featured in Carnatic music recitals.
32 Other such North-South experiments include jugalbaandii-s, or duets, with one musician from each
tradition, such as Hindustani slide guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Carnatic violinist L Subramaniam.
55

shortcomings of his theories. I would argue that, for musicians who know about
Bhatkhande to any extent, this is a representative attitude. Any performing musician will
readily recognize the flaws in Bhatkhande’s theory if he chooses to examine what he said
and wrote, but in a general way most musicians would also agree that Bhatkhande’s
mission to provide a scientific basis for the tradition was and is a good thing. That they
do believe this, however, in no way means that they will necessarily take any practical
steps to further this agenda. Likewise with Paluskar, most musicians would agree that
Hindustani classical music is a symbol of the Indian nation, but would rarely endorse
music colleges as a means of training performing musicians or take an active role in any
political movement (although, to be fair, it is hard to imagine that any political cause
might emerge that would in any way resemble the independence movement in terms of
overall popularity with the vast majority of the Indian people). It is worth keeping in
mind that the above passage from Ravi Shankar was written in the 1960s. Those
performers who are now in their 30s or 40s would be less likely to have such knowledge
of either Bhatkhande or Paluskar, reinforcing my claim that their true legacy has been to
promote a very the diffuse and non-specific notion that Hindustani music is, at its core, a
national tradition. That Bhatkhande should not have had a profound and abiding effect
on performance practice as such is not surprising considering his disdain both for many
musicians and for gharanas generally, but it should be noted that Vishnu Digambar’s
impact in this realm has also not been great. As Wim van der Meer writes, “Vishnu
Digambar Paluskar is [an] outstanding figure whose influence cannot be overestimated.
However, this influence has been much more a social one than a directly musical
56

one”(1980:155). I will discuss what I see as Vishnu’s Digambar’s musical legacy in
chapter 2 in the context of the classical music scene in Paluskar’s home state of
Maharashtra.
Before proceeding, however, there is one more aspect of Bhatkhande’s influence
that should be mentioned here. This regards the scope of what Bhatkhande considered
germane to his scholarly endeavors. Dr. Ashok Ranade, in his short monograph
Reflections on Musicology and History (2001) discusses what he sees as a narrowing of
the range of subject of matter accorded importance by Indian musicology in the 20th
century. Ranade first brings up this idea relative to the notion that Sangiit, a word most
often translated as ‘music’ in English, was traditionally considered to be a more inclusive
term covering the fields of dance, drama, and music, both instrumental and vocal.
However, in more recent times, the term has been, in essence, narrowed primarily to
classical vocal music, at least in terms of what Indian musicologists see as worthy of
study. As Ranade states, “It would not be an exaggeration to say that this narrowing
down has been mainly due to Pt. V.N. Bhatkhande’s extremely focused and systematic
exposition of the discipline in the modern period”(2001:12). Later in the same work,
Ranade notes a similar narrowing down effected by Bhatkhande and followers in terms of
restricting musicology to “an entirely grammatical interpretation of music”(2001:51). 33
The point to be made here, then, is that the difficulty I experienced in my attempts to
have current performers discuss the Hindustani tradition can be attributed to a number of
factors, but certainly this idea that socio-cultural factors such as regional culture are not
33 Purohit (1988) makes the same point at several junctures in his own discussion of Bhatkhande.
57

important in understanding music is one of them. So, not only would musicians be
hesitant to discuss music in terms of region for the broader reasons outlined above and
below, there is also the tendency to believe that the only legitimate area of concern for
the field of musicology in India is musical structure, or the “music itself.” I believe this
is particularly important in this case because so many of the musicians I interviewed were
what might be termed as “scholarly musicians,” even if, in many cases, these individuals
were not active writers and/or did not hold an official post at any institution. Further, of
these “scholarly musicians,” perhaps only one or two were not singers, the prime
exception being tabla and sitar player Nayan Ghosh of Bombay.
B. Regionalism as Regressive
To say India is a regional place is a truism. Even to the most undiscerning tourist
visiting India for first time, the differences from region to region between language and
food, to name the most obvious examples, are readily apparent. This then brings to mind
the problematic assertions often made by individuals who have only seen one region or
city in India, yet based on that limited evidence, generalize about the country as a whole.
In other words, seeing Delhi and Agra does not equate to seeing India. Further, although
the modern Indian states are, to a certain extent, modern constructs that do not necessarily
correspond to any enduring linguistic or natural geographic markers (though in some
cases there is a correspondence), it is clear that many of the major regions of today do
have a continuous history that stretches back for several hundred years, if not more.
However, as the issue here is to understand the importance of regional culture in modern
58

Indian life, particularly in contrast to nationalism in India, we need only go back some
120 years in history to begin our discussion. This is because regionalism as a
phenomenon really only came about in the last decades of the 19th century, and not
coincidentally this coincides with the period when the centers of patronage for Hindustani
classical music began to shift from North India to places outside North India, particularly
to Bombay and Calcutta, the capitols and economic centers of British India. As Ainslee
Embree explains in his article “Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures: The Two
Realities,” “…the debate on regionalism is scarcely a hundred years old because in that
period it becomes a part of the meanings of the lives of the people in India”(1985:20).
The debate in question is the one which took place in various forums concerning India’s
existence as a cohesive nation, with British imperialists on one side and Indian
nationalists on the other. That the British would assert that India had no existence as
such without the imperialists themselves holding it together is not surprising, considering
that this was the period when the movement for Indian independence first started to take
shape. On the strength of this argument the British Raj could claim that Indians across
the different regions of the subcontinent had nothing in common that could unite them,
while at the same time emphasizing the success that British colonialism had had in doing
just that. Thus, by this logic, India could do nothing without the British save to
disintegrate into the “great natural regions” and political chaos. It is worth noting the
thesis of Embree’s article, because, as he explains, two prime factors are responsible for
the unity of India, a unity which has proved much stronger than whatever centrifugal
pressures have been created by the different regions. The first of these is the Brahamanic
59

tradition; 34 the second is “the great historic fact of the intrusion of two powerful alien
civilizations, the Islamic and the European, both of which produced empires that
encompassed much of the subcontinent”(1985:32). So, while the British argued against
the unity of India as the Indian Nationalist movement grew, they were simultaneously
helping to preserve and extend a unity that was very real in practical terms. They also
gave an ideological boost to this unity, and here Embree’s two prime factors dovetail to a
large extent. As he explains, “‘India’ as a designation of a cultural region is a Western
construct”(1985:24). It is a construct that can be traced back as early as the 5th century
BCE through to imperialist writers like Kipling and that, at its core, views India as an
undifferentiated and monolithic society fundamentally different from Europe, whether the
contrast is specifically made between Greece and India, France and India, or England and
India. Turning to the Indian side of the equation, Embree discusses the influence of
Brahmanic culture in terms of the ideological unity it has provided throughout its history.
He writes,
To sum up the content of this Brahmanical ideology is difficult, because it
includes the whole vast corpus of the classical texts as well as the inheritance of
many centuries of historical experience, but some items may be mentioned. One
is a sense of order throughout the cosmos, linking all of its elements in a
continuous and understandable pattern. Immediately related to this is the peculiar
role of the possessor of knowledge, the Brahman, in maintaining the cosmic
order. Then there is the concept of many levels of truth, the assertion that while
there is “truth” in the sense of an over-arching reality, and there are “true” actions,
there are many possibilities and contradictions, all of which may be true in some
sense. It is no accident that Gandhi spoke of “his experiments with truth.” The
pervasive doctrines of karma and reincarnation are clearly part of the Brahmanic
core, as is, above all, the concept of dharma, perhaps the center of the tradition.
Closely linked to these concepts, as well as the others, is the sense of a
34
In Embree’s terms, Hinduism and Brahmanism are not identical. Rather, Brahmanical ideology is but
one element of Hinduism (1985:22).
60

hierarchical structure in which each entity occupies a necessary and logical place.
The result, at least for those who live within it, is a wholly rational universe
(1985:23-24).
Within the “vast corpus of classical texts,” which have served to promote and perpetuate
the Brahmanic ideology, one then can find a similar construction of India as a cultural
unity as is found in Orientalist literature. According to the Sanskrit texts, India was a
land clearly demarcated by the Himalayas to the north and the oceans to the south. 35 Of
course, this is a sacred geography, a unity based on religion, not politics, and it is worth
mentioning that many of the major historical regions have their own sacred geography,
where the boundaries are demarcated by shrines, centers of religious learning, and places
of pilgrimage. 36 The point to be made, though, is that, as Embree states, in the minds of
the Indian Nationalist leaders these two conceptions of India, mythic or not, supported
and resonated with each other to form a powerful support for the Nationalist ideology.
This is owing to the fact that many of the Nationalist leaders, e.g. Nehru, due to their
upper caste stature and their English education, were well familiar with both of these
views of India as a unity.
Thus, it should not be surprising that this tension between the view of India as a
whole or as an artificial concatenation of regions never played a factor in the campaign
for Indian independence. On the contrary, “[o]ne can argue, there are few other
nationalist movements in modern times where regional differences played so small a part
as they did in India, where they seem at first glance so obvious and so important”
35 Embree notes a “White paper prepared by the Historical Division of the Ministry of External Affairs”
that cited the Vishnu Purana (an ancient Sanskrit text) in order to prove the historical provenance of this
view (1985:26).
36 see Feldhaus (2006)
61

(Embree 1985:36). However, the debate on regionalism or region versus nation did not
end with the exit of the British Raj from India, it actually grew in intensity. This is due to
the political movements that arose in various regions of India to form the states of the
newly independent country along linguistic lines. What India inherited from the British
in the way of political subdivisions were those that had come about for reasons of
political expediency devoid of any other logic. This meant a combination of the
provinces of British India, for example the Bombay Presidency, that were very large and
that each encompassed several of the present states of the Republic of India, along with
numerous princely states that were scattered across the subcontinent and that in some
cases were very, very small in size. So, there was no doubt in the minds of any of the
leaders of independent India that these provinces or states needed to be re-organized and
the boundaries redrawn. The issue was to determine on what basis this should happen. It
should be noted that the idea of redrawing India’s internal boundaries had been discussed
in the context of the meetings of the Indian National Congress (INC) as early as 1920.
Robert D. King in his excellent monograph Nehru and the Language Politics of India,
explains that Gandhi at the 1920 INC session in Nagpur “accepted the general principle
that provincial boundaries should be drawn on language lines and that the political
machinery of the Indian National Congress should be organized according to language,”
although he had concerns that this might conflict with his goal of making Hindustani
(colloquial Hindi/Urdu) the national language (1997:61). The prime factor in the
eventual acceptance of this notion was the political pressure created by Telegu speakers’
and their representatives’ demands for an Andhra dominated, Telegu speaking state to be
62

carved from the multi-linguistic Madras Presidency, the idea being that Telegu speakers
would have been politically and culturally dominated by Tamil speakers if the Madras
Presidency was not divided into separate Tamil and Telegu speaking states. Once this
demand was recognized, other demands from regional linguistic groups quickly followed,
namely from Sindhi speakers demanding a Sindh state and Kannada speakers demanding
a Karnataka state. This “domino effect” would foreshadow a similar course of events
when Andhra Pradesh became the first new linguistically based state post-independence.
By 1927 the INC passed a resolution for the ‘redistribution of provinces on a linguistic
basis,’ and by 1937, Nehru himself accepted the idea of linguistic provinces, although in
a “very subdued” fashion (ibid.:62). The British, despite their interest in divide and rule
politics, were not particularly interested, or arguably even very aware, of these language
issues. They did create two essentially linguistic provinces, Sind and Orissa, in 1936
(Schwartzberg 1985:158). It seems, though, that these were created as much for, in the
case of Sind, religious reasons (because Sind was a majority Muslim region being ruled
by a majority Hindu Bombay Presidency) and, in the case of both, geographic reasons, as
the capitols of both the Bombay Presidency and the Madras Presidency were quite far
from the Sind or Orissa, respectively. Regardless, due the crises and other demands first
of World War II and then of the final push towards independence the issue of linguistic
states or provinces was left on the back burner.
In the immediate years following independence and the partition of British India
into the separate states of Pakistan and India, Nehru began to reverse his position on
linguistic states, both because of more pressing issues, such as the horrendous communal
63

violence between Hindus and Muslims and the need for economic development in a
largely impoverished and industrially underdeveloped nation, and because he had begun
to feel that regional, language-based politics would create unnecessary dissention in a
country struggling to unify itself. However, a committee was appointed by the central
government to “study the desirability of creating four, and only four, new provinces:
Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra”(King 1997:103). When this commission
(known as the Dar commission after its chairman, S.K. Dar) issued a report on its
findings in 1948, they were “considerably at variance with the pre-independence position
of Congress”(Schwartzberg 1985:162). The commission had concluded that language
should be only one factor, and one of the least important at that, in determining how the
map of India should be reorganized. Geography, administrative efficiency, and history
were among the factors that were to take precedence over language. In light of this
commission’s findings, a committee was formed with Nehru as a member in order to
modify the government’s position on linguistic states. As King explains, the findings of
this committee were very similar to those of the Dar commission, although it went further
in underlining the problems posed by the possibility of organizing India along linguistic
lines (1997:107-108). For King, this was clear proof of Nehru’s desire to postpone
discussing the issue, a policy King feels was ultimately successful, even if Nehru was
forced by events to create the first linguistic state, Andhra Pradesh, much sooner than he
had hoped he would have to, in 1952. The success of this policy, King argues, lay in the
fact that it both allowed the central government to address some of the aforementioned
problems confronting India in 1947 and perhaps diffused some of the violence and unrest
64

which the country might have faced if the process of creating linguistic states was entered
into earlier.
When Nehru did finally give in, it was in response to an incident which had
stirred the unreasoning passion and violence he had feared in regard to the whole issue of
linguistic states. As King explains, many of the demands for language-based states were
based on issues other than language. Nehru, even while appreciating the possibility for
divisiveness that could be created by the division of Indian territory according to
language, likely did not initially understand to what extent other issues, such as caste
rivalries, were masquerading as linguistic movements. In the case of the demand for a
Telegu-speaking Andhra state, the “vying of Brahmans, Kammas, and Reddis for power
in Madras, the slipping of control of Congress from the hands of Brahmans, educational
jealousy, all dwarfed in actuality everything else that played a role in the Andhra
movement, and language most particularly” (ibid.:71). However, by 1952, Nehru seemed
to have a better grasp of all the different reasons for such demands, and, as such, had only
become more determined to delay taking action; his popularity and prestige in these first
years after independence had, fortunately, allowed him the freedom to do so. Nehru
changed his mind with an uncharacteristic quickness, though, after Andhra leader and
Gandhian Sri Potti Sriramulu fasted until death in December of 1952. Sriramulu had
been an untiring campaigner in the fight against untouchablilty and apparently felt
strongly that without the support of an Andhra-led state government, which of course
would not have been possible without the creation of an Andhra majority state, he would
not have been able to carry on his fight with any effectiveness. Nehru, as King notes,
65

was not eager to be blamed for the death of beloved figure, especially a follower of
Gandhi (Nehru’s mentor) using Gandhian methods of protest, but he also felt that
Sriramulu’s demands were unreasonable, in particular his insistence that Madras city
should either be made a part of the Andhra state or be administered by the central
government. Madras, of course, eventually became a part of Tamil-speaking Tamil
Nadu, and rightly so, as it was a Tamil dominated city all along and was geographically a
part of Tamil territory. After Sriramulu died, though, “looting and rioting and major
destruction of property followed apace”(ibid.:115). In response to the kind of violence he
had anticipated might be stirred up by this issue, Nehru set in motion the process for
creating the new state of Andhra Pradesh, only one day after Sriramulu’s death. After
this decision, it was inevitable that action should be taken to finally redraw the map along
linguistic lines. Andhra Pradesh was “officially constituted” in 1953, and shortly
afterward a Commission on States Reorganization was formed. After taking into account
the findings of this commission, the majority of today’s Indian states were created in
1956, 37 save for Haryana, which was created through the partition of the Punjab into a
Sikh/Punjabi dominated Punjab and a Hindu/Hindi dominated Haryana, Maharashtra and
Gujurat which together composed the initially created Bombay state, and the four new
states created in 2000. An especially controversial decision was made in regard to
Bombay city, which had been claimed by both Marathi and Gujurati speakers. The
Commission had recommended that a bilingual (Gujurati and Marathi) Bombay state
37 The initial states created by this act were Andra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Bombay State, Jammu and
Kashmir, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and
West Bengal.
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should be created. This decision was “acceptable to no one, and all parties to the matter
were extreme, bitter, and uncompromising”(ibid.:120). After a period which saw,
amongst other things, linguistic riots in Bombay and the creation of the Samyukta
Maharashtra Samithi (The Committee for Undivided Maharashtra), Bombay state was
divided in 1960 into Gujurati-speaking Gujurat and Marathi-speaking Maharashtra, with
the Mahrashtrians taking the prize that was the city of Bombay. As I will explain shortly,
this was not the last time that Bombay would serve as the background for regional
language battles. It is also worth mentioning that two areas, namely the Belgaum and
Karwad districts, which had been part of the demand for the new state of Maharashtra,
were ceded to Karnataka (then Mysore state). The decision to incorporate these areas
into Karnataka remains a political issue in Maharashtra at present.
I have included this account of King’s work on the history of formation of India’s
linguistic states and Nehru’s involvement with this process for two reasons: the first is to
illustrate through concrete examples how regional political movements have shaped the
modern nation of India. The second, and more important reason, is that I feel that an
examination of Nehru’s actions in both delaying and eventually implementing this
process reveals quite a bit regarding how the elite in India has historically viewed region
vis-a-vis the nation. King attributes Nehru’s mode of operation as much as anything to
his inherent and strongly held sense of rationalism, along with his attendant belief in the
power of science to cure the ills of humanity. Thus, for Nehru, language “as a political
issue, like religion, belonged to the pre-rational impulses. They engendered passion,
pointless bickering, deflection from higher purpose”(ibid.:170). King also feels that
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Nehru owed a debt to socialist thinkers, specifically Lenin, specifically in how he
handled the issue of language-based states, even while describing Nehru’s belief in the
Soviet way as “naïve.” Lenin, himself facing the problems that came with trying to unify
a very large, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic nation, had maintained that no nation (in the
sense of an ethnic group) or language should be privileged over any other, that no
coercion should be used in promoting one national language, and that, as a general
principle, there were always more pressing issues to be faced in the USSR than language
(ibid.:174). However, while Nehru’s socialist tendencies or leanings have largely fallen
out of favor in the India of today, it is important to emphasize the impact specifically that
English education and English thought had made on Nehru’s philosophy and style of
governance. Rationalism and the belief in progress through science are certainly part, but
not all, of the equation here. Harold Gould, in his article “On the Apperception of Doom
in the Indian Political Process”(1985), has addressed the subject of the consistent
perception of critics, mostly journalists, in post-independence India that India is a
fundamentally fragile nation that is always on the verge of encountering a threat to its
stability that it can no longer survive. 38 Gould reaches three broad conclusions regarding
this trend, two of which concern us here. 39 The first is that this pessimism is rooted in a
stereotypical idea of British politics which was inculcated precisely by the Westernized
education system “originated by Englishmen and Anglicized Indians…” The stereotype
is a highly idealized one, and by comparison, Indian politics, with its backroom dealings,
its “trading favors for loyalties,” its “winking at a certain amount of larceny,” inevitably
38 The most outstanding example being Selig Harrison’s India: the Most Dangerous Decades (1960)
39 The other is the “aura of moral preoccupations” attributable to Gandhi’s political influence (1985:295).
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comes up short. All these phenomena are, of course, absolutely a part of British politics,
as they are everywhere, but this reality, Gould argues, has never been recognized by the
critics to which he is referring. Thus, this “apperception of doom…arises from a deep-
seated belief that [Indian] politics have never measured up to a British ideal which was
transmitted to them through British education for the express purpose of trying to
persuade them that they never could”(Gould 1985:297). The second of Gould’s broad
conclusions that is relevant to this discussion concerns the high caste and middle or upper
class economic background of the critics in question. Gould asserts that these individuals
who were accustomed to a position of leadership prior to independence feel quite
uncomfortable “emotionally and intellectually dealing with the entry into the political
process…of people whose values, tastes and even conceptions of what is moral and
conscionable often diverge pronouncedly” from their own (ibid.:296). 40 This difficulty,
then, results in a certain amount of trepidation regarding the politics practiced by such
people who never had participated in politics to any degree before the 1950s. This is
largely a cultural matter, notwithstanding the political ramifications posed by high
caste/upper class critics, and the point is that it is the style and manner of low caste and/or
low economic class politicians which truly is shocking or worrisome to these critics. As
Gould makes clear, however, it is this new breed of leaders that make a difference in
“[r]apidly modernizing societies,” not “leaders whose identities still rest in the old
aristocracies…,” who are unable or unwilling to dirty their hands by engaging with the
realities of politics in a modern, democratic society.
40
Nandy makes a similar point in his article “Final Encounter: The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi”
(1998).
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To return to the specific issue of regional political movements, many authors,
including the majority of those I have cited here, explain that, at their root, regional
politics are based in a sense of inequality, generally economic inequality, whether it is
real or perceived. As K.C. Pande writes, “[b]ecause of the size of the country, uneven
distribution of resources and different levels and rates of development in different parts,
certain problems do arise which are mainly concerned with seeking to remove the
disparity between the economically well off and poor parts”(1976:3). Even when a
symbolic matter such as language cum regional identity becomes the rallying cry for a
political movement, economic issues remain the root cause. As we have seen in the case
of the movement for the creation of Andhra Pradesh, the demand for a Telegu-speaking
state was based on caste rivalries which themselves were founded on the perception (or
reality) of economic inequalities. However, to attribute regional politics entirely to
economic causes is reductive and ahistorical, so one must be careful not to lose sight of
the complexity of these issues while trying to isolate one factor analytically. Regional
demands can manifest themselves in different ways. At the highest level they can surface
as movements either for independence from India or, more frequently, for the creation of
new states within India. Another manifestation of these feelings of perceived inequality
are the so-called ‘sons of the soil’ movements. Pande explains this phenomenon as
follows,
Generally, the skilled or semi-skilled workers in a textile or steel industry are
Muslims from U.P., Delhi and some other places. They have gone to these old
industrial centres [for ex. Ahmedabad, Gujurat or Bombay] and almost settled
down there for more than two or three generations, but they have not yet become
‘sons of the soil’ in the sense the term is now-a-days used. The emerging middle
class of the soil in the urban areas has a strong sense of loyalty to one’s own
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language and region. Along with this push factors working in the rural areas are
throwing out large numbers of agriculturalists particularly agricultural workers to
the urban areas. These workers think more employment opportunities are
available in these industrial centres. But soon they realize that they have to be
content with inferior jobs because the ‘outsiders’ have already occupied better
jobs. This leads to frustration and disappointment. This frustration on the one
hand and urban middle classes’ strong regional and linguistic bias on the other
create a situation in which their joint fury is directed against the ‘outsiders’ who
constitute a fair section of the working class population (1976:9).
The most well-known, within India and internationally, longest lived, and, in some ways,
the most successful of these ‘sons of the soil’ movements is the Shiv Sena of Bombay, a
subject to which I will now turn.
The Shiv Sena (literally, the army of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the great Maratha
chieftain and contemporary of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb) could be described as a
number of things. It is, variously, a youth empowerment movement (as its main
constituency has always been the young), a political party, a crime syndicate, and a
cultural organization. As such, it encourages its young members to start their own small
businesses, most often vaDaa paav 41 stalls or carts; it supports candidates for municipal
and state elections; it runs protection rackets in certain neighborhoods of Bombay; and it
organizes and/or bankrolls popular music concerts (Eckert 2003 mentions performances
by both Michael Jackson and Lata Mangeshkar) and traditional Maharashtrian festivals,
i.e. GaNeshotsav. It also provides services (such as facilitating water or electric service)
to citizens living in lower class and slum areas that the inefficient and generally
overwhelmed local government is unable to provide them itself. The Shiv Sena was
founded in 1966 by Balasaheb ‘Bal’ Thackeray, originally a cartoonist, first for the Free
41 VaDa paav is a type of fast food snack associated particularly with Bombay.
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Press Journal, and later for his own weekly publication Marmik. As Dipankar Gupta
explains, it was through his work as cartoonist that he developed and began to promote
his essentially populist message, which was that ‘native’ Maharashtrians (i.e. Marathi
speakers) were being unfairly deprived of economic opportunities by ‘non-
Maharashtrians’(Gupta 1982:40). In the early days of the organization ‘outsiders’ meant
South Indians and Gujuratis, although the Sena’s attention has been focused much more
on Muslims from North India since the early 1980s. That Bombay has blossomed since
Independence as the economic capital of India, and indeed as one of the largest economic
centers in Asia, has only helped exacerbate the frustration felt by lower-middle class
Marathi speakers in Bombay, while simultaneously bolstering the appeal of a nativist
leader like Bal Thackeray. It is important to note here that the appeal of the Shiv Sena is
truly one of the unintended consequences of the movement for linguistic states. This is
because Bombay was a city built and developed primarily through the efforts both of
native Indian groups, i.e. Parsis and Gujuratis, and of the British, which is to say that
Maharashtrians were never a crucial force in the economic growth and development of
the city. Bombay was included in the state of Maharashtra primarily because of two
factors: its geographical location and the status of Maharashtrians as the most numerous
linguistic group demographically (although Marathi speakers have never comprised much
more than 50% of the total population of the city). It is, thus, not hard to imagine that if
the political wrangling post-Independence had taken a slightly different turn, Bombay
could have just as well been ceded to Gujarat, in which case the Shiv Sena would likely
have never come into existence. This in turn brings up the related point that it was in fact
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the Samyukta Mahrashtra Samithi (SMS) that was responsible for “crystallizing” (to use
Gupta’s term) Maharashtrian regional sentiments and, thus, providing the ideological
base for the nascent Shiv Sena.
The setting in motion of Marathi sentiments of linguistic regionalism and
parochialism was done systematically and pointedly for the first time by the
SMS…This movement...was principally bolstered by the pride and consciousness
among Maharashtrians of their culture and history. This consciousness as well as
the glorification of Maharashtrian heroes of yore, the struggle for the inclusion of
Belgaum and Karwar, and the feeling that Maharashtrians were being
discriminated against by the Central Government, were excited and ingrained
among the Maharashtrians by the SMS. The SMS was one of the largest and most
cogent political movements in contemporary Indian history, which based itself
almost exclusively on regional and linguistic sentiments (Gupta 1982:45).
From this passage we can glean the main two ideological elements which Thackeray and
his associates have used to appeal to the rank and file Sena member (Shiv sainik): a belief
in the superiority of Maharashtrian history, culture, tradition, and language and a certain
amount of paranoia mixed with xenophobia.
The importance of Shivaji and his legend as a symbol for the Shiv Sena cannot be
underestimated. This goes well beyond the significance of naming the movement after
this great historical figure. First and foremost, Shivaji is a name that inspires pride in
every Maharastrian, and it is hard to argue that there is any other historical Maharashtrian
that is more frequently remembered, revered, and invoked than is Shivaji. Certainly, the
use of Shivaji as symbol for both Maharashtrians and other Indians to rally around for
political causes was a well established practice by the time Thackeray founded the Shiv
Sena in the late ‘60s. As Purandare writes, “[d]uring India’s freedom struggle from the
British, the Shivaji icon injected new dynamism among the nationalists and was used by
Lokmanya Tilak, Jyotirao Phule, Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, Lokahitwadi,
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Wasudeo Balwant Phadke, and Bipin Chandra Pal, among others, to inspire the ideal of
nationalism among the masses and impart instruction to the people about the political
programme of the national movement”(1999:53-54). And, more to the point, “Shivaji is
a coin that never fails to work”(ibid.:55). However, it is important to point out that
Shivaji himself was a Maratha by caste, a Maratha that transcended the agrarian/Shudra
role traditionally ascribed by the Brahmanic establishment to Marathas and even became
sanctified as a Kshatriya by Pandits from Benares. The significance of this then is that
the main constituency for the Sena has always been middle and working class Marathas,
a group politically dominant (by virtue of numbers and land ownership) in the rest of
Maharashtra state, but that historically has been economically marginalized in Bombay.
Another important aspect of Shivaji’s symbolic value is his legacy as military
leader. As Eckert explains, the main tool the Sena has used in promoting itself is
violence, a rather sensationalistic use of violence, targeted variously at South Indian
restaurants, Muslims, government offices (during periods when the Sena is not in power),
and political rivals. Lastly, while some have debated the sometimes taken for granted
notion that Shivaji fought to create not only a Maratha empire but a specifically Hindu
empire, 42 this is definitely the understanding that the average Indian has of his legacy,
and because of this, Shivaji has remained a potent symbol for the Sena movement even
when it shifted in the early 1980s from being a primarily pro-Maharashtrian movement
and organization to being a primarily pro-Hindu Nationalist movement and organization
(which is not to say that the Sena’s regionalism and its nationalism are necessarily
42 see Laine (2003)
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incompatible or contradictory).
Julia M Eckert’s The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics, and the Shiv
Sena is perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated analysis among the body of literature
concerning the Shiv Sena. Eckert describes the Sena’s modus operandi as “militant
enmity” which she describes in abstract terms. She writes,
Militant enmity, it is suggested, keeps the movement going by constructing the
conflict-whatever conflict-to be existential. The contention is that militant
ideologies propounding an essential (and often existential) opposition between
friend and foe have a particular perpetuating potential because they construct a
conflict to be irresolvable. The non-negotiability of essentially defined conflicts
is in the interest of those that propound them: for the movement to keep moving
the conflict needs to remain unresolved or rather: irresolvable (2003:5).
In other words, the Shiv Sena has no real intention to decisively end any conflict, whether
it be against South Indians or Gujaratis who supposedly have taken economic oppor-
tunities from Maharashtrian ‘sons of the soil’ or against ‘anti-Hindu’ and thus ‘anti-
national’ Muslims, because without an enemy there is no conflict and without conflict
there is no reason for the Sena to exist and no power for Thackeray and his minions.
This, then, as Eckert argues, explains why the Sena has shifted its targets so willingly and
effortlessly. By way of example, South Indians who early on were not only accused of
stealing jobs from Maharashtrians but even vilified as “criminals, thieves and smugglers”
later proved to be “bad enemies” when the the Sena worked to increase its political/
electoral base as it grew as a party. This is because, on the one hand, Thackeray has
always promoted a version of regionalism which is compatible with nationalism, rather
than one based on a separatist mentality, and on the other because South Indians
“‘willingly learned Marathi and spoke it fluently, put up busts or portraits of Shivaji in
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their...restaurants, some even joined the Shiv Sena’” (a Sena informant, quoted in Eckert
2003:88-89). The Shiv Sena has no true program, political or otherwise, because that
would constitute a limitation to their appeal and their scope for action. Their only interest
is to define the ‘in-group,’ which has been variously characterized as Marathas,
Maharashtrians, Hindus, or most often the ambiguous ‘common man,’ in contrast to the
enemy, which has been equally as various.
To conclude, I would like to return to the basic point of this section which is to
explain how the historical factors I have described above have impacted what I take to be
the common sense understanding of regionalism, much in the same way that I have
argued that the work of nationalist music reformers like Bhatkhande and Paluskar have
shaped the perception of Indian public such that most believe Hindustani music to be, at
its core, a national tradition. I do not believe that most middle- or upper-class or upper-
caste Indians are in any way ashamed of the regional aspect of their identities. On the
contrary, I have hardly met an Indian, musician or otherwise, who did not take some
amount of pride in their place of origin. The point is rather that many members of India’s
economic and cultural elite are predisposed in most cases to be wary of putting their state
or linguistic region above the nation whether symbolically or politically. In terms of
Nehru’s influence, I think it is more important to emphasize that many of today’s middle
class Hindu musicians share his basic viewpoint and his moral and ethical orientation due
to the similarities in their educational, cultural, and economic backgrounds, rather than
asserting that middle class Indians base their political beliefs to a large degree
specifically on what Nehru believed or said. This may be true to a certain extent (and
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difficult to assess at any rate), but it is hard to see that Nehru has anything like the
prestige or influence that he did during his lifetime or shortly after. It is instructive,
though, to both compare Nehru’s philosophy versus Bal Thackeray’s as well as to see
how Thackeray and the Shiv Sena have reacted to or dealt with Nehru’s legacy. I should
reiterate that Bal Thackeray has never been intentionally anti-national and has never
advocated that Maharashtra break off from India to form it’s own nation. On the
contrary, the Shiv Sena has become more nationalistic, and thus more cooperative with
Gujaratis and South Indians, over time. It is a form of nationalism that, while
accommodating a larger ‘in group’ than when the Sena was founded in the 1960s, is still
opposed to the single largest minority group in India, Indian Muslims, and has no place
for them in their vision of a fundamentally Hindu India. This is in clear contradistinction
to the value Nehru placed on national unity, as evidenced by his opposition to and then
delay of the creation of linguistic states. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Nehru valued
nothing more than rationalism, and he would have no doubt been horrified by the Shiv
Sena’s manipulation of the emotions that can be stirred by appeals to regional or
communal pride, not to mention the Sena’s reliance on violence as its key political tool.
The most explicit connection between Nehru’s policies and the activities of the Shiv
Sena, though, comes again through the Samyukta Maharashtra Samithi. It was the
Nehru-led government, after all, that recommended the creation of a bilingual Bombay
state and that later, while bowing to the pressure for a Marathi speaking state, pressure
created and applied largely by the SMS, deprived Maharashtra state of the
aforementioned border areas of Karwad and Belgaum, a slight that has yet to be
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forgotten. Along these lines, Purandare recounts the “considerable consternation” created
when Maharashtrian Congress leader (and Nehru’s ally) Yashwant Chavan stated that
“‘Nehru is greater than Maharashtra’ and by terming the Samyukta Maharashtra
movement as ‘home-grown colonialism’”(1999:52).
We can see, then, that from the beginning of India’s history as an independent
nation there has been an ideological and sometimes very practical conflict between the
view of India as a unified nation and as a collection of regions. Lest some conclude that
these conflicts are now in the past, geographer Emma Mawdsley discusses some of the
ramifications, ideological and otherwise, of the creation of four new Indian states in
2000. Among other things, Mawdsley asserts that “Successive central governments have
tended to view assertions of regional identity with suspicion, and to stigmatize them as
parochial, chauvinist and even anti-national”(2002:1). What I argue, then, is that this is
the elite view of regionalism in India, and that while my interlocutors, who I deem as
elite both in economic and cultural terms, may not subscribe 100% to this negative view
of regionalism or ‘assertions of regional identity,’ they certainly are aware that this is a
common view. As such, this would certainly act as a deterrent to any musician who
would be predisposed to make any claim that Hindustani music had become Bengali-ized
or Marathi-ized in the last 50 years.
C. Regionalism vs. Globalism and Homogeneity
Finally there is the notion that because of various factors, identified as
“modernization” or, more often, “globalization,” however imprecisely or ambiguously
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these terms might be utilized in every day conversation, regional differences, musical or
otherwise, have nearly ceased to exist. The eminent vocalist Dr. Prabha Atre of Bombay
was perhaps the strongest advocate of this position among the musicians I met during my
field research. As she told me during our interview in her Bombay apartment,
Yeah, climate [which we had been discussing], yeah, it must have some influence
on your thinking, but then now that with this globalization, so much
is…everything is available everywhere, so that isolation is not there and so you
cannot say that because of this now…you have to think of today’s generation,
how they are” (2005)
These types of statements were generally put forward with the accompanying notion that,
if I had come to do my research 20 or 30 years earlier, I would have found much more
evidence of regional influence in classical music then. Again, as this is really the crux of
this entire project, I will be addressing this issue throughout. What I will say at this
point, though, is that one should look rather carefully at the historical progression of the
tradition (and of culture in India generally) before making blanket statements to the effect
that globalization has effaced (or started to efface) the differences between all music in
India or the world. There are some bits of evidence I would point to on the contrary.
First, it is not the case that we can look to some point in the past, be it a century or ten
centuries ago, and trace a straight line from region being very important to becoming
progressively less important. On the contrary, as many scholars have pointed out (and as
I have explained above), it was only in the 19th century when printing was introduced on
a widespread basis that regional languages started to take on anything resembling the
importance they have today. Second, in the political arena, region undoubtedly remains
a factor. While language perhaps is no longer the “hot-button” issue it was in the first
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two decades after independence, regional movements, language-based or not, are alive
and well in modern India. One could point to the xenophobic, “sons of the soil” agenda
of the Shiv Sena, the continuing unrest in the Northeastern states, 43 or the ongoing
process of “internal Balkanization,” where new states are carved out of existing ones, to
name a few examples. That regionalism (in this case meaning regionally-based political
movements), is still a force in India is hard to argue. In the case of North Indian classical
music one has to be a bit more specific.
There are two aspects of today’s Hindustani music which are both common to
every part of India where you find any Hindustani musician and which are the bane of
many musicologists, old-school performers, and traditionalists/purists – speed/virtuosity
and, in the case of vocal music, an undesirable sameness in terms of vocal quality. I will
discuss both these aspects of modern Hindustani music in greater detail in a later
chapters, but it will suffice here for me to say that these are phenomena that, whatever
their causes (which are many, and by no means clear cut), are in no way based on the
regional origins of today’s musicians. Beyond these aspects of today’s classical music,
though, I would argue that there indeed are regional differences in the way music is
actually performed by today’s musicians. Again, however, this is a point I will return to
in chapters 3 through 5 where I will address the issue of how and to what extent gharana-
based styles of performances have been assimilated by musicians in Maharashtra and
West Bengal, and in chapters 7 and 8, where I will address the issue of how regionally-
based aesthetic preferences influence classical music. This, in a sense, will be my
43 see Phukon (1996) for an example of the literature on Regionalism in the Indian Northeast
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positive evidence in proving the importance of region for understanding modern
Hindustani music. However, we can also take the opposite approach and look at some
evidence which proves that Hindustani music, by its nature, is not particularly susceptible
to the homogenization which is generally thought to be one of the prime effects or
symptoms of globalization.
The first point I would like to address, then, concerns the nature of the Hindustani
musical system itself. It is true that the situation that Indian classical music has found
itself in since the early decades of the twentieth century, i.e. that royal patronage no
longer exists and has been replaced by both government funding and, to a much greater
extent, patronage by the mass audience, has hurt the tradition in certain ways. There are
two aspects of this current day scenario which are generally thought to be to the
detriment of Hindustani music. First, because musicians no longer have the luxury of
doing nothing but practicing, performing, and teaching (as in the feudal set-up), the
transmission of music to the young, developing musician has been greatly compromised.
In short, mature musicians, particularly those who travel frequently across India or
internationally, have less time to teach, and the students have less time to practice due the
fact that they have to earn a living, unlike the situation in former times where the student
was essentially taken in and supported as part of the Guru’s household. Similarly, young
musicians of today feel much greater pressure than ever before to start performing before
they have fully matured as musicians, at least by traditional standards. This situation is
then exacerbated by mass audiences who are far less knowledgeable than the aristocratic
patrons of classical music in bygone eras who were raised in the courtly milieu and had
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an intimate knowledge of music (among the other classical arts), to the extent that many
kings and princelings were actually competent performers themselves. So, while young
musicians receive, on the whole, less training before starting their performing career than
in the past, the audiences of today are in no position to demand a higher caliber of music
because the vast majority of them has no idea what this means or what this would entail.
This is not to question the fact that there are a large number of people in India who love
and appreciate classical music. The problem is that, for lack of education in the subject,
many simply have to take it on good faith that musicians who are booked into the various
concert halls across the country are presenting them with the genuine article. These
points have been discussed by a large number of scholars and other writers and are hard
to dispute. Speed, as I have mentioned, is one aspect of the music that has not been
neglected in recent years by up-and-coming musicians, and this is one area where perhaps
the standards have been raised in the last 50 years. However, this is really a mechanical
form of virtuosity and in no way compensates for a shallow repertoire of compositions or
ragas or a lack of knowledge in terms of how to properly perform any particular raga.
So, if this is one aspect of modernity, then, yes, modernity has affected the Hindustani
tradition in a fairly profound way.
The point to be made, though, is that the above factors entail changes in the
standard of performance, not to the musical system itself - that is a much different
proposition. The reason why I state as much is because if Hindustani music has been
affected by globalization (the term Dr. Atre used), one can only take that it has been
homogenized, in the sense that it has been influenced by and, thus, has grown closer to
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the most ubiquitous type of music in the world today, Western pop music or Western-
influenced or Western–styled pop music. If it has, these changes are largely
imperceptible. This is because the Hindustani tradition is fundamentally different from
Western music, in terms of its instrumentation, its tuning system, and its concept of
melody, which is monophonic and based on the modal raga system. This makes the
tradition fundamentally unsuited to the addition of harmony, the calling card of Western
music that has been imported into or added onto the musics of so many other cultures, for
example in sub-Saharan Africa where the indigenous musics are generally much more
amenable to the use of both harmony and equally-tempered instruments. Marxist scholar
Vinyak Purohit, in volume two of his monumental work Arts of Transitional India
(1988), expands on this notion at length. Purohit is the type of Marxist critic (perhaps the
most common type) who feels that petty insults, ad hominem attacks, and general disdain
for everyone and everything outside of himself and his own theories are an essential
aspect of scholarly analysis, but, all the same, he has much to say that is valuable
regarding both the nature of the Hindustani raga system and the general historical
development of the tradition. Discussing the differences between Western and
Hindustani music he writes,
The contrast provided by Indian music with Western music is…not a contrast
between succession and simultaneity of sounds, but that between two differently
conceived projections of simultaneously propagated sound patterns. In the Indian
system one pattern is held steady and the other varied. In the Western system,
several patterns are simultaneously projected against an assumed, falsified and
corrupted, tempered standard scale. Since all the instruments in an orchestra with
or without voices are based upon this tempered standard scale, the simultaneous
variations are performed in a many-sided manner. Lacking the tempered scale,
Indian music elaborates simultaneity in sound pattern through the device of one
steady set sounded against another variable set. In other words, the drone is
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fundamental to Indian music, and there cannot be any Indian music in the
absence of the drone. In other words, finally, without simultaneity of sound,
without the tonic scale held firmly and steadily against variations, we cannot have
the raga system of Indian music (emphasis is the author’s – 1988:821-822).
In other words, the two systems are, again, fundamentally incompatible, unless one or the
other is changed to the extent that it is no longer recognizable as itself. Harmony cannot
accommodate raga, and raga cannot accommodate harmony. Unfortunately, as he is
wont to do, Purohit moves from this insightful summary of the differences between these
two musical systems to concluding in a later passage that, due to these differences,
“Indian classical music can remain only an exoticism attractive to some sections of the
Western youth…, in the same way as Western music in India is an exoticism restricted to
selected groups of the comprador elite”(1988:919), thus indulging in a racially-based
essentialism that would seem to contradict his general stance of attacking those whom he
sees as holding on to outdated, particularly feudalistic or colonial, notions (at another
point Purohit ponders whether “Euro-America will turn to some other cult, for instance,
African voodoo with its associated complex drumming patterns, before capitalist society
finally collapses…”) .
Daniel Neuman in his article “The Ecology of Indian Music in North America”
(1984), offers a bit more optimistic and an undeniably less politically biased account of
how the Hindustani tradition has managed to retain its uniqueness while coming into
contact with Western culture and Western music. Neuman approaches the issue slightly
differently than does Purohit, as Neuman is interested in looking at the dynamics of this
encounter in the context of North America itself (as the title of the piece indicates) rather
than in the Indian context. Neuman begins by stating, “…Indian music in North America
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has become an established force on its own terms, no longer relying – if it ever did –
upon listeners seeking instant salvation, endless bliss and perpetual truth”(1984:9). So,
right from the start Neuman contradicts Purohit’s assertion that Westerners are incapable
of fully understanding and appreciating on its own terms, not merely as one manifestation
of a faddish interest in Eastern spiritualism. Leaving this point aside, though, what
Neuman sets out to do in this article is to determine how a foreign music tradition could
find or make a “niche” for itself in North America, a phenomenon which, as Neuman
notes, is “unprecedented in world music history”(ibid.:14). The reasons for the success
of Indian Music in finding this niche are many. Among these are a quality of adaptability
which manifests itself both in the broader sense of the musicians of the tradition being
able to adapt to changes in sources of patronage and in a more strictly musical sense, as
Hindustani music is improvised and thus “allows much freedom for rapid adjustment to
the perceived changes in an audience’s mood”(ibid.:13). Also, Neuman attaches
significance to the fact that there are some parallels between Hindustani music and
Western music genres, such as “metered performances” common to Indian music, jazz,
and classical music, and the small ensemble format, which is common to Indian music
and Western pop and jazz. The point to emphasize here, though, is that while Indian
classical music might have benefited from resembling Western music in certain ways, it
has never had to change any of its core features even in establishing itself in a totally
foreign context.
So, if we want to discuss how Hindustani music has changed in recent years due
to media (radio, television, sound recordings, internet) and the exposure media has given
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to all types of music, Indian and foreign, we clearly have to restrict ourselves to less
profound changes than have been experienced by other traditional musics in their
encounter with Western culture and the global capitalist system. I should be clear,
however, that I am not arguing that this homogenization effect has not occurred to any
degree in Hindustani music. What I am arguing is that, due to the nature of the musical
system, change can only take place along certain lines and outside influences (i.e.
influences from other types of music) can only manifest themselves in limited cases.
Vocal timbre and delivery, a factor I have already mentioned, is perhaps the aspect of
Hindustani music most prone to non-classical influences. The fact that Kishori Amonkar,
one of the great superstars of the tradition in recent years, has admitted to modeling her
vocal delivery in part on that of Bollywood playback singer Lata Mangeshkar confirms
this assertion to a large degree. Beyond this, though, if we want to look at
homogenization and Hindustani music it must be homogenization within the tradition.
And again, this is a seemingly intuitive argument. That is, it would be hard to argue that
a Hindustani musician in training would not be more likely to adhere to their Guru’s style
if they never got the chance to hear any musician performing in a different style until,
say, they have become a mature performer than if they are constantly exposed to different
styles from their earliest years, which is now the reality for most musicians. Obviously
this has changed the way musicians learn, perform, and conceive of music and their own
approach to the music.
There are two important caveats, however, to keep in mind when we examine this
homogenization taking place in Hindustani music. First, as we are limiting our
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discussion primarily to performing musicians, we need to remember that, while
musicians in training might be subject to a whole host of influences outside of their
individual Gurus’ music, the actual firsthand training they receive is much more
important and enduring than anything that they might pick up from simply hearing
another artist’s music. That is, everything that a musician tries to appropriate from the
performers that they have not learned from directly is filtered through what they have
received from their Guru. Also, specifically regarding regional influences, if we take that
in the past there were singers with uniquely regional styles (some of whom had a national
following, some who did not), then these musicians certainly must have passed at least
some aspects of these regional styles down to their disciples. To give a more concrete
example, the Marathi Sangiit NaaTak (Music-Drama) is basically an obsolete genre. If
and when these dramas are performed today, they are done as historical exercises (or for
the sake of nostalgia) and are performed largely by amateur singers, unlike in the heyday
of the genre when great stalwarts such as Vinyakrao Patwardhan or Master Krishnarao or
Hirabai Barodekar played the lead roles. Further, not only have today’s young musicians
not grown up with Sangiit NaaTak, even many of today’s veteran performers would not
even have seen Sangiit NaaTak at its height. However, many of today’s young
Maharashtrian musicians not only sing naaTyapad (theatre songs), they also sing them in
their unique style, which means utilizing certain taan patterns and a certain type of vocal
delivery. So, Sangiit NaaTak-s are a thing of the past, but NaaTya Sangiit (Marathi
theatre music) has become a part of the classical tradition in Maharashtra (but not
elsewhere). The second caveat is that although media such as sound recordings have
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expanded the options a young musician can choose from in terms of musical style, each
musician does have to make choices. Despite the fact that many musicians state that they
would like to take the best from every musician, this is impossible in practical terms.
Every choice that a musician makes means rejecting another alternative. What I argue is
that it is actually these types of choices that reveal regional biases or aesthetic preferences
most clearly. In the past, a musician could learn their Guru’s/gharana’s style without the
distraction of hearing other artists, but they had no choice but to learn that style only.
There was little in the way of choice even in terms of which Guru to learn from, if one
was lucky enough to find a competent Guru at all. Now, musicians can imitate or reject
the different aspects of the styles of the musicians they hear just as audiences can choose
or not choose to attend the performance of any particular artist. While it may not be
immediately apparent, not every classical musician, even of the superstar variety, is
equally popular in every part of India. Bhimsen Joshi has a large and dedicated following
in Calcutta, but the late Kumar Gandharva, a singer equally as famous on the whole and
arguably better as a singer, never had a following in Calcutta. I argue that the same holds
true in terms of the influence any great musician has in terms of inspiring imitators across
the country. Choices are made, and these choices are telling.
The last factor, then, that I feel is important in discussing how Hindustani music
has changed in recent years is the idea of individuality, both in general and in a musical
sense. Of course, individuality has always been important in Indian classical music.
Hindustani music, after all (and Carnatic music, as well), is solo, improvised music. The
solo aspect means that the soloist, or featured singer or instrumentalist, controls almost
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every aspect of the performance, from choosing the SA, or tonic note, and tuning the
drone instruments, to selecting the tala, raga, and composition to be performed, to
allotting short solos for the accompanying musician(s). The improvised aspect means
that outside of the short compositions (which are generally traditional, but could be
written by the performer him- or herself) which serve as a framework for the performance
of a raga, all the other musical materials are generated by the musician. Improvisation in
a raga is by definition very much rule-bound, and as such, the amount that a musician
truly improvises in a performance (in the sense that the material presented is generated on
the spot) depends on his or her own level of training, knowledge, and experience. Very
often with less experienced and or less skilled musicians, much of what is played is
something the performers learned from their Guru(s) or something that they have
composed in advance. Even with these qualifications, though, it is clear that a
performance by a Hindustani musician is suffused with that performer’s own personality.
This is as opposed to traditions such as Western classical music, where the performer’s
job is to faithfully reproduce what has been written by a composer who is not involved in
the actual performance of the music. On a broader level, we can also observe that larger
changes and innovations that occur in the Hindustani tradition are also the contribution of
individuals. At its core, gharana is founded on the idea of a family or lineage, the
khaandaan. However, even gharanas are founded by and based on the styles of
individual musicians. For this reason, it is not surprising that Bonnie Wade would
include a chapter in her monograph Khyal: Creativity Within North India’s Classical
Music Tradition (1984) titled “On Individuality,” where she discusses “artists who
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studied gharana styles formally but chose to remain independent of association with any
one of them”; the Delhi gharana, where singers of different generations have specialized
in different Khyal styles; and Amir Khan, a singer who “developed his own style without
formal study with any khyaliya and whose style has been influential…”(1984:255). In
terms of gharana, it also worth mentioning that the bottom line in Hindustani music is
that each musician has to prove him or herself worthy to be a performer and to carry on
the tradition of his or her Guru or gharana.
Individualism, then, is nothing new in North Indian classical music. However, I
feel that the individuality that is part and parcel of Hindustani music has received a great
boost due to larger cultural and societal trends in India in recent years. It is true that,
within the realm of classical music, gharana has faded in importance in recent years.
Gharana is a product of the Islamic courtly milieu of the nineteenth century, but the vast
majority of musicians today are Hindu and thus have no blood ties to these lineages. This
is not to say that musicians do not take pride in or make use of their ties to the gharana
traditions, but there is not the sense of ownership or obligation that necessarily compels
middle class Hindus to preserve and perpetuate these traditions in the same way that past
generations of Muslim musicians have. This is only one example, however, of a larger
trend in India where individual identity and individual achievement is becoming more
and more emphasized and valued than one’s membership in any larger group, such as a
religious sect, caste, or linguistic group. In this sense, we should speak then of
individualism rather than simply individuality. Now, at least judging by my own
discussions and interviews with my interlocutors, individuality is not only a structural
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aspect of the tradition, but musicians are now approaching the music with an attitude that
being an individual, being unique, is one the most important artistic values one can aspire
to. Although the idea of individuality came up in a variety of contexts during my
research, two of the musicians I interviewed, vocalist Neela Bhagwat and tabla player
Anish Pradhan, both of Bombay, articulated their views on the subject at length during
my interviews with them. Anish Pradhan, for his part, is a disciple of the well-known
tabla maestro of Bombay, the late Nikhil Ghosh, and a first generation performer. AP’s
mother was a lawyer and an amateur musician, and his father was a journalist. Both were
involved in “political and trade union movement[s],” undoubtedly shaping AP’s own
views on politics and society in important ways (for ex., when I asked AP about his caste
he replied that he is a “complete atheist”). AP addressed the notion of individuality (in
musical terms) at several points in our interview. At one point, for example, while
discussing the importance of gharana in current times, he lamented the musicians
(vocalists, specifically) who were “trying to make a carbon copy of an icon.” He
addressed the notion most pointedly, though, when I began approaching some of my
more direct questions regarding the importance of regional origin to a musician’s style.
Thus, when asked specifically if he felt that there was a particular character to classical
music as a whole in Bombay he replied,
Once again there is no specific character as such. There are more avenues open
for musicians here than there are perhaps elsewhere because of the, uh, plethora
of channels…and, you know, television channels and radio and of course not
many recordings take place of classical music now, but somewhere or the other
people manage to find some kind of space for themselves, and if not they open
some class or something like that. So, maybe in smaller areas it is less possible to
do…why, you see Washi [a suburb in Navi, or “New”, Mumbai, northeast of
Bombay proper], in Washi it may be less, less uh, fortunate circumstances than in
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the main city. So, but, apart from the economics of it, I don’t see anything
directly related to the music making because of the character of a city or because
of the character of a caste group or community. And, one thing I would like ask,
that…because we, this, this hierarchical thing and because of the talk of caste and
community, I am repeatedly saying that we have to tread very gingerly here
because of the unfortunate circumstances in which the country finds itself now
because of the fundamentalist groups on both sides, uh, just acting as vultures
waiting for the right moment to capture. And, you know, the easiest thing from to
go from here is to ask, “What does Jeffrey know of Hindustani music? He is
white. He is an American.” But for me it is not important what your color is.
There may be Americans that are more Hindustani musically minded than an
upper caste Maharashtrian…(interview, 2005).
So, for AP not only are factors such as regional origin and caste less important today than
in earlier times, particularly in urban areas (where most classical musicians in India now
reside), it is politically irresponsible and perhaps dangerous to judge people according to
these categories, even in a scholarly context. This is not to say that I agree with him
unambiguously, but certainly his views are representative of many middle class Indians
today, musician or otherwise.
The vocalist Neela Bhagwat approached the notion of individuality in a slightly
different fashion. NB, like AP, subscribes to generally leftist politics. She, as she
mentioned to me, is a feminist, a Marxist, and “…a part of the left parties and left
ideology of this country.” However, while politics in the traditional sense did enter into
our dialogue at times, she approached the idea of individuality more as an artistic issue.
When I asked her about singers imitating famous role models, or if she had been
influenced in such manner, she responded, “I am not a copying machine. I am an
individual. I am a person. I am a human being…with my own ideas. I cannot forget that
– that is me.” Likewise, when I asked NB about gharana, she felt gharana was absolutely
necessary, but as a means to an end:
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Another thing I liked about classical music was the blending of discipline and
freedom that…that one grows into…because one is learning a traditional art, one
is also learning from a traditional guru many times. One has to adopt that
discipline, at the same time, if you want to express yourself, then you have to
think of what you feel as a person and then try to put it in your own form, so there
is freedom. Once you have mastered the discipline, you are free and you are
liberated to do anything. That is what I like about the classical tradition in India
(Interview, 2005)
So, while perhaps these two musicians represent the left, or even perhaps the extreme
left, in terms of their political views amongst the musician community, their views do
represent, as I have said, a certain percentage of educated, middle class, but politically
aware persons in modern India. And beyond that, the statements I have quoted above
would likely not be taken as unreasonably leftist by most middle class musicians – in
detail perhaps, but not in their basic message that in modern India one is what one has
experienced and what one makes of oneself as an artist and a person.
Conclusion
To sum up, I have discussed three prime factors that I feel have greatly reduced
the likelihood that the average classical musician of the Hindustani tradition would be
willing to discuss the influence of regional culture in Hindustani music in a positive light,
if at all: first, the notion that Hindustani classical music is essentially national and
nationalist; the notion that regionalism, in both the broadest sense of the word and in
terms of its specifically political meaning, is the province of marginalized, low caste, or
low economic class groups; and the relatively diffuse and non-specific notion that, due to
political, economic, and technological developments worldwide, India has moved beyond
the historical stage in which distinct regional cultures and cultural forms have any
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elevance, or, in the estimation of some, even continue to exist. The difficulty in
asserting the importance of such factors is that, unlike in most cases in this study where
the information and opinions of my interlocutors have largely shaped and guided my
analyses, of these three issues I have discussed, only one was explicitly mentioned by one
or more of interlocutors, namely the idea that regionalism and regional cultures have
faded in importance due to the homogenizing influence of globalism and modernity. As I
mentioned above, the real problem was that when any particular musician that I met with
denied the validity of positing any sort of relationship between regional culture and
classical music, they most often declined to state why they would deny such a
connection. Of course, I was and remain grateful that all my interlocutors agreed to
devote the time they did for my study (in all but a handful cases, they did so without
remuneration), and I feel strongly that all of them were well within their rights to speak
or not speak about whatsoever they chose. However, from the perspective of a
researcher, this could be frustrating at times, and, most importantly, it meant that I was
left to my own devices in determining why it was that so many musicians would dismiss
the focus of my study as irrelevant. Along these same lines, I would be remiss if (beyond
the direct quotes I provided from Anish Pradhan, Prabha Atre, and Neela Bhagwat that
make their views fairly clear) I were to state or imply that any one of these factors was
more or less influential on the views of any particular musician I interviewed. There is a
possibility that one, two, all three, or even none of these factors, have influenced the
beliefs of any specific performer. I only intend to suggest that all of these factors have
played some role in shaping the apparently fairly common belief that there is, basically,
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nothing regional about Hindustani music. In the rest of this dissertation, I intend to do
my best to provide some evidence, if not conclusively prove, that there have indeed been
important influences traceable to the regional cultures of Maharashtra and Bengal that
have manifested themselves in the style of Hindustani classical music and its constituent
genres from the late 19th century up to the present.
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Part One: the “Inside View”
2. Gharana in the 21st Century
In Chapter One, I briefly discussed the tendency within Indian musicology, as
mentioned by Ashok Ranade, to adhere closely to Pandit Bhatkhande’s approach of
viewing Hindustani music only in terms of musical structure. This, again, means
disregarding any ‘peripheral’ factors, such as culture, politics, religion, etc., as important
in understanding the tradition. Certainly this tendency has exercised a profound effect on
the way not only musicologists but also scholarly minded musicians in India have viewed
the history and development of the tradition, as evidenced by the conversations I had with
my interlocutors during my period of research in India. Thus, while the musicians who
agreed that regional culture has had or does have a noticeable effect on Hindustani music
of any shade (whether it be Khyal, Dhrupad, or instrumental music) are relatively few,
almost every one I interviewed pointed out that if there were any differences between
classical music in different regions, it was largely due to two factors: one, which
important North Indian musicians had chosen to settle where, and two, which among
those musicians had been the most successful in training disciples and, thus, propagating
and popularizing their tradition and/or individual style in the city or region where they
lived. Admittedly, this is not precisely the same thing as Bhatkhande’s “narrowly
grammatical” interpretation of Hindustani music, but I feel strongly that it is very much
an extension of Bhatkhande’s approach, whether or not the influence of Bhatkhande on
any of the musicians I spoke with was direct or indirect. In other words, I think the
tendency of most musicians and scholars, with the exception of Ashok Ranade and some
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others who identify themselves as ethnomusicologists, is to view the Hindustani music
tradition as a closed system, so to speak, where all changes comes from the inside. Now,
I should be clear that although I do not agree with this approach as an exclusive means of
understanding Hindustani music in the regional context - indeed, the main contribution
offered by the present study is hopefully to expand the range of factors which have
traditionally been included in studies of this music - I do feel that viewing the tradition in
these terms is certainly the most concrete and quantifiable way of looking at regional
differences in classical music. Also, it is the first logical step in beginning to analyze the
factors that are more subjective and interpretive, such as the arguable influence of
regional semi-classical forms on Hindustani music in these two regions or the influence
of broader, regionally-based aesthetic preferences on the same. In this and the four
following chapters, then, I will take the “Inside View” of the history and development of
Hindustani music in both Bengal and Maharashtra. As such, I will define and discuss the
gharana concept; I will examine what current day performers feel about gharana and its
importance for the tradition in light of issues such as the impact of media, particularly
audio recordings; I will examine the respective histories of mainstream, i.e. gharana-
based, classical music in Maharashtra and Bengal; and finally, I will discuss some
specific stylistic tendencies in order to demonstrate the different ways in which
Maharashtrian and Bengali classical musicians incorporate gharana-based techniques into
their individual styles of performance.
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As I noted in chapter 1, Daniel Neuman has argued that gharanas arose in the
middle of the nineteenth century both as a means to keep musical knowledge within the
hands of particular lineages of musicians and in order to provide these musicians with an
identity which made it easier for newer audiences (both elite and, as the nineteenth
century crossed over into the twentieth, increasingly non-elite) to understand who they
were and how their music might sound. To reiterate, this seems to have been a direct
response to wider changes in technology such as the growth and expansion of the railway
system and the creation of speedier and more efficient means of long distance
communication. In the present context, however, we need to step back and more closely
examine what this concept means. The classic definition of gharana, offered by Neuman,
is as follows: “…minimally, a lineage of hereditary musicians, their disciples, and the
particular musical style they represent”(1990:146). Deshpande, in Indian Musical
Traditions, 44 adds one more important factor - that a tradition must last for at least three
generations if it is to be considered a gharana (1987:120). It is also important to note that
all major gharanas, with the noteworthy exception of the Vishnupur gharana of Bengal
(which I will discuss in detail later in chapter 4, and which is perhaps only a major
gharana now in the field of sitar), were founded in the royal courts of North India,
primarily in the vicinity of Delhi but throughout the Hindi/Urdu regions, and were
founded by Muslim performers of the Khyal vocal genre, which in the nineteenth century
(as today), was the most widespread and popular of the purely classical Hindustani forms.
The demographic aspect is important for a variety of reasons, but most importantly
44 This is the English translation of the original Marathi title Gharandaaj Gayaki.
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ecause, as the early gharaanedaar musicians (musicians who belonged to a recognized
lineage) were Muslims, membership in the gharana, and thus access to the gharana
repertoire, could be greatly restricted by the practice of cousin marriage (which generally
means the marriage of first cousins), a custom which is taboo for Hindus (Neuman 1990).
It is this aspect of exclusiveness that undoubtedly led some observers, mostly Hindu
musicologists and reformers like Bhatkhande to look upon gharanas with suspicion. In
the eyes of these critics, Hindustani music was a national inheritance and belonged to all
Indians. For gharana musicians, whose livelihood was solely derived from music, their
intention was simply to preserve and maintain their specialist knowledge both for the
sake of future generations of their families and for the sake of preserving the music they
had, at least to some extent, created. The last part of the definition of gharana is that
they, with the partial exception of the Alladiya Khan gharana (partial because this
gharana is also called the “Jaipur gharana,” after Alladiya Khan’s ancestral home), are
named after the city in which their distinctive style was originally created. This tie to the
courts where the gharanas were originally established is certainly an important historical
and geographical distinction, although not crucial as a means of distinguishing the
different identities and styles of the gharanas, since again most of these cities are located
within close proximity to each other and as such belong to the same broader region.
There is one very, very important caveat to this definition, which is that the
concept of gharana is just that, a concept. “There are no gharana celebrations, virtually
no political organization, no campus or central headquarters, and no administrative
structure”(Neuman 1990:146). Gharana status is solely based on the authority and
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prestige of the musicians who founded and have perpetuated them, and recognition of this
status is granted by a consensus of various individuals, including patrons, scholars,
critics, and, most importantly, other performers of the Hindustani tradition. As a result,
much time and ink have been spent by members of all these groups in debating which
gharanas should properly be considered gharanas and which should not. One very high
profile incident along these lines is related by BR Deodhar, a musicologist and student of
VD Paluskar, in his book Pillars of Hindustani Music (1993). Deodhar, in his chapter on
Alladiya Khan, relates a story in which Bhatkhande himself questioned the origins of
Alladiya Khan’s (AK) music. Bhatkhande apparently felt rather strongly that AK’s
singing style was largely his own creation, a notion which, not incidentally, most would
not argue today. As Deodhar writes,
I discussed this point [the origins of AK’s style] with Pandit Bhatkhande…one
day. I suspected the Panditji was not excessively fond of Khansaheb. He
described Khansaheb as extremely crafty and businesslike. He added, “If
Khansaheb had entered politics he would have made a name for himself. I do not
question his scholarship but the style of music with which he is associated was
created by Khansaheb himself; however, he persistently denies this.” Panditji
next said, “On this very beach (at Chowpatty) [in Bombay] I once found myself
sitting next to Alladiya Khan. He said ‘What I sing has been taught in my family
for generations. It is not my personal creation.’ I asked, ‘A number of your
people continue to dwell in Rajasthan. Is their style of singing identical to
yours?’ Khansaheb’s reply was,-‘the music of the older members of my family is
the same. You can go to Rajasthan and satisfy your self on that count.’ I was
given one or two names of Khansaheb’s relations still residing at Uniyara. Since
by then I was determined to go to the bottom of the whole affair I went all the
way to Rajasthan and heard the musicians in question. When I met Khansaheb
again at the same spot, after I returned from Rajasthan, I told him bluntly that the
music I had heard was distinctly closer to that of the Gwalior tradition than to his
own music. ‘Why do you not confess now that what you sing is something you
yourself have developed?’ As a consequence Khansaheb was very displeased
with me and we were alienated from each other because of the
incident.”(1993:34-35)
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That performing musicians should engage in such debates is readily understandable, as
membership in a recognized gharana can have very real consequences in terms,
ultimately, of how much money they earn. In the case of scholars and critics, though, it
is a slightly different case. While most scholars and journalists are ostensibly objective
and impartial and few would admit otherwise, closer scrutiny will reveal that almost
every individual who has any first hand experience with Hindustani music has learned
from or at least has had close contact with a musician who represents or is aligned with a
gharana and, thus, promotes that musician’s gharana on some level to at least a certain
extent. 45 I would be remiss if I also did not clearly state here that this applies as much to
foreign scholars of the tradition as to Indian scholars, and I myself am included in this
group.
One other observation can be made concerning Alladiya Khan and the gharana he
founded that is significant in this context. For the most orthodox denizens of the world of
Hindustani music, a gharana has to be based on an actual lineage, meaning blood
relations. As Neuman mentions, disciples are certainly included as gharana members, but
many feel that these outsiders to the central lineage of the gharana cannot carry on the
gharana per se, although they can, of course, pass on the style to their own disciples.
However, the Alladiya Khan gharana seemingly disproves this notion. As Bonnie Wade
explains, AK was, as mentioned in Deodhar’s anecdote, from a family of hereditary
musicians, but “no other members of his family contributed to the cultivation of his khyal
style; two of his preeminent successors, however, are mother and daughter of a different
45 Bhatkhande is one of the few who have posed such questions who did not have a bias in favor of one
gharana over others, although he of course had his own biases.
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family [Hindus Mogubai Kurdikar and Kishori Amonkar]”(1984:3). It seems that, in
AK’s lifetime, he felt it important to stress his status as a hereditary musician and his
membership in the gharana of that lineage, even if, in truth, he had made fairly radical
changes to the style of his forebears. Today, though, as there are clearly three
generations of musicians who follow Alladiya Khan’s style (the style he created, that is),
there is no reason not to call the gharana The Alladiya Khan Gharana, or at least
acknowledge that the style of this gharana, whatever its name, was founded by AK, not
by any of his ancestors. Some would argue that the same situation applies in the case of
the late sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan. He was also a hereditary musician, and both his
father and grandfather, Enayet and Imdad Khan, respectively, were well-known sitar
maestros. As such, his gharana is conventionally referred to as the Imdad Khan gharana.
However, many claim, as with AK, that VK substantially altered the music he learned
from his family (like AK, VK’s father died before he had completed his musical
training), and thus, should be looked upon as the founder of a new style, one that will
eventually be called The Vilayat Khan gharana once the condition of three generations is
met, a situation which has not yet come about. Again, though, those who pose this
argument undoubtedly have ulterior motives, as claiming that VK has created his own
style is tantamount to saying that he and his successors have no gharana, at least not yet.
At any rate, it remains to be seen if in, say, fifty years from now this lineage will be
labeled as the Vilayat Khan gharana.
One additional way that the ‘classic’ definition of gharana offered by both
Deshpande and Neuman can be refined regards the use of the term for classical genres
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outside of Khyal. According to Neuman, “Recognized and named gharanas are specific
socio-musical identities which are properly those of soloists” (1990:120). This means
that accompanist musicians, including both tabla and saarangii players, cannot properly
belong to a gharana, but are said, rather, to play in a certain baaj, or technical style. A
baaj includes the criterion of musical style (and are associated with geographical
locations or areas) but not of being organized around a lineage. In the case of saarangii
players, this is more understandable, as the repertoire of this stringed instrument is
derived entirely from vocal music and as saarangii players essentially learn to play in all
the major gharana styles as a necessity of making themselves as attractive as possible to
singers who would choose them for a given performance. According to DK Datar, well-
known senior Hindustani violinist of Bombay, both of these statements are true of the
violin as well (interview, 2005), although, to be sure, the violin is a much less established
instrument in the Hindustani tradition than the saarangii and is not burdened with the
saarangii’s negative social connotations. 46 In the case of tabla, though, there are
generally accepted gharanas, most notably those of Benares, Farukhabad, Punjab, Ajrada,
Delhi, and Lucknow, and it is certainly worth mentioning that while tabla is most often
an accompanying instrument, there is a very rich tradition of solo tabla which is totally
independent of and separate from vocal or instrumental (sitar/sarod) music. James
Kippen, for one, takes issue with Neuman’s argument that there are no tabla gharanas,
saying that “Neuman’s ideas are more a consequence of his own concern for clarity than
46 The violin is frequently used as an accompanying instrument in South Indian or Carnatic classical music,
but only a handful of musicians have cultivated it in the Hindustani context, the most notable being V.G.
Jog.
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of an attempt to understand the ways in which musicians themselves perceive gharana.”
Or, more to the point, “[Neuman’s] conclusions may conceivably reflect the views of his
informants, but they certainly do not reflect the views of the people with whom I worked”
(1988:64), namely members of the Lucknow tabla gharana. This, then, is the point that
needs to be emphasized – that different groups with different motivations at times make
very different claims, particularly when the prestige which accompanies gharana status is
at stake. Wade makes a very similar point when she explains, again in the context of the
Alladiya Khan gharana, that the “implications of discipleship” can be the same as in an
Ustaad-shaagird relationship which is also father-son (or uncle-nephew), if the teacher
chooses to treat the unrelated disciple as they would treat their own son, i.e. if they teach
their disciple the full repertoire of their gharana (Wade 1984:2). In the case of the
Alladiya Khan gharana, very few, especially now, would question whether this tradition
is a gharana. In the case of musicians less famous than Alladiya Khan and Mogubai
Kurdikar, it is likely that this lack of a central lineage could be used as grounds for
criticism. To be sure, even a tradition as distinguished and important as the Gwalior
Khyal gharana is sometimes said to be extinct, as there is no living member of the
original khaandaan who still represents the gharana, although there are a number of
notable singers who still perform in the Gwalior style.
Neuman frequently in The Life of Music in North India compares the socio-
musical organization of musicians, featuring, among other things gharanas and baaj, to
the caste system (for ex., 1990:204), and it is true that there are many parallels along
these lines. To extend this analogy, we can see that that if we were to rank the different
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types of musicians in caste terms according to their traditionally prescribed status,
vocalists would no doubt rank at the top, the Brahmans of the music world, so to speak.
As such, the conclusions that Neuman reaches bear more than a passing resemblance to
the sweeping statements a scholar like Louis Dumont has made about caste, while
consulting only Brahmans for information. 47 The resulting analyses are not incorrect or
invalid, but their bias should be taken into account. At any rate, by this logic,
accompanists such as tabla and sarangi players would fall near the bottom of the
hierarchy. However, the middle class of the classical music world is comprised of the
solo instrumentalists, most often sitar and sarod players. Regarding instrumental
gharanas, Neuman acknowledges, as with tabla players, that sitar and sarod players use
the term gharana in different senses, but while he does not reject these claims in the same
sense as he rejects the claims of tabla players to gharana status, he does argue that the
only meaningful pedigree is a link to the great singer Tansen, whose descendants are
referred to as Seniyas. As Neuman writes, “Virtually all instrumentalists belong in one
sense or another to the Seniya gharana…,” and “To the extent that association with the
Seniya tradition is used, it is in the sense that some musicians are more Seniya then
others”(1990:107-108). Thus, it seems that Neuman again is judging non-gharaanedaar
khyaaliya musicians by gharaanedaar khyaaliya standards. This is not to say that the
musicians who belong to the traditions founded by the sarod players Allaudin Khan and
Hafeez Ali Khan (who both studied with one of the last known descendants of Tansen,
Wazir Khan of Rampur), for example, do not themselves at times emphasize their Seniya
47 Vamanrao Deshpande, for his part, actually is a Brahman, musically and literally.
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credentials. However, these two traditions are generally referred to as the Maihar and
Gwalior gharanas, respectively, and, at least in my experience, neither the general public
nor other current musicians dispute the existence of these two gharanas. Similarly, very
few would claim that the Imdad Khan gharana of Enayet and Vilayat Khan is in any way
inauthentic, even though these musicians have only a peripheral tie to the Seniya
tradition. Again, though, for traditional Muslim musicians, particularly vocalists, perhaps
the only meaningful claim an instrumentalist can make is to have a connection with
Tansen, the vocalist generally thought of as the greatest in the history of North Indian
classical music (albeit one whose ancestors were instrumentalists). In Neuman’s case
one is tempted to think that his conclusions might seem slightly skewed because he
gathered his information in the 1970s when the imbalance of power and status between
vocalists and other musicians was greater than it is today. However, at one point,
Neuman does write, “In practice, however, instrumental music in the north seems
currently the predominant form, as gauged by the popularity of musicians like Ali Akbar
Khan, Vilayat Khan, and Ravi Shankar” (1990:108). Despite this, I would argue that
there is an issue with the scene shifting over time, but it is not so much that
instrumentalists have gained more power or higher status over the last thirty years,
although they perhaps have. Instead, it can be argued that gharaanedaar vocalists have
much, much less importance in the classical music scene in the twenty-first century than
they did fifty or even thirty years ago. This is not to say that vocalists are not still
considered to be the most important of all musicians by many traditionalists in India, but
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the importance of heredity as an indicator of authenticity is now greatly diminished, at
least among the musicians I encountered in Pune, Bombay, and Calcutta.
Turning briefly to the light classical form which is most often performed by
classical singers and instrumentalists, the Thumri genre, we find no mention either in
Neuman or Deshpande of gharanas corresponding to this form, and rightly so.
Deshpande instead uses the term baaj, mentioning the Lucknow, Purab, and Benares baaj
(1987:11), though the Punjabi Thumri, the style created and popularized by Bade Ghulam
Ali of Patiala gharana could be added to this list. Thus, in keeping with Neuman’s
definition, there are Thumri styles that correspond to these geographical locations, but not
specific lineages that have propagated these styles of Thumri. 48 There are several reasons
for this. One might be that Thumri historically has been dominated by female vocalists,
often of low caste, while gharanas have traditionally been centered on lineages of male
musicians. More importantly, though, the Thumri is not considered a classical form as
such. This is because in Thumri, ragas are treated loosely, and performances feature the
free substitution of pitches and phrases foreign to a particular raga. The main musical
process featured in the performance of a Thumri is not the exposition of a raga in an
ordered and systematic fashion; it is instead bol banaao, the combination of fragments of
the lyric with various melodic phrases for emotive effect.
It should also be noted that classical vocalists do not specialize in Thumri – they
specialize in either Khyal or Dhrupad, but many do perform Thumri on stage as one part
48
Ranade uses the term “thumri gharana” in Music and Musicians of Hindoostan (1994) without
explanation.
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of their presentation. 49 It is useful here to cite Neuman’s definition of a classical
musician. He writes, “By classical musician, I mean specifically one who plays music
set within the framework of ragas, and compositions set to talas. In practice this means
the individual musician performs in dhrupad or khyal or corresponding instrumental
styles as the primary classical forms, in addition to styles such as thumri, ghazal, and
tarana, as auxiliary forms”(1990:91). In other words, certain gharanas might feature the
singing of Thumris generally, or even the singing of a specific style of Thumri, as one
aspect of their overall presentation, but no gharana can be established or perpetuated by
singers who specialize primarily in Thumri or any other semi-classical form.
Hindustani music scholar Deepak Raja states this proposition most clearly, emphasizing
the artistic versatility of courtesans (historically the primary exponents of Thumri) and
their teachers:
Vocalists, instrumentalists, and even Kathak dancers are known to claim
membership of the “Benares gharana”. The term “gharana” is, however,
inappropriate in this context. The so-called Benares gharana is an entire culture
that revolved around the salons of the courtesans supported by the aristocracy of
the region during the 18th and 19th centuries. Its performing arts were Kathak
dance, and the semi-classical genres of vocal music. Its accompaniment arts were
those of the Sarangi and the Tabla. These were supported by a group of
composers, choreographers, and teachers. The culture of the salons required all
performers to study dance as well as music, irrespective of their profession.
Teachers, choreographers and composers also cultivated a similar versatility.
(http://swaratala.blogspot.com/ – 9/25/2007).
Raja also notably eschews the apparent elitism of Neuman (at least in this case), as he
explains that the term gharana might be appropriate for the tabla players and Kathak
dancers of Benares, but not for Thumri singers, while at same time crediting the great
49
Patiala and Kirana gharanas are most famous for their Thumri renderings, but most Khyal singers sing
Thumri or an equivalent genre.
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musicianship of the individual practitioners of Thumri singing who live in or hail from
Benares.
Considering that Dhrupad, the oldest extant form of Indian vocal music, is a
properly classical form practiced by classical musicians, do we then find gharanas of
musicians specializing in Dhrupad? Judging from Neuman and Deshpande, the answer
might be no, as neither mentions explicitly the name of a Dhrupad gharana or uses the
term “Dhrupad gharana.” However, neither author specifically denies their existence
either. In the case of Deshpande, this is quite easy to understand, as Dhrupad has never
had much of a presence in Maharashtra at any point in time, at least not since Balkrishna
Ichalkaranjikar popularized Khyal there starting in the late 19th c. 50 In Neuman’s case,
though, it seems that this is an instance where his conclusions do decidedly bear the
imprint of the time period in which his work was conducted. That is, in the 1970s,
Dhrupad was not nearly as popular or visible (in the conext of public performances) as it
is today; although, as Widdess (1994) explains, the lowest ebb for Dhrupad in these terms
was around 1950. As Widdess writes, public Dhrupad festivals (which are the main
focus of his article) were initiated in the 1970s to serve as a new context for Dhrupad,
primarily “because the previous context for dhrupad performance – the palaces and
temples of Hindu and Sikh provincial rulers and religious authorities during the 19 th and
early 20 th centuries – had effectively ceased to function in that capacity by 1950”(91).
However, considering that Neuman states of the Dhrupad performers at the time, “[t]hose
who perform it today see themselves of the last of their kind” (1990:118), it is tempting
50
Saiduddin Dagar and Uday Bhawalkar are two notable Dhrupad singers who live and regularly perform
in Pune.
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to think that, if he was aware of these developments in terms of shifting Dhrupad to new
performance contexts, he did not consider them particularly important, or at least did not
see the potential for growth, which, in retrospect, we can now see was always there. He
does, though, reference the Dagar family, easily the most well-known lineage of Dhrupad
musicians in the period spanning from the early twentieth century to the present and
grants them the status of a khaandaan, or recognized lineage of classical musicians. So,
while he does not use the phrase “Dagar gharana,” he seems to be more or less
recognizing that that lineage meets the prerequisites of being a gharana. 51 However, in
examining Widdess and Sanyal’s recent work (2004) on the subject, we find that the
gharana designation is used for several groups of Dhrupad musicians, including the
Dagars. If gharana has not been traditionally used by Dhrupad musicians, it is not a
statement about the status of the genre, as everyone knowledgeable of Hindustani music
knows that Dhrupad is indeed the most classical and prestigious, if not the most popular,
form of North Indian classical music. It is more likely that it simply has not (or, again,
had not, by the time Neuman’s research was conducted) become customary as yet to
associate gharana with Dhrupad.
One last factor concerning Dhrupad which is notable in this context and which
perhaps explains why gharana has not been connected with Dhrupad more frequently is
the existence of a concept very similar to gharana, but not identical, baanii. Baanii, like
gharana, is a style or stylistic school. Unlike gharana, though, each baanii is not
coterminous with one lineage of musicians and their disciples. As Neuman writes,
51 Neuman does reference the Vishnupur gharana, one which was founded by Dhrupad singers, but is now
made up Khyal singers and instrumentalists.
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“Dhrupadiyas [Dhrupad singers] and binkars [instrumentalists who perform Dhrupad on
the biin, or stick zither] are identified with one of four traditional dhrupad styles (bani),
known as dagarbani, khandarbani, nauharbani, and gaudharbani. They are thought to
be the precursors of gharana styles, and the ancestors of today’s khandani musicians are
said to have been specialists in at least one of them”(1990:119). So, to offer another
answer to the above question of why the term gharana is not often used in reference to
Dhrupad musicians, one can ascertain that it is because baanii is seen by many as the
predecessor to gharana (as Neuman notes), and as such might be thought by some to be
the Dhrupad equivalent of gharana. Another point to be made is that by bringing baanii
into the equation, we find that the tradition of style categories is a very old one in India
(the baanii-s are said to have originated with the musicians of Akbar’s court, thus dating
them back to approximately the 16th century). Gharanas are unique in certain regards,
owing to the time and circumstances under which they came into existence, but it can be
argued that they are also the latest manifestation of an older concept. Widdess and
Sanyal confirm this view by connecting baanii with giiti, a concept by which styles of
melody were classified in Sanskrit treatises of the ninth and thirteenth centuries, i.e. in
Sarngadeva’s Sangiita-ratnaakara. In both cases, the nature of the categories are very
similar, as in both cases there is a “primary or ‘pure’(suddha) type and a number of
variant types, the last of which is ‘mixed’”(2004:69).
The most concrete connection between baanii-s and gharanas is that singers of
two of the most important Khyal gharanas, Agra and Jaipur/Alladiya Khan (not
coincidentally the two gharanas most often said to be based on the Dhrupad style, or
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dhrupad ang), claim to cultivate two of the banis, Nauhar and Dagar, respectively
(Widdess and Sanyal 2004:65). Also, while the specific content of the four baanii-s does
not concern us at this juncture, it is worth mentioning that baanii not only refers to
strictly melodic style, but also to factors such as the choice of raga, rhythmic structure,
instrumental and vocal technique, and the dominance of a particular ras, or aesthetic
mood (ibid.:61). To give a specific example, then, Widdess and Sanyal describe the
principal characteristics of the Khandar baanii, based on the consensus they have derived
from a variety of historical sources, thusly:
1. The predominant embellishment is gamak.
2. The tempo is faster than in the Gaudahar and Dagar banis.
3. The aesthetic effect is one of vigour, masculinity and the Heroic ethos (vir ras),
to which is sometimes added Wonder (adbhut ras)(ibid.:80).
Thus, as with gharana (and in contradistinction to giiti, which only concerns melodic
style), baanii covers a whole range of aesthetic choices. However, I would argue that the
baanii concept is most germane in terms of Khyal gharanas when we examine the
differences between baanii and gharana, not their similarities.
Elaborating on the point I mentioned above, that baanii represents style but is not
thought to be the property or inheritance of one lineage, Widdess and Sanyal write:
Another term for style is gayaki, from gayak singer. This denotes the particular
vocal style of a gharana or of an individual singer. Gayaki embraces every aspect
of musical presentation, including voice quality. A good disciple can often create
the impression that his teacher is singing: he has mastered the gayaki of that
particular teacher.
The term gayaki in this sense is significant to khyal singers because, for them,
gharana is the primary focus of musical identity and authenticity: to be an Agra
gharana singer is to present the gayaki of that gharana. Thus there is a direct
relationship between gharana and gayaki. In dhrupad, however, the relationship is
less close: however many schools of dhrupad there are or were, there have only
ever been four banis, so far as is known. One cannot speak of the bani of a
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gharana or of an individual singer as something unique to that gharana or
individual. There are, or at least there were in the past, other gharanas of the
Dagar bani besides that now known as ‘the Dagar gharana’. What is more, while
some gharanas are associated with one particular bani, others have been known to
cultivate two, or even all four. Even today, different members of the Mallick
family of Darbhanga claim to sing Khandar and Gaudahar banis; the Betiya
gharana was a gharana of four banis, and in a recent recording Indra Kishor
Mishra of that gharana claims to be singing a combination of the Khandar and
Nauhar banis (ibid.:62).
To sum up then, some Dhrupad gharanas sing in more than one baanii style; some, i.e.
the Dagar gharana, identify with one baanii to the extent that they derive their
professional name from it; and sometimes two musicians from the same gharana, that is,
the same lineage, claim to cultivate different baanii-s, or different combinations of
baanii-s, than other members of the same gharana. Beyond this, as Widdess and Sanyal
also note, many musicians and musicologists argue that baanii-s have no contemporary
relevance at all and are only of historical significance, owing to a mixing of styles which
has blurred their individuality beyond recognition and left us with one universal Dhrupad
style. This dismissal of baanii, however, is very much contradicted by the musicians
themselves, who attest to its continuing importance. What I would like to argue here,
though, is that although the fundamental difference in the traditional definitions of
gharana and baanii is that baanii-s lack the identification with one specific lineage of
musicians, the reality today on the ground is that, over time, gharana is becoming more
and more like baanii. True, the hereditary component of the gharana concept as applied
to all classical genres, not only Khyal, remains to at least some extent, particularly in the
realms of Dhrupad and instrumental music. However, in the case of Khyal itself, where
the concept was created, we can note a resemblance with Widdess and Sanyal’s definition
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of baanii in modern Dhrupad. Thus, in Khyal we find singers that have learned from a
gharana stalwart and remain loyal to that style; singers who have trained with a gharana
stalwart but openly incorporate the influences of other gharanas and individual
musicians; singers who have not trained with a notable guru but attempt to imitate a well-
known individual singer; and singers who have no ties, real or stylistic, to any gharana at
all. The point I would like to stress here, though, is that, while certain lineages of
musicians feel it important to highlight either the tradition of music within their family
or, for non-hereditary musicians, their ties with such a lineage, for the most part, the
archetypical Khyal gharanas (i.e. Gwalior, Agra, Kirana, Jaipur, Patiala), with all the
aspects of their musical presentation, have become relatively abstract stylistic categories
from which artists can draw as they so choose.
An alternate way of looking at Khyal gharanas is to consider them primarily as
lineages, placing less emphasis on their having a distinct style relative to other lineages.
If, as I mentioned, gharanas are stronger in instrumental music and Dhrupad, it is largely
because in these areas, most of the well-known gharanas are still represented by members
of the original family that founded the gharana. So, in instrumental music the Imdad
Khan, Shajahanpur, Gwalior, and Maihar gharanas and in Dhrupad, the Dagar, Betiah,
and Darbhanga gharanas are all represented currently by heridary, khaandaanii members.
In the case of the instrumental gharanas this is because even the oldest of them is
relatively recent compared to the age of most of the major Khyal gharanas. In the case of
the surviving Dhrupad lineages, though, credit goes to the various generations of Gurus
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cum performers who have managed to train their sons and nephews and, thus, keep the
tradition alive in their family. In Khyal, though, we find that most of the major gharanas
are represented by singers who are not only not members of the founding khaandaan, but
are also mostly Hindus from non-musician families (in caste terms). The Gwalior
gharana, the original Khyal gharana and the most important musical tradition in
Maharashtra, notably has no living members of the founding khaandaan, much less one
that is a respectable, professional level performer. It is not hard to imagine, then, that
these non-hereditary Hindus simply do not have as much invested in “their” gharanas or
any gharana as would a hereditary member. This much is hard to argue.
However, it is not the case simply that Muslims care about gharana and Hindus do
not. Rather, there is a whole range of feelings amongst the musicians I interviewed
regarding the importance of gharana. For example, Shruti Sadolikar was definitely the
most outspoken advocate of remaining loyal to one’s own gharana and style, even while
agreeing with most of her colleagues that individual thought and creativity is crucial to a
mature artist. When I asked her about the tendency I had noticed among Marathi Khyal
singers to mix the gaayakii-s of various gharanas in order to create a more individualistic
style, she replied thusly:
Unfortunately, there have been people from many different gharanas, even other
gharanas, who have taken the liberty of straying into the pastures of other
gharanas and tried to imbibe that style of singing into their own gharanas, and this
happens with every gharana because people have, you know, creativity, and those
who are blessed with creativity they are taking this liberty, and the artist’s liberty
cannot be denied. The only thing is that, uh, I would definitely say, if you are
singing a particular composition from a particular gharana, don’t dilute it. Try to
present it as far as possible as best to the knowledge that you have. I don’t feel
you should feel insulted or you should feel shy of admitting that this is my
boundary, this is my limit, and I can’t go beyond it…Because you profess to say
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that, you profess that, “I have broken the boundaries of my gharana and I have
created my own style.” Then why do you need the compositions of your old
Gurus, that are a hundred and four hundred years old? You can experiment with
your own compostions – go ahead, have your own compositions. But, when you
sing that particular composition from that particular Guru and particular gharana,
you have to adhere to the rules. It’s like you know, in Maharashtra or in India, we
take a big pride in saying that, “yes, I belong to this khaandaan, I am a daughter
of Sadolikars.” So what Sadolikars meant in a society, what is the Sadolikar
household known for? I cannot totally break those traditions and say, “yes, I am a
Sadolikar.”(interview, 2005).
So, the persons Shrutiji is taking issue with here are clearly those artists that claim
allegiance to one gharana but then take things from other gharanas without crediting the
source and without respecting the musical integrity of compostions, for example. The
important point, though, is that she feels this loyalty largely because she is the daughter
of a father who was a well-known Khyal maestro and famous Marathi stage performer
that not only was a disciple of a core gharana but also learned directly from the khaliifaa
of that gharana.
Needless to say, though, when I encountered a musician that did not have such an
illustrious family history and/or such a direct link the central musicians of their gharana,
they generally had correspondingly less faith in and loyalty to whatever tradition they
might belong to. Further, even though the one-on-one Guru-disciple relationship is as
important as ever in Hindustani music, particularly in terms of training future
professional performers, even the loyalty most musicians show to their Guru is perhaps
not what it once was either. Part of this, of course, is a matter of Western-
influenced/modern values that do not place the same emphasis on respect and reverence
for elders, teachers, etc., as is the case in traditional Indian society, especially considering
that much of my work was done in Bombay, undoubtedly the most Westernized city in all
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of India. The other factor of import here, however, is the very basic one that most
musicians these days train with several Gurus, often starting out in an institutionalized
setting, and it is rare that any musician in training in such a context spends more than a
few hours a week with their Guru (the prime exception being the ITC-SRA gurukul in
Calcutta). Keeping this in mind, it would be more surprising if today’s young
performers saw their Gurus as a mother or father figure, as this is not the reality in most
Guru-disciple relationships these days, again if my group of interlocutors can at all be
taken as representative. There is a range, I should reiterate, from someone like Shruti
Sadolikar, who is the offspring of a well-known performer who was a disciple of a
prestigious gharana, at one end, to lesser-known musicians who both are not sons or
daughters of well-known performers and have learned from multiple Gurus at the other.
Most of the musicians I met in 2005 fall closer to the latter pole or extreme than the
former. This is not to say that any of the musicians I interviewed were not respectful to
the tradition, the music, or to their elders and the stalwarts of the field. It is more that the
respect they hold is a more general respect for Hindustani music and the great musicians
who have inspired them in some way, rather than a pronounced reverence for their own
Guru or gharana.
For most musicians these days the stylistic path they pursue and the teachers they
learn from are a matter of calculated and rational choice. Again, if they have no tradition,
family or otherwise, which they feel they are carrying on in their own music, then they
are fairly free to make use of whatever educational resources are available. In Bombay
(and to a lesser extent Pune) such resources are ample, in terms of both music institutions
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and knowledgeable Gurus who have had gharana taaliim. Even amateurs and dilettante-
types have access to ‘name’ Gurus in these cities. In Calcutta specifically, there is no
shortage of practicing musicians, particularly tabla, sitar, and sarod players, but also
Khyal singers. As I will discuss further below, however, even many of the top Khyal
singers in Calcutta have never learned from a gharana-trained Gurus and many singers
perform in (approximately) the style of a nationally famous musician rather than the style
that their own Guru follows. For many young musicians in Calcutta, this means that the
style they follow is purely a matter of choosing among any of the styles of any of the
musicians they have been exposed to, which is, of course, thanks to modern media, a
large pool. The downside in that situation, though, is that no one can learn from
recordings what they can learn from a proper Guru. In Bombay and Pune, students have
the opportunity to learn from respected practitioners of almost any major Khyal style and
can supplement that with whatever they can learn from the musicians they do not study
with directly. At the same time, though, Calcutta is home to the majority of the most
well-respected and successful instrumentalists in India, so aspiring instrumentalists there
have an advantage over their Maharashtrian counterparts, as in Maharashtra, excluding
Bombay, there is hardly a sitar or sarod player of note (and even in Bombay they cannot
be said to be plentiful), so aspiring sitarists there have few options when it comes to
receiving proper training. The point I would like to make here is not simply that Bengalis
have access to good Gurus in the instrumental realm, so they become instrumentalists,
and Maharashtrians have access to good Khyal Gurus, so they become singers, as many
of my interlocutors would have it. This certainly is an important factor, but even beyond
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the access to good Gurus, I feel that Bengalis tend to have a different attitude relative to
their Gurus and the styles their Gurus teach them than do their Marathi counterparts. I
will define these differences in this and the following chapters which deal with gharana
and the classical music scenes in both regions.
The first and perhaps most decisive step in determining how and to what extent
musicians of today preserve the styles originally cultivated by the traditional Khyal
gharanas, as noted above, is to examine both which musicians migrated to Maharashtra
and Bengal from North India and how and to what extent those musicians were able to
spread their music among the non-hereditary Hindu musicians in each of those
regions/states. It should be reiterated at the outset that the respective situations in these
two states are not really parallel or even complementary. It is true that, as I will argue, in
many ways these two states are complementary as they have, in a sense, split the heritage
of North Indian classical music between the two of them (which is not to say that no
classical music remains in North India, I should note). Maharashtrians now dominate
Khyal and Bengalis dominate, even more thoroughly, instrumental music, i.e. in sitar,
sarod, and tabla. While this is a key distinction and one of the reasons why I chose to
undertake this project in the first place, it does not adequately describe the actual musical
scene in either place. In Maharashtra there are currently two centers for classical music,
Pune and Bombay, and in West Bengal there is one, Calcutta. In Pune, we find that
Khyal is entirely dominant and that there are tabla players who certainly perform at a
professional level but who mainly specialize in accompanying vocal music. Harmonium
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players are also much in demand as accompanists, as there are no performing saarangii
players there. Otherwise there are a handful of Dhrupad singers, a recent development,
and a handful of sitar players, none of all-India repute. 52 In Bombay, we find musicians
representing every major classical music tradition and genre and who are from all parts of
India, including Bengalis, Maharashtrians, and North Indians, Muslim and Hindu. There
are sitar players, a very few sarod players, many tabla players, and many Khyal singers.
Also, Bombay possesses perhaps India’s largest collection of non-traditional
instrumentalists, such as baansurii (bamboo flute) and santuur (hammered dulcimer)
players. 53 Closer examination, though, reveals that the split we see between Bengal and
Maharashtra in terms of instrumentalists versus vocalists plays out within Bombay itself.
Almost all of the notable instrumentalists in Bombay are from Bengal or North India,
save for some Maharashtrian tabliya-s, and most but not all Khyal singers are
Maharashtrian. In Calcutta, again the only major center of classical music in Bengal (and
arguably the only major center in India east of Benares), we find a majority of the best
sitar players in India, a majority of the best tabla players, and almost all the sarod players
of repute in India. There are some Dhrupad singers, although most sing a modified,
distinctly Bengali variety of the genre, and there are some Khyal singers, albeit only a
handful that have a name or following outside of Calcutta.
From this brief synopsis, we can readily see that the only notable areas of overlap
between the two states in question are primarily in terms of Khyal singers, and
52
Well-known sitarist Shahid Parvez maintains a residence in Pune but is not much involved in the local
music scene there.
53
This is mostly due to the fact bamboo flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia and santoor maestro Shiv Kumar
Sharma live in Bombay.
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secondarily in terms of tabla players. At the same time, even in restricting ourselves to
examination of the distribution of Khyal gharanas, we find two very different cases. This
is due to the rather simple fact that very few gharaanedaar Ustads ever settled
permanently in Calcutta, while most of the Ustads of Khyal who left North India found
their way to Maharashtra, whether it was to Bombay, Pune, or one of the many small
princely states that once dotted the current day border between Maharashtra and
Karnataka states. This fact determined a situation where the Marathi musicians learned
their music directly from gharana musicians, while Bengalis have developed their Khyal
from a combination of limited direct learning, much imitation, and more innovation.
Following my examination of the diffusion of Khyal in each region I will contrast tabla
playing in both states, although we will find much less regional differentiation in this
realm than in Khyal singing. Finally, then, I will examine the traditions of string
instrument playing in Bengal. While in the case of sitar and sarod, there is no real room
for comparison between Maharashtra and Bengal, it is important to give them due
consideration as they determine so much about the nature of classical music in Calcutta
and greater Bengal.
Considering that I have already stated that there is a sizeable community of
instrumentalists in Bombay, one might question my overlooking this aspect of the scene
in Bombay (though I will detail the very brief history of instrumental music there in my
chapter in instrumental music). However, as many of my interlocutors have stated, and
as my own observations confirm, instrumental music has never really taken root in
Bombay. This means, most importantly, that instrumentalists in Bombay by and large
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have yet to found enduring traditions there. Many of the musicians I have interviewed
(including a number of musicians in Bombay) suggested rather frankly that this
represents a failure on the part of the professional-level instrumentalists there. Certainly
the inclination and ability to teach is not present in every musician, regardless of their
place of residence, but beyond this, there are a number of factors unique to Bombay that
have contributed to this situation. The most important is that since classical musicians,
particularly instrumentalists, in Bombay can find a number of outlets for performance
and recording (as Bombay is the home of the Indian film and recording industry), it
seems that for many, teaching at all or teaching more than a handful is simply not an
economic imperative. 54 Another is that, while a large number of musicians in Pune and
Calcutta are native to those cities or at least have some ties to them - indeed as several
musicians in Calcutta told me, no one would live in Calcutta if it was not their home -
Bombay is a very transitory place where people come and go according to economic
opportunity. At any rate, one exception to all these points is Annapurna Devi, sitarist and
daughter of Baba Allaudin Khan, the fountainhead of the Maihar gharana, who has lived
and taught in Bombay for several decades now and trained a number of fine musicians
such as bamboo flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia.
54 By contrast, there are many who derive most or all their income from teaching.
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3. Khyal in Maharashtra
Considering that Maharashtra was a much greater beneficiary in terms of
inheriting gharaanedaar musicians from North India than was Bengal, I will start by
detailing Maharashtra’s side of the story first. The history of modern classical music in
Maharashtra properly begins in the mid 19th century when a handful of Maharashtrian
Hindus, mostly Brahmans, began, first, to travel to Gwalior to study the Khyal gayaki of
the gharana named after that important (particularly in music historical terms) princely
state and then later propagated the Gwalior tradition both in Gwalior and back home in
Maharashtra. There are two primary reasons for this phenomenon of Maharashtrian
Brahmans traveling so far from their homeland to learn a Muslim dominated genre from
Muslim Ustads. The first is that in 1726 Gwalior, which previously had been ruled by the
Tomar Rajputs, important patrons of the Dhrupad genre, came under the control of the
Scindias, a Maratha dynasty. 55 While none of the available sources states this explicitly,
it seems likely that Maharashtrians desirous of learning classical music felt more
welcome and more at home there than in the princely states of North India, which were
ruled by Muslim kings and princes or even by non-Marathi Hindus. The second reason is
that, although again, we cannot be sure of specific details, it is clear that Haddu and
Hassu Khan, founders of the Gwalior gharana, while Muslim themselves, felt a special
affinity for these Marathi Hindus and trained a number of them as their disciples. As
G.H. Ranade writes, “[w]e are told that the famous brothers, Haddukhan and Hassukhan
of Gwalior, used to be proud of their Maharashtrian disciples for their unstinted loyalty
55 Scindia is an altered version of the Maratha surname Shinde.
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and veneration for their ‘Guru’ the Ustad, whom they revered even more than their
parents. It became an unwritten rule with them to teach music preferably to Hindus and
to Maharashtrian Brahmins in particular”(1967:34).
This early dominance by Brahmans in terms of being the first Maharashtrians to
learn Khyal is an interesting aspect of the story at this point, and I asked most of my
Maharashtrian interlocutors why they felt that Brahmans had been and continue to be so
pervasive in classical music in that region. The majority of musicians I queried along
these lines objected to my introducing caste into the equation in the first place, and I was
not surprised, considering that most musicians do not believe that caste or religious
community is of any importance in becoming a musician (as noted above). Not all
reacted as strongly as Anish Pradhan to this line of questioning (see chapter 1), but most
saw it as a non-factor. One who did see some significance to the role of Brahmans in
popularizing Khyal in Maharashtra was aforementioned Smt. Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar
(SS), daughter of Jaipur vocalist Vamanrao Sadolikar and (at the time of my research)
faculty member at ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Calcutta. SS, echoing G.H.
Ranade’s sentiments, felt that Maharashtrian Brahmans had been successful in learning
classical music from Muslim Ustads primarily due to their unstinting devotion to their
Guru, even if that Guru was a Muslim, and their willingness to suffer hardships in the
process. Along these lines she related an anecdote to me about her father’s desire to learn
a composition from a sarangi player in Jalgaon, MH.
Once or twice I have heard references about being Brahman. My father wanted…
when he was in Yashwant NaaTak ManDalii [a well-known music-drama
company], the owner of the naaTak company used to patronize the local artists.
He had one saarangiya brought to the place where they were putting up, and this
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saarangiya started playing a particular composition in raag Bhimpalaasi and he
started singing it. Once he sang the asthaaii [1 st line of a composition], the
second time he was singing and looking up, and he saw my father’s lips moving.
So he knew that my father was trying to pick up the asthaaii. He put the gaj
[bow] down, and he said, “Abhii meraa man nahi lag rahaa hai [I am not
remembering it right now]. I will sing it some other time.” My father asked for
his address. My father went the next day to him. They were in Jalgaon, in the
month of May, and Jalgaon is a very, very hot place in the month of May. My
father was the hero of the NaaTak company. He used to have at least 3-4 shows a
week, and he had to go for his make-up and all from 6:30, 7:00 onwards because
the show used to start from 9:00. My father went to this old saarangiya who was
staying very far away from the main Jalgaon city. He used to live with a
courtesan, and he used to play saarangii there. He was sitting with a rope cot,
wooden cot, and a neem tree, and my father would sit just waiting for him to open
his mouth and sing the antaraa. The first time my father went to him he asked
him, “Kyaa chhaahiye?[What do you want?]” My father said, “Aap nahi antaraa
gaayaa. Astaai mujhe bahut achchaa lag rahaa hai. Aap anataraa ek baar gaa
diijiye. [You didn’t sing the second line of the composition. I liked the first part
very much – please sing the antaraa one time.] ” He said, “Ah, mujhe pataa thaa
[I know what happened]. I saw you picking up my ashtaaii. I knew you have got
it. Antaraa nahi mil gayaa [You didn’t get the antara].” My father said, “Aap jo
bolo [please tell me], I will do every sevaa [service] that you want. I won’t be
able to give too much of money, but I will do any kind of sevaa that you want me
to.” “Hukkaa bhar kelaa [Fill my hookah].” At 12:00 in the afternoon he would
make him go to the city, and bring back the hookah full of the coals. [SS makes a
puffing sound, as if blowing on lit coals] My father would come doing this all the
way to the place where he was living, in the heat. My father did it for the whole
month, for about 28-29 days my father did that. And this man would keep him
sitting in the sun, he wouldn’t even offer him a glass of water. My father being a
Brahman, he never asked him. My father said, “I am not here for a glass of water
- I am there only for the antaraa, give me the antaraa.” And my father would sit
there, in the evening he would have his eyes totally red because of the heat, and
he had to go sometimes, to go and perform on the stage. And behind his back,
people were talking about him being, going to the prostitutes’ area and sitting
there and spending his whole day there. And they started writing to my
grandfather, “Your son is being seen in the prostitutes’ area.” They did all the
back-biting, but my father never gave up. The day my father…one day my father
went to get the hookah, and his fingers had burnt and he was bleeding. That old
man opened his eyes and saw my father’s dhoti was red with blood. “Kyaa ho
gayaa [What happened]?” He [Vamanrao Sadolikar] said, “Jal gayaa [they’re
burnt].”…“You’re a Brahman; you will not leave me unless I give you the
antaraa. And if I don’t give you the antaraa now, Allah will punish me, I have to
give it to you.”(interview, 2005)
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Another way to express this idea, though in less colorful terms perhaps than in this
anecdote about Vamanrao Sadolikar, is that, as opposed to Marathas (again, we are
limiting the discussion here to Maharashtra) who were primarily agriculturists and
soldiers, Brahmans were long accustomed to learning in the guru-disciple tradition, with
its intellectual rigor and extended period of student-hood, and although there were
important differences between learning Sanskrit and learning classical vocal music in that
period, Brahmans would have had a real advantage in these terms over other caste
groups. Of course, traditionally Chitpaavan/KonkaNastha (coastal) Brahmans such as
Bhatkhande were not priests or scholars as their primary occupation, 56 but they also were
habituated to working in intellectual fields. Considering, then, that learning under
traditional Ustads was notoriously difficult, Haddu and Hassu Khan must have
appreciated the persistence, patience, and stamina of their Marathi Brahman disciples.
Mukherjee (2006) states rather straightforwardly both that Haddu Khan preferred
Brahmans as disciples because “they were supposed to be brighter than members of other
castes” and favored Hindus to Muslim students (Muslims from outside Haddu and
Hassu’s khaandaan) generally because, in Haddu’s view, Muslims tended to be disloyal
to their Guru/Ustad, crediting their knowledge and ability once they had attained success
to their fathers or uncles, i.e. to their own family and lineage (71-72). It might be too
much to speculate that either Haddu or Hassu ever anticipated that Hindus would be the
future of their tradition (and classical music generally), but their willingness to teach
56 KonkaNastha Brahmans (also called ‘Chitpaavan’) are associated with the KoNkan coastal belt of
Maharashtra, while Deshastha Brahmans, the other primary Brahman sub-caste in the region, are native to
the desh, or Deccan Plateau.
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Hindus has proven to have been fortuitous in terms of spreading the Gwalior gaayakii
more widely than that of any other gharana. Bayly (1999) notes that in the Maratha-ruled
princely states, which included Gwalior and a number of other important centers outside
of Maharashtra like Baroda and Indore, Brahmans were generally accorded a great deal
of respect and were often even employed in key administrative and political positions,
certainly more often than in any Muslim-ruled princely state. Although this would not
explain why Haddu-Hassu Khan taught so many more Hindu students than their average
contemporary, it might help to explain why they preferred Brahmans over other Hindu
castes.
There are essentially two branches of the Gwalior Khyal tradition, and as Wade
among others points out, these can be distinguished as the lines of Haddu Khan and his
disciples and, on the other side, that of Hassu Khan. Further, although owing to his
relative early death, Hassu Khan himself taught fewer students, his line has turned out to
be both larger and more important specifically in the Maharashtra region, thanks largely
to Balkrishnabua and his disciple V.D. Paluskar. The Haddu Khan tradition, on the other
hand, has primarily been propagated by a family of ethnic Maharashtrian Brahmans
(ethnic in the sense that the family has been residing outside Maharashtra since before the
time they became involved with the Gwalior tradition) with the surname Pandit. In
musical terms this line begins with Natthe Khan, the ‘cousin brother’ of Nathan Pir
Baksh, Haddu and Hassu’s father. As Wade explains, owing to political intrigue in the
Lucknow court where Nathan Pir Baksh had previously resided, he and his sons shifted to
Gwalior, likely because Natthe Khan was their relative and encouraged their move,
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although neither the relationship between Nathan Pir Baksh and Natthe Khan nor why
Nathan Pir Baksh chose Gwalior as a new home can be definitively proven (Wade
1984:40). The link between Natthe Khan and the Pandit family comes through Natthe
Khan’s son Nissar Hussain, who received training both from his father and from Haddu
Khan. Nissar Hussain succeeded Natthe Khan as court musician in the Scindia court, but
when Jayajji Rao Scindia died in 1886, Nissar Hussain was out of a job, as the successor
as ruler Madhava Rao was “too young to rule and all patronage was suspended”(ibid.:48).
Nissar Hussain then ended up living (still in Gwalior) with the aforementioned Pandit
family, the patriarch of which, Vishnu Pandit, was a kiirtan [devotional song] singer and
a friend of Haddu, Hassu, and Natthe Khan. Two of Vishnu Pandit’s sons, Eknath and
Shankarrao then subsequently studied classical singing with Nissar Hussain. This
tradition has been further propagated by Shankarao’s son Krishnarao, Shankarrao’s
disciple Rajabhaiyya Poochwale (who was born in Satara in southern Maharashtra but
settled in North India), and then in the next generation by Krishnarao’s son Lakshman
Krishnarao and today L.K. Pandit’s daughter Meera. For the most part, I will leave this
line here because, although they have Maharashtrian roots, these musicians properly
belong to North India. There are two exceptions to this: first, the important singer
Ramkrishnabua Vaze (d.1945), a native Maharashtrian disciple of Shankarrao Pandit, and
Neela Bhagwat, my aforementioned interlocutor who learned her music from
Sharatchandra Arolkar, a disciple of Krishnarao Pandit (Neela Bhagwat:interview, 2005).
The Hassu line, as Wade refers to it, has been popularized by Vishnu
Digambar’s efforts to reform and spread classical music through the medium of his music
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institutions, to the extent that musicians generally refer to it as the ‘Paluskar line’ (as
opposed to the ‘other line,’ the Pandit line). Balkrishnabua often is seen as the starting
point in the Khyal tradition of Maharashtra, and rightly so, in the sense that he
popularized the genre in that region and paved the way for the work done by his disciple
Paluskar. As Vamanrao Deshpande writes,
Balkrishnabuwa was the doyen of musicians and a Khyaliya of a high order of the
Haddu-Hassu-Khan style. It is to him that we owe the dawn of the Khyal era in
Maharashtra. Not that there were no earlier Khyaliyas in Maharashtra. But their
influence was so slight that they can at best be said to have paved the way for
Balkrishnabuwa’s arrival. Effectively, Balkrishnabuwa was the founder and
father of that style in this part of the country (1972:11).
That being said, it is important that we note some of these earlier Marathi Khyal singers,
as they, after all, provide the link between Balkrishnabua and Haddu-Hassu Khan
themselves. There are two Maharashtrian students of Hassu that are noteworthy in this
context, and indeed they are the only two disciples of Hassu that Wade discusses in her
account. The first was Vasudevbua Joshi, a KonkaNastha Brahman from the Bombay
area who traveled by foot to Gwalior as a teenager, eventually becoming a student of
Hassu. As Ranade notes, Vasudevbua settled in Gwalior and served as a Guru for a
number of other Maharashtrian students, including Balkrishnabua, who later came there
to learn Khyal (1967:35). The second was Ramkrishna Deva Paranjape (a.k.a.
Devjibua), a KonkaNastha Brahman from the Pune area who shifted to Gwalior and
became a student of Hassu after having had some initial training in Dhrupad with one
Chintamani Mishra. As with Nissar Hussain, Devjibua left Gwalior after his patron’s
death, although in this case it was Jankojirao Scindia, not Jayajirao, and took up a
position as court musician in another Maratha-ruled princely state, Dhar, in the southern
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part of modern day Madhya Pradesh state (Deodhar 1993:7). Both of these two were
eventually to serve as Guru for Balkrishnabua.
Balkrishnabua Ichalkaranjikar (henceforth BI) was born in the Kolhapur area of
southern Maharashtra in 1849. As Wade notes, his father was a good singer, but his
mother disapproved of BI’s musical interests (1984:41). His childhood and early
adolescent years were tempestuous, as his mother died when he was five and his father
died when he was fifteen (Deodhar 1993:4). Also, there was a great deal of conflict both
between BI and his mother and between him and his uncle, who served as his guardian
for some time while his father was away performing. Both were set on BI becoming a
bhikshuk, a priest who lives on alms begged from local householders, but BI, it seems,
found both the begging and the scriptural study distasteful. BI, then, after receiving an
embarrassing beating in front of his friends and others from his uncle for failing to collect
alms from a local wedding, ran away and was eventually reunited with his father. After
two years of training in classical singing, however, his father passed. Arrangements were
made by the Raja of Jat for BI to learn from Alidat (or Ali Datta) Khan, and then after
leaving Jat, a high ranking official in Kolhapur made similar arrangements for BI to learn
there with a famous singer of the time, Bhaurao Khagwadkar. In both cases, BI’s
relationship with his would-be Guru soured quickly, and he learned little from either one.
After a short stint in a theatrical company, BI met one of his father’s old friends in
Bombay who helped him to go ahead with plans to proceed to Dhar to learn with
Devjibua, although he first had to dodge an attempt by his uncle to compel him to marry
a girl back in his home village. Eventually, though, BI made it to Dhar and began his
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period of discipleship under Devjibua. By all accounts, Devjibua was fond of BI and
taught him openly for four years (Deshpande 1972:12). However, this relationship also
became problematic, as Devjibua’s wife apparently was not as fond of BI as her husband
was. As Deodhar explains, BI’s guru’s wife intensely disliked him, and one day she
threatened to burn their house down if Devjibua did not turn the boy out. 57
“Consequently, Devjibuwa had no alternative but to give his blessings to Balkrishnabua
and ask him to leave the house” (Deodhar 1993:7).
Although BI had learned much in Dhar, his training was not complete. Neither,
though, were his troubles in finding a Guru who would teach him. He resolved to go to
Gwalior and learn from Vasudevbua Joshi, and he did make it there in due time.
However, Joshibua refused to teach BI, apparently because there was some sort of rivalry
or lingering bad blood between Devjibua and Joshibua, the two disciples of Hassu Khan.
As with the instances I noted in the story of Vishnu Digambar, BI’s story at this point
takes a mythic turn. Both Deshpande and Deodhar state that, in his despondence over
being rejected by Joshibua, BI began a 28 day period of fasting and meditation where he
subsisted only on leaves and/or bel fruit. At the end of this period, BI was visited by a
goddess in a dream who advised him to make another attempt at becoming Joshibua’s
disciple. According to Deodhar, the goddess advised him to travel to Benares to meet
with Joshibua there. He did just that, and won Joshibua’s favor by performing some
sevaa for his future guru, specifically preparing his buuTii, a mixture of cannabis and
other substances which Joshibua regularly consumed (Deodhar 1993:10). When Joshibua
57 Wade (1984) curiously omits this detail in her account.
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left to return to Gwalior, BI accompanied him, and embarked on an arduous course of
training that would prepare him to become the singer many regard as the most important
in the early history of Khyal in Maharashtra.
I should note here that I have delved into greater detail in discussing BI’s musical
training than in the case of some other musicians I mention above or below for a very
specific reason. Balkrishna is, of course, a crucial figure and merits extended discussion.
More than this, however, I feel it is important to emphasize the troubles BI had in
learning music and becoming a musician because to a large degree they disprove a
common sense notion that many people have in Maharashtra regarding the early history
of classical music (i.e. Khyal singing) in that region. Many seem to believe that at a
certain point in the 19th century, Maharashtrians began traveling north to learn Khyal
from Muslim gharaanedaar singers, and succeeded by, in effect, wresting the music from
the hands of the orthodox, intransigent, and perhaps even illiterate and/or drug addicted
Ustads through their (the Maharashtrians’) incredible perseverance and hard work.
Again, there is some truth to this. What I would like to point out, though, is that as BI’s
story proves, the Hindu musicians of this time shared most of the flaws attributed to
Muslim musicians of the day to a greater or lesser extent. BI learned, or attempted to
learn, from only one Muslim singer, Alidat Khan; all his other Gurus were Hindu. We
can see, though, that these Hindus were every bit as difficult and temperamental as ‘old-
school’ Muslim musicians are thought to have been. After all, Bhaurao Khagwadkar
dismissed BI simply for failing to complete a household chore properly, and Joshibua
rejected him (at first) due to some grudge he held against BI’s previous Guru, Devjibua.
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Joshibua also was a regular user of cannabis (as BI would himself later become). In other
words, Hindu musicians were clearly as narrow-minded and prejudiced as their Muslim
counterparts at this point in history. It is clearly not true, as some would have it, that the
pioneers of Khyal in Maharashtra struggled to learn their music but then subsequently
were all uniformly open-minded and totally magnanimous with their disciples by
comparison to their own Ustads. One of the most dominant traits shared by
Maharashtrian musicians (and Maharashtrians generally) is their reverence for tradition,
and certainly the early Maharashtrian khyaaliya-s preserved their Gurus’ and Ustads’
vices and prejudices as much as they preserved the music they learned from them.
Although Vishnu Digambar was to make some decisive breaks with this traditionalism, it
continued well into the 20th century.
To finish with Balkrishnabua’s story, after taking a year of taaliim (training) from
Haddu Khan’s son Mohammed Khan (though not as an official disciple) and Joshibua’s
subsequent death, BI returned to Maharashtra to stay, and settled first in Bombay. His
stay there was short but eventful. BI took on a number of famous personages there as
students including Orientalist R.G. Bhandarkar and K.T. Telang, justice of the Bombay
high court. Also during this time he founded a monthly music publication entitled
Sangiit DarpaN jointly with sitarist VR Kale (Deodhar 1993:15). In accounts of Vishnu
Digambar’s life, BI is portrayed as generally old-fashioned and orthodox, but we can see
that in many ways BI’s work foreshadowed that of his famous disciple. As Deshpande
writes, “…everything that Pandit Vishnu Digambar did on a big scale later can be traced
to the inspiration he got from the modest beginnings made by this great savant…”
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(1973:14). BI left Bombay because of the asthma he had contracted earlier on a visit to
Nepal. He first went to Aundh to sing in the darbaar, but his asthma grew worse there.
So, he then finally settled in his home region of southern Maharashtra in Ichalkaranji. He
stayed for some thirty years and trained most of his well-known disciples during that
period. Besides V.D. Paluskar, some of BI’s notable disciples were Anant Manohar Joshi
(Antubuwa), Neelkanthbuwa Jangam (Shenaiyya), Vamanbua Chaphekar, and Yashwant
Mirashi Buwa. Antubuwa was, among other things, an early Guru of Jaipur gharana
stalwart Mallikarjun Mansur. Pandit Mirashibua was to serve as Guru to the veteran
singer Yashwantbua Joshi of Bombay, a musician I interviewed for this project and one
of the Gurus of my vocal teacher in Bombay, Dr. Ram Deshpande. Deodhar notes that,
according to Antubuwa, BI had had as many as 15-20 disciples living in his household at
one time living free of charge (though they did have to take care of household duties, in
the traditional arrangement) during his own period of discipleship, so it is clear that BI
taught many more students than just these aforementioned maestros (1993:16). In terms
of later Gwalior singers in Maharashtra, things are a bit less clear, largely because the
primary available sources on the subject, i.e. Wade (1984), Deodhar (published in 1993,
but mostly written much earlier) and Deshpande (1973), are now at least 20 years old.
Certainly, it is well-known that Vishnu Digambar trained a number of talented, respected,
and well-known disciples including Narayanrao Vyas, Vinayakrao Patwardhan,
Omkarnath Thakur, and his son D.V. Paluskar. Beyond this generation the numbers are
fewer, but there do remain notable singers of this style in Maharashtra today, although
most do not sing in the pure Gwalior style (which is true of the singers of nearly every
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Khyal gharana). Besides Yashwantbua Joshi, there are two other very notable stalwarts
performing today, Ulhas Kashalkar (who now teaches at ITC-Sangeet Research Academy
in Calcutta, but started his career in Bombay and hails originally from Nagpur) and
Veena Sahasrabuddhe, both of whom trained at some point with the late Gajananbua
Joshi, a disciple of both Ramkrishnabua Vaze and his father Pandit Antubuwa and an
underrated figure notable as a singer and violinist who developed his own brand of the
Gwalior gayaki which mixes that style with elements of the Jaipur and Agra styles. It is
also worth noting that Veena Sahasrabuddhe’s father, Shankarrao Bodas, was himself a
disciple of Vishnu Digambar (Veena Sahasrabuddhe:interview, 2005).
The Gwalior gharana can in a very real sense be labeled the style of Maharashtra
because it was that style that penetrated all parts of Maharashtra and northern Karnataka
the earliest and most profoundly of all. One can quibble about the number of truly great
figures that have sung in this style in the past 50 years, as there are not as many as there
are performers who sing in the Kirana, Jaipur, or Agra styles, or even as there are
individualistic, essentially non-gharana figures (like Kumar Gandharva) or singers of
smaller gharanas (like Pandit Jasraj of the otherwise obscure Mewati gharana). However,
the Gwalior style is, in fact, the foundation of Khyal in Maharashtra, again thanks to
Vishnu Digambar’s Gandharva Mahavidyalayas. The most common pattern in the
Maharashtra region is that, at least for artists who are not the son or daughter of a
professional musician, aspiring singers most often learn with a local, possibly amateur
Guru who sings in the Gwalior style (and is perhaps even a Gandharva Mahavidyalaya
graduate) to begin their training. Then when that aspiring singer reaches a certain point
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of maturation, i.e. when they decide they want to be a professional or at least proceed to
learn at a higher level, they move on to learn with a more notable Guru who very often
sings in the Jaipur, Kirana, or Agra styles. This results in a certain mixing of styles
which has been a common phenomenon in Maharashtra for quite some time now. This
applies specifically to the “rank and file” or middle-tier musician, who might be a
professional of regional or local fame or an amateur who performs regularly. However,
even in the case of the greats who are not Gwalior singers as such, we find that many
started out with Gurus who sang in the Gwalior style, leaving a lasting imprint on their
music. A short list of such musicians would include heavyweights like Mallikarjun
Mansur (Jaipur), Bhimsen Joshi (Kirana), Kumar Gandharva, and Vasantrao Deshpande.
I will discuss the different gharana styles below, but it is worth noting here that Gwalior
is the first and original gharana, with all the other major gharanas being essentially
offshoots of the Gwalior tradition. It is also, at least theoretically, the most complete
style in the sense of emphasizing each portion of a raga performance equally. This is not
an inarguable statement as the late Kumar Prasad Mukherjee among others has stated that
traditional Gwalior singers have never put much emphasis on aalaap and emphasize the
taan portion in particular, but, regardless, the Gwalior style works quite nicely as
preparation for learning one of the other styles which specialize in developing one or
another more specific aspect of the music.
To continue, the Gwalior style was one that Maharashtrians learned in North India
and brought back to their homeland. However, after Balkrishnabua prepared the ground,
so to speak, by popularizing the Gwalior gaayakii and Khyal generally, a number of
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gharaanedaar stalwarts themselves shifted to Maharashtra, either to the growing British
presidency capital Bombay or to one of the many princely states in or close by
Maharashtra proper. The first gharana to make an appearance in this fashion was the
Agra gharana. Wade notes that Sher Khan of the Agra gharana had moved to Bombay to
teach for some time (Wade does not say how long) as early as 1840, and for at least some
of these years he was accompanied by his young son Nissar Hussain, more commonly
known as Natthan Khan. Sher Khan eventually returned to Agra, but Natthan Khan
would later make Bombay his home base for a longer period (1984:93). Natthan Khan’s
first professional assignment was as a court singer in Jaipur, but after 10-12 years there
he again shifted to Bombay. Wade cites Vilayat Hussain Khan in explaining that Natthan
chose Bombay in large part because a particular “female professional singer,” Bawali
Bai, both took him as her Ustad and was willing to support him financially. Bawali Bai
was from Goa, and was only one of many female musicians from that area who were both
notable artists themselves and sources of income for gharaanedaar Ustads who served as
their teachers. Natthan, though, was eventually to move to Mysore to sing in the darbaar
there. The Agra artist who was to have the greatest impact in terms of teaching
Maharashtrian disciples, though, was Natthan Khan’s son, the aforementioned Vilayat
Hussain Khan. VHK spent his earliest years with his father in Mysore, but moved to
Jaipur after his father’s death. In Jaipur, his musical training started with his great-uncle
Mohammed Baksh, but he learned with a large number of other relatives during that time.
It was in 1914, at the age of nineteen, that he moved to Bombay. There he earned a
reputation as a generous teacher and “one of the most authentic exponents of Agra
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gharana”(Wade 1984:99). Among his more notable students were Gajananbua Joshi,
Ram Marathe, a classical vocalist perhaps more well-known as a singer of Marathi
NaaTyaa Sangiit (and one of Ulhas Kashalkar’s Gurus), Jagannathbua Purohit (Guru to
Yashwantbua Joshi and the late Jitendra Abhisheki), and Mogubai Kurdikar, also from
Goa, who later became a disciple of Alladiya Khan.
The most famous Agra singer of them all was of course the great Faiyaz Hussain
Khan, the ‘Aftaab-i-Musiqi,’ or ‘Sun of Music.’ Faiyaz toured widely, visiting a number
of cities, but he did stay for a number of years in Baroda (in the court of Maratha king
Sayajirao Gaekwad) and in Bombay for several shorter stints. As Wade notes, he did not
like to teach, and although he did in fact teach many students, there were few notable
Maharashtrian singers who learned from him. The most important torchbearer for Faiyaz
Khan’s style in the Maharashtra region was Srikrishna Ratanjankar, who had learned with
Antubuwa of the Gwalior gharana and Bhatkhande, among others, before his five years
of taaliim with Faiyaz Khan. Ratanjankar spent most of his professional life in Lucknow
at Bhatkhande’s college, but his continuing ties to the Maharashtra region have come
though his disciples, the late K.G. Ginde and Dinkar Kaikini, both of whom have spent
time teaching on the staff of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bombay (Kaikini is still
involved with that institution at present).
While the number of more recent Agra vocalists are few in Maharashtra, however,
it should be emphasized the great contribution Faiyaz Khan made simply by helping to
popularize classical music in a general way. Dinkar Kaikini, in the interview I conducted
with him in his Bombay home, recounted the attraction he had felt to Faiyaz Khan’s
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music upon first hearing the great maestro perform in Bombay, an attraction which must
have been felt by so many other admirers upon first hearing the great Ustad’s music.
Kaikini explained that he had originally thought he would follow Abdul Karim Khan’s
Kirana style, but he changed his mind after hearing both perform in the same concert.
The second artist came, was Ustad Faiyaz Khansaheb, and his personality was
very great. He came with black, uh, what do you call?…sherwaani, so many
medals, and fez cap. And his voice was very bass…at the same time there was
tenor also, the quality, timbre. When he started singing…it went inside me. So
then I decided, all I want to sing, I must sing like him. I was… at that time I was
seven years old. So, that was the first impression of, you can say, heavy music
(interview, 2005).
It was for this reason that Kaikini went to Chidanand Nagarkar, a young singer at the
time who sang in Faiyaz Khan’s style. Nagarkar subsequnetly directed Kaikini to his
eventual Guru, Ratanjankar. Two other noteworthy Agra style singers, both in Bombay,
are veteran Guru and amateur performer Srikrishna ‘Babanrao’ Haldankar, who studied
with Agra gharanedar Khadim Husssain (who also settled permanently in Bombay after
shifting from Jaipur), and Aarti Anklikar-Tikekar who has learned from Vasant Kulkarni
(of Agra and Gwalior gharanas) and from Kishori Amonkar, and currently studies with
Dinkar Kaikini.
More influential in the Maharashtra region than the Agra gharana style have been
the respective gaayakii-s of the Kirana and Jaipur gharanas, at least in terms of the
numbers of noteworthy Maharashtrian followers. In the cases of both these gharanas,
the driving musical force of each moved from North India to settle in Maharashtra,
eventually within a short distance of one another. In the case of the Kirana gharana it
was gharana doyen Abdul Karim who moved south; in the case of the Jaipur gharana, it
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was founder Alladiya Khan who made Maharashtra his new home. In both cases, Baroda
was their first destination in the region. Abdul Karim, for his part, was born and raised in
Kirana, now in Uttar Pradesh state, and was trained in music by his father Kale Khan and
his cousin Nanne Khan (Wade 1984:85). When Abdul Karim was starting his career, he
went on a series of tours with his brother Abdul Haque, and the two subsequently ended
up in Baroda, as they had been brought there to teach music to the women of the
household. During this stay, the two young Kirana singers were unexpectedly called on
to sing at a concert featuring some of the great singers of the day. Their performance
earned them some notoriety in musical circles, as well as a better appointment in the
court (ibid.:186). Abdul Karim’s next destination was Bombay, and from there he went
to Miraj, the location of the tomb of Muslim saint Qwajja Mirasaheb. Although Abdul
Karim would for a few years move between Sholapur, Kolhapur, and a few other cities in
southern Maharashtra, he would more or less permanently settle in Miraj. Abdul Karim
taught his disciples in the traditional fashion with them living in his home, but he also did
much to further the cause of institutionalized classical music education. He opened his
first school in 1910 in Belgaum (now in Karnataka), and later shifted it to Pune. A
second branch was then opened in Bombay. This is somewhat speculative, but it seems
logical to think that, as the Kirana style is arguably the second most common style in
Maharashtra historically (it could be most popular today, again arguably), it must have
also benefited from the larger numbers of students that could be exposed to the style in
the music school context, as the Gwalior style undoubtedly had.
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As Wade notes, Abdul Karim initially left Baroda for Bombay to be with one of
his students, Tarabai, who later would become his wife. Two of their children, Abdul
Rehman, later known as Suresh Babu Mane (Mane was Tarabai’s maiden name), and
Champutai, known as Hirabai Barodekar, later became famous performers. That these
two were Abdul Karim’s children seems to have been something of an open secret in
Maharashtra over the years - neither Deodhar in his article on Abdul Karim nor V.H.
Deshpande in his piece on Suresh Babu (and Deshpande was Suresh Babu’s disciple for a
time, we should note) mention these relationships. At any rate, Suresh Babu went on to
train Manik Verma, among others. Hirabai’s notable students include the aforementioned
Dr. Prabha Atre. Hirabai herself was also trained for five years by Abdul Wahid Khan, a
younger cousin of Abdul Karim’s, who settled in Lahore, Punjab after a few years in
Bombay. Abdul Wahid was a crucial influence on Amir Khan of Indore, who would, in
effect, later spread the Kirana style to Bengal (I say ‘in effect’ because Amir Khan never
formally trained with a Kirana singer). The most notable Kirana singers of the last fifty
years, though, have been those trained by Abdul Karim’s most famous disciple, Rambhau
Kundgolkar, known popularly as Sawai Gandharva. Sawai Gandharva trained Bhimsen
Joshi, Gangubai Hangal (both from Karnataka like their Guru), and the Parsi singer Firoz
Dastur. Gangubai has subsequently groomed her daughter Krishna as a vocalist and still
lives today in Hubli in northern Karnataka. Bhimsen Joshi, originally from Gadag,
Karnataka, is unquestionably the most famous and influential of Kirana vocalists today.
Bhimsenji has not trained any disciples who have made a name for themselves nationally,
but, like Faiyaz Khan, he has been important in terms of popularizing classical music
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(although he is perhaps most famous outside classical circles for singing bhajan-s, Hindu
devotional songs) and inspiring young singers to pursue classical music. By my own
observation, Bhimsenji is easily the most influential musician in Pune, his home for over
fifty years, where every singer, regardless of their stylistic affiliation or Guru, seems to
have taken something from his style, a statement none of my interviewees disagreed with.
This is not, of course, to say that he has not inspired imitators and followers in Bombay
and elsewhere, including even in Calcutta, because he certainly has. Bhimsen Joshi has
also has done service to Hindustani music by founding the Sawai Gandharva music
festival in Pune, now one of the most prestigious music festivals in India, if not one of the
largest.
The aforementioned Alladiya Khan was the founder of the gharana variously
known as the Jaipur gharana (after his family’s home city/region for two generations
before Alladiya was born), the Atrauli gharana (after his family’s ancestral home in Uttar
Pradesh), the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, or the Alladiya Khan gharana. Of these, the latter is
most appropriate in the sense that, as explained above, Alladiya created a style uniquely
his own which was a departure from the music in which he had been trained in his
youth. 58 Alladiya Khan was born in Uniyara, Rajasthan in 1855 (Deodhar 1993:27). As
with many of the other musicians I have discussed, Alladiya’s father was a respected
singer but passed before Alladiya had begun learning music in earnest. Most of his
training, then, came with his uncle Jehangir Khan, a musician “equally adept in dhrupad-
dhamar and khyal singing,” according to Deodhar. Alladiya Khan is often referred to in
58
By my observation, Jaipur is the most frequent designation used by musicians and connoisseurs today in
Maharashtra.
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Maharashtrian musical circles as ‘avgaD daas’ (‘servant of the difficult’ in Marathi) for
his attraction not only to difficult and complex music, but also for his marathon practice
sessions and his high expectations and standards for his disciples (and perhaps also for
his penchant for politicking, as noted by Bhatkhande). This tendency, in large part, must
have been due to the influence of his uncle, who, as Deshpande notes in discussing
Alladiya’s family tradition of intensive training and practice, “had developed a deformity
in his shoulder through lifelong playing on the tanpura” (1989:65). A key influence
from Alladiya’s early days was the music of Mubarak Ali Khan, the son of Gwalior
gharanedar Bade Mohammed Khan. Alladiya never learned from Mubarak Ali as a
disciple, 59 but it seems likely that the intricate taan patterns which were to become a
hallmark of Alladiya’s music later in life were inspired at least in part by those of
Mubarak Ali. As Deodhar notes, Alladiya frequently discussed Mubarak Ali and his
musical influence throughout his life (1993:28). So, while Alladiya could be offended
when certain individuals (i.e. Bhatkhande) questioned the authenticity of his music in
gharana terms, he was equally as likely to publicly acknowledge his heroes, even if they
belonged to a different gharana than his own.
During the early part of his career, Alladiya traveled frequently and performed at
locations as distant as Nepal, Calcutta, Patna (in Bihar), and Allahabad, and spent several
stints as a court musician in various locales. The turning point in his story, however,
came at age 40 when he was in the service of the court of Amlata (Wade says Ambetha),
59 As Deodhar (1993:28) notes, Alladiya could not learn from Mubarak Ali due to the objections of his
family members, objections likely due to their relatively high social standing based on their legacy as part
of a family of Brahmans converted to Islam and as a member of a lineage of Dhrupad singers.
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now in Madhya Pradesh state. The Raja of Amlata, as all the various accounts of
Alladiya’s life explain, was very fond of music, to the extent that when he brought
Alladiya there, he persuaded him to sing as much as 7-8 hours a day on a regular basis
(Deodhar 1993:30). After two years of this grueling routine, Alladiya’s voice gave out.
Initially he had hoped it would return to normal after some rest, but when it did not, he
was forced to rethink his style. The result of this was the gaayakii he proceeded to make
famous, which mostly employed medium tempos and featured extensive use of his
intricate and rhythmically complex taan patterns, in order to de-emphasize the sweetness
and flexibility which his voice had lost. Alladiya’s first move into the Maharashtra
region as a permanent resident was, again, to Baroda. He had planned to stay on there,
but due to the “machinations”(to use Deodhar’s term) of another court musician, one
Maula Bux, 60 who clearly did not want Alladiya (or any powerful rival) there, he then
subsequently moved to Bombay. In Bombay he was heard by Shahu, the raja of
Kolhapur, who brought him back there as a court musician. His stay in Kolhapur was to
be longest at any one stop; it lasted, according to Wade, 15 years (1984:165). 61 He spent
his remaining years after Kolhapur back in Bombay.
In terms of Maharashtrian disciples, Alladiya trained a number of singers who
were to become the finest of their respective generations. However, other than Kesarbai
Kerkar, it is unclear which students he taught directly and/or for how long. 62 Kesarbai,
60 Bakhle (2005) portrays Maula Bux as an innovative, politically savvy figure that, with more support,
could have developed a system of institutionalized Hindustani music education without the Hindu
nationalist trappings added by Paluskar and Bhatkhande.
61 Susheela Mishra, in her undocumented account, says he stayed in Kolhapur for 25 years, 1895-1920, a
figure also given by several of my informants (1990:69).
62 Wade quotes Kesarbai Kerkar as stating that Alladiya had no other disciples (1984:170-171).
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for her part, was another singer from Goa who trained with Alladiya for some 16 or 17
years, according to Deodhar (1993:33), and she was inarguably Alladiya’s finest protégé
and in the minds of many, was one of the finest, if not the finest, Khyal singers of the
second half of the twentieth century. Kesarbai was another musician not fond of
teaching, however, and never produced a disciple of note. Alladiya’s second most well-
known disciple was Moghubai Kurdikar. Even in the case of Moghubai, though, there
were rumors that she was not an official disciple, a rumor which, as Wade explains,
Alladiya once publicly refuted (1984:180-171). Beyond these two, though, it is difficult
to say who else learned directly from Alladiya. Deodhar lists Seth Gulubhai Jasdanwalla
(Bombay businessman and Guru of Jitendra Abhisheki for a time), Shankarrao Sarnaik
(also the owner of Yashwant Natak Mandali), and Leela Shirgaonkar as students having
taken lessons from the great Ustad “in his declining years,” and says that Nivruttibua
Sarnaik and Vamarao Sadolikar are others who “also claimed to have received tuition
from Khansaheb”(1993:33). Part of the confusion is due to the fact that much of the
actual training of students in Alladiya’s style of music was done by his youngest son
Bhurji Khan, a good teacher who had a lackluster voice. This explains why Vamanrao
Sadolikar, for one, has often been denied the status of Alladiya’s disciple in historical
accounts. As his daughter Shruti Sadolikar explained to me, Vamanrao had taken an
interest in learning the Jaipur style after hearing the riyaaz (practice) of Shankarrao
Sarnaik. However, becoming a disciple of Alladiya proved difficult, as he charged a very
high initial fee for the ganDaa-bandh ceremony (in which a young student became a
master musician’s official disciple), and because Alladiya apparently had had trouble
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with a previous Brahman student and swore off teaching any more of them. Vamanrao
then became the disciple of Bhurji Khan. After a few years with Bhurji, Vamanrao
learned directly from Alladiya for a period of ten years (Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar:
interview, 2005). Govindbua Shaligram of Kolhapur would count as one more of the
uncertain disciples of Alladiya. He would go on to teach his niece Smt. Padmavati
Shaligram-Gokhle (b.1920), 63 who performed regularly until the 1980s when she retired,
but made an appearance that I was fortunate to witness at 2005’s 13th annual ITC
Sangeet Sammelan in Calcutta. Ms. Gokhle continues to sing in a fairly pure version of
the Jaipur style. She is the beneficiary of having learned from Alladiya’s brother Haider
Khan and his nephew Natthan Khan, in addition to the taaliim she received from her
uncle.
Alladiya’s second son, Manji Khan, was also a singer, and a fine one at that.
However, he and his father never saw eye to eye, largely because, as Wade notes, Manji
was a great admirer of Rehmat Khan (a.k.a. Bhugandharva) of the Gwalior gharana, and
Alladiya did not tolerate the open-mindedness of his son in this regard (even though he
himself had been likewise influenced by Mubarak Ali from outside of his khaandaan)
(Wade 1984:166). Manji taught very little it seems, but one noteworthy student was
Mallikarjun Mansur from the Darwad district of northern Karnataka, who also studied
with Bhurji. Mallikarjun Mansur was obscure in terms of national fame for much of his
life, but went on to become a celebrity later in his later years, primarily because he
remained faithful to the style he had been taught by Alladiya’s sons even as the more
63 Soman (2004)
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well-known Kishori Amonkar was incorporating elements of other gharanas into the
Jaipur gaayakii she had inherited from her mother. Mallikarjun’s son Rajshekhar now
carries the tradition forward, albeit as an amateur living in Darwad. Other notable singers
of later generations are the aforementioned Shruti Sadolikar, Padma Talwalkar (disciple
of Moghubai, Nivruttibua Sarnaik, and Gajananbua Joshi), and Ashwini Bhide-
Deshpande, a Bombay native and resident who received her training largely from her
mother, Manik Bhide. It is the Guru of Manik Bhide, Kishori Amonkar, however, that
has been the leading exponent of the Jaipur style for the last 30 odd years. Indeed, in the
eyes of most, Kishori is the finest female Khyal singer post Kesarbai, and, as most of my
interlocutors agreed, is the analogue of her male counterparts like Bhimsen Joshi, Jasraj,
and Kumar Gandharva in terms of being one of the most widely emulated female
classical singers in India today.
One more Khyal singer, I feel, merits discussion here, one who also had the
benefit of learning with Alladiya Khan. This is the great Bhaskarbua Bhakle, who
besides Balkrishnabua and Vishnu Digambar was perhaps the greatest figure of
Maharashtrian classical music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However,
Bhaskarbua is not generally thought of as belonging to the Alladiya/Jaipur gharana, nor
to the Gwalior or Agra gharanas, though he also studied with Gurus of those two
traditions. For Wade, Bhaskarbua is the earliest of the individualistic khyaaliya-s that
“studied gharana styles formally but chose to remain independent of association with any
one of them”(1984:255). Indeed, Bhaskarbua is one of the musicians who likely could
have been looked upon in retrospect as, if not the founder of a new gharana, the creator of
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a new style - if only he had had the followers to carry his unique style forward. As it
happened, though, Bhaskarbua’s most notable students in historical terms were Master
Krishnarao (Krishna Phulambrikar), a singer who sang Khyal but was more famous as a
singer of Marathi NaaTyaa Sangiit; Govindrao Tembe, writer/actor/harmonium player;
and Bal Gandharva (Narayan Rajhans), a singer only of NaaTyaa Sangiit, albeit the most
revered NaaTyaa Sangiit singer in the history of the Marathi stage. Another notable
disciple is Punjabi musician-scholar Dilip Chandra Vedi. Without denying his
importance in a general sense, D.C. Vedi does not concern us here, as his life and
professional career was spent entirely in North India, with his discipleship under
Bhaskarbua being his only real tie to the Maharashtra region. For what it is worth,
though, D.C. Vedi also did not pass down what he learned from Bhaskarbua in the strict
manner in which an orthodox gharana musician would have handed down what they had
learned from their Guru/Ustad. This is perhaps because the most important thing D.C.
Vedi learned from Bhaskarbua was the value of open-mindedness. Wade quotes him as
explaining to her in a 1978 interview that “I am not a blind follower of any gharana. God
is not purchased by anyone. Music cannot be claimed by anyone. All artists take from
all, but few admit it” (ibid.:257). At any rate, the only real link between Bhaskarbua and
any of today’s notable Maharashtrian performers comes through the late Ram Marathe, a
disciple of Master Krishnarao, among others, who taught Ulhas Kashalkar for a time.
Bhaskar Bakhle was born in Kathor in Baroda state in 1869 to a poor Brahman
family (Deodhar 1993:92). His father’s meager salary was not enough to send young
Bhaskar to an English school, so instead he was sent to a Sanskrit paaThshaalaa (school).
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While he did well with Sanskrit, it was noticed by his teachers that Bhaskar had a great
fondness and aptitude for music. He was then sent, after some lessons from a haridaas 64
named Pingle, to learn at the music school run by Maula Bux of the Baroda court. After
six months of training there, Bhaskar auditioned for and was accepted by the famous
Sangiit NaaTak Company run by Annasaheb Kirloskar; he was to play a female character
in the drama that the company was about to begin rehearsing. However, as Deodhar
writes, Bhaskar knew “that when his voice broke [due to the onset of puberty] his value
to the company would be next to nothing”(ibid.:93). For this reason, Bhaskar spent much
of his time while touring with the Natak company trying to find a proper Guru - learning
classical music remained his ultimate goal. It seems that while performing in Indore,
Bhaskar caught the ear of the great biinkaar Bande Ali Khan, and succeeded in having
the Ustad accept him as his disciple. After a few lessons, though, the Kirloskar company
had to leave Indore for its next destination, and Bhaskar’s training was over for the time
being.
The turning point in Bhaskarbua’s story came when he was, according to all
accounts, insulted by the leading man of the company, Sangiit NaaTak legend Bhaurao
Kolhatkar. What exactly Kolhatkar said to Bhaskarbua varies according to different
sources, but all agree that he insulted the boy’s cracking voice. According to Deshpande,
Kolhatkar told Bhaskarbua, “With your broken voice, you are no good to us except for
menial jobs”(1972:23). In Deodhar’s more detailed account, though, Bhaskar had begun
a routine of extensive practicing in order to help his voice through its transitional phase,
64 A haridaas is, according to Deodhar, a “person who gives discourses on religious subjects and includes
prose as well as poetry and music”(1993:92n).
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and due to this, Kolhatkar suggested that Bhaskar was shirking his duties with the
company in order to make time to practice, while also insulting his voice (1993:94).
Regardless of the details, Bhaskarbua left the company at this time, and set about finding
a Guru. He found one in the person of Faiz Mohammed Khan of the Gwalior gharana, a
singer employed in the Baroda darbaar. According to Deodhar it was the
aforementioned high court justice of Bombay (and student of Balkrishnabua) K.T. Telang
who made the arrangements for Bhaskarbua to learn with Faiz Mohammed, and Telang
would again intercede a few months later when on a visit to Faiz Mohammed, he had
discovered that the Ustad had not been teaching (or feeding) the teenaged Bhaskar, whose
time was mostly filled with doing chores in Faiz Mohammed’s home (ibid.:95). After
this intercession, though, Faiz Mohammed began teaching Bhaskar in earnest, and their
relationship lasted eight years, until 1894. Regarding the guru-bhakti (devotion for the
Guru) that Bhaskarbua felt for Faiz Mohammed, Deshpande gives an anecdote in which,
during a lesson, Faiz Mohammed, while chewing paan and tobacco, unexpectedly
coughed out what he had been chewing. As there was no spittoon around, Bhaskarbua
caught the “sputum” in his hands, threw it out the window and “resumed his lesson as if
nothing had happened”(1972:23).
Faiz Mohammed returned the affection that Bhaskarbua felt for him in full
measure, evidenced not only by the careful training he provided Bhaskarbua, but also by
willingly sending Bhaskarbua to another Ustad, one of a different gharana no less, when
he felt that he had taught everything he could to Bhaskarbua. This second Guru was
Ustad Natthan Khan of Agra gharana, who at the time was employed by the Mysore
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darbaar. He heard Bhaskarbua sing a bit when he had come to visit Faiz Mohammed,
and agreed to teach him when Faiz Mohammed suggested it. This period of
Bhaskarbua’s education lasted six more years, though the time the two spent together was
limited by the fact that Bhaskarbua was staying mostly in Bombay and Dharwad and
could only learn when Natthan Khan was passing through. Natthan was as fond of his
student as Faiz Mohammed had been, and he likewise recommended (reputedly while on
his deathbed) that Bhaskar move on and learn from Alladiya Khan, his third and final
Guru. This relationship was to last until Bhaskarbua’s untimely demise at the age of 52;
during this period both Bhaskarbua and Alladiya were staying at Bombay. It is again
worth mentioning that this willingness on the part of Bhaskarbua’s Ustads to send him to
learn from singers of other gharanas again contradicts the stereotype of gharaanedaar
musicians who withheld their best music from outsiders and placed their gharana above
everything else. This is not to say that Faiz Mohammed and Natthan did not have their
flaws – we know Faiz Mohammed did – but they certainly seemed to have taught
Bhaskarbua as if he was their own son. Likewise, when Bhaskarbua died, Alladiya
reportedly was disconsolate. Deshpande quotes AK as saying, “‘Bhaskar is gone – whom
shall I now sing for?’”(1972:25).
Bhaskarbua’s career is of special significance here for two reasons. First, as with
Vishnu Digambar, Bhaskarbua succeeded in making a name for himself in areas of India
far away from his home base of Maharashtra. As Deshpande explains,
While Balkrishnabua, the doyen, had brought the art of music to Maharashtra
from outside, Bhaskarbua, it may be said, took it out of Maharashtra, to other
parts of the country. In fact, Bhaskarbua was the first Maratha musician whose
musicianship crossed the frontiers of Maharashtra in recent times and commanded
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equal respect in the home province and in other provinces such as Gujurat, Sind,
Punjab, Kashmir, Mysore, Karnatak, etc. (1972:22).
By all accounts, Bhaskarbua was loved by audiences in the Punjab in particular, for
example in Jalandhar, where women reputedly dressed in men’s clothing in order to hear
Bhaskarbua sing at the festival there (at Devi Talao) which allowed admission only to
men. The affection North Indian audiences felt for Bhaskarbua was duplicated by the
Ustads of North India. One Mubarak Ali (not the Mubarak Ali of Gwalior, mentioned
above in connection with Alladiya Khan) was particularly noted for his love of
Bhaskarbua’s singing. According to Deshpande, “Ustads like Mubarak Ali Khan of
Karachi felt themselves honored in doing personal service such as rubbing oil on his head
or massaging him”(ibid.:25). He also, again according to Deodhar, followed Bhaskarbua
around India in order to hear him sing as often as possible. Wim van der Meer notes that
Rehmat Khan used to refer to Bhaskarbua as “Khansaheb Bhaskarbua, or Bhaskar Khan,
thus denoting that he considered Bhaskar as the only Hindu musician worth being called
that name”(1980:153). All in all, then, Bhaskarbua helped to establish the reputation of
Maharashtrian musicians outside of Maharashtra, especially among the gharaanedaar
establishment of North India, even if his legacy now is limited to historical accounts and
anecdotes regarding his greatness. His music was either never recorded, as was the case
with Alladiya Khan, or no recordings survive. 65
The greater significance of Bhaskarbua in the present context concerns the
manner in which he successfully combined the styles of three gharanas into an admixture
65 Amlan Dasgupta, music connoisseur and English professor at Calcutta’s Jadavpur University, has a 78
rpm recording that he strongly believes to be Bhaskarbua.
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that was universally admired. It should be apparent that most Marathi khyaaliya-s of the
last 50-60 years have learned their music from Gurus representing at least two different
gharanas. As I mentioned above, the most common pattern has been for a singer to begin
with a Guru who sings the Gwalior style and then move to a Guru who sings the gaayakii
of one of the other major gharanas, whether it is Kirana, Agra, or Jaipur (these being the
relevant gharanas in Maharashtra – the Rampur-Sahaswan and Patiala styles have not
made much an of impression with Marathi vocalists). Certainly, there have been other
combinations, but this has been the most common, as the Gwalior style is most prevalent
and most compatible with other styles. Although performers representing other gharanas
might object, it is frequently stated that Gwalior is the most balanced style in the sense
that it places equal emphasis on all the broad divisions of a performance, while the others
emphasize one aspect, perhaps to the detriment of the others. By this view, Kirana
focuses most on aalaapii, the opening part of a raga performance when the different
melodic combinations permissible within a raga are systematically explored; Agra
emphasizes the middle portion or bol-ang which is the most rhythmically oriented portion
of a performance; and Jaipur emphasizes taan, as I explained in my discussion of
Alladiya Khan. Of these three, the Kirana style is most limited in the sense that not only
is aalaapii emphasized, the other elements are noticeably deemphasized, particularly the
bol-ang. Deshpande feels that the Agra style is similarly limited but lies on the other end
of his swara-laya spectrum, foregrounding rhythm at the expense of melody.
Babanrao Haldankar, for one, strongly rejects this view. In our interview, he
vehemently asserted that the Agra gaayakii was versatile and could be used to sing “any
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kind of raag” (interview, 2005). Deshpande, not coincidentally a disciple of Jaipur
stalwart Moghubai Kurdikar, similarly argues that not only is the Jaipur style not limited
in any way, it is actually as balanced as Gwalior and is complex where the Gwalior style
is simplistic. This is in spite of the fact that B.R. Deodhar testifies that he “failed to find
any bol-tana” in Alladiya’s music on the two occasions he heard the great master on
stage (1993:36), and in spite of the fact that a cursory listen to a recording of Kesarbai’s
or Mallikarjun Mansur’s recordings will demonstrate that these artists devoted a large
portion of their performances to taan.
At any rate, the result of this differential emphasis on the different aspects of the
music has been that when singers became willing and desirous of crossing gharana lines,
so to speak, in order to improve their own music and make it more individualistic and
personal, they could look to the music of other gharanas in order to improve the under-
developed aspects of their own gharana’s style. Again, this can be seen in the music of
some of Maharashtra’s most legendary singers. Bhimsen Joshi is known as the doyen of
the Kirana gharana, but he learned initially from a Gwalior-affiliated Guru and has
augmented what he has learned from Sawai Gandharva with elements of the more
rhythmically vigorous Agra style. Kishori Amonkar has gone the opposite direction,
adding the Kirana aalaap to the Jaipur style she has learned from her mother.
Bhaskarbua, though, stands out as the first and possibly the greatest Marathi khyaaliya
who successfully blended the gaayakii of three gharanas. In this way he is very much a
prototype for the vocalists who would follow him historically.
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I would argue that there are two broad types of Maharashtrian Khyal singer, 66
those that favor or have favored a more simplistic, emotionally expressive, and bhakti-
based idiom, a category which would include not only Vishnu Digambar and many of his
followers (particularly his son D.V. Paluskar and disciples Narayanrao Vyas and
Vinayakrao Patwardhan), but also many of the Kirana singers, including Abdul Karim
himself, who had a strongly devotional element in his music. The common denominator
amongst this group may well be the influence of Rehmat Khan, the son of Haddu Khan of
the Gwalior gharana. I equivocate a bit on this point due to the fact that the available
sources differ greatly in their appraisal of Rehmat’s historical significance and influence.
Wade (1984) does mention Rehmat as having had a great deal of influence on Alladiya’s
son Manji, which, as I mentioned above, apparently created a rift between Manji and his
father. However, in Wade’s section on the Gwalior gharana in which she enumerates the
accomplishments of the various members of that lineage, she states that Rehmat “is not
among the best remembered musicians of his time”(48). Wim van der Meer (1980),
basing his account mostly on the testimony of his own teacher D.C. Vedi (who was able
to see Rehmat perform in person), feels rather that Rehmat was one of the crucial figures
in classical vocal music at the turn of the 20th century. As van der Meer writes, “[h]is
greatness was acclaimed generally and all musicians sought his favor at the beginning of
the century” (1980:152-153). Among the incidents which van der Meer cites as evidence
of his greatness was a “musical contest” in which Rehmat defeated the great Alladiya
Khansaheb “by unanimous consent.”
66 These broad categories do not cover all singers in Maharashtra; there are some that sing ‘pure’ Gwalior
or Jaipur or Kirana, for example Jaipur maestro Mallickarjun Mansur.
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Wim van der Meer asserts, again based on the recollections of D.C. Vedi, that
Rehmat was a key influence not only on Manji Khan, but also on Abdul Karim Khan,
who heard Rehmat sing after the latter had settled in Kurundwad (near Miraj where
Abdul Karim lived at the time), and on Omkarnath Thakur, well-known disciple of
Vishnu Digambar, who on several occasions provided tanpura accompaniment for
Rehmat’s performances. If we take that Omkarnath drew much from Rehmat’s music,
which is not unquestionable by any means, then it would seem that this influence
continued into the music of Kumar Gandharva, who, by all accounts, was greatly
influenced by Omkarnath. Wim van der Meer describes Rehmat Khan’s style thusly:
According to Vedi the characteristics of Rehmat Khan’s style were in the first
place a fabulous standard of intonation and voice production, secondly, a
profound, emotional style of rendering alapa or barhata, marked by a deep
insight into the raga and, thirdly, a great ease and freedom paired with the most
original and aesthetic tanas. The essential point is that Rehmet Khan liberated
himself from the rather meticulous and methodical approach to music which
predominated in the Gwalior gharana. Instead, his music poured out of his soul,
and spoke of total understanding of and union with the raga he performed
(1980:153-154).
Why then would Wade make the statement that Rehmat is not among the better
remembered musicians of his generation? Her own answer to this question is that
Rehmat was simply overshadowed by his father, the great Haddu Khan (1984:48). A
more convincing answer is provided by van der Meer, who explains that Rehmat refused
an appointment as a court musician in Gwalior, and then left altogether after the death of
his father and brother, ending up in Benares. As van der Meer writes, “[Rehmat] must
have been quite a phenomenon there [in Benares], singing in the streets, living on alms
and constantly drugged by opium”(1980:153). For a time, then, Rehmat was totally lost
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to the Hindustani music establishment, until Vishnupant Chhatre, a pioneer of circus in
India and disciple of Haddu, found Rehmat and brought him back to Maharashtra (to
Bombay), thus earning Chhatre his place in the history of Indian classical music
(Deodhar 1993). It was after Vishnu Chhatre’s death that Rehmat ended up in
Kurundwad, under the care of Chhatre’s younger brother. So, not only was Rehmat
largely forgotten during what should have been the prime of his career, he also apparently
had few initiated disciples. Again, many were influenced by his singing, but he did not
leave behind a group of dedicated followers who could have preserved his legacy and
memory.
The other type of khyaaliya would include those performers who have combined
the Jaipur style with either the Gwalior and/or the Agra styles. Bhaskarbua was the first
of these. As Deshpande explains,
…Bhaskarbua was a unique singer in his time in the sense that he had attained
proficiency of the highest order in all aspects of Indian classical music and he was
able to present his art in a perfectly balanced manner. In other words, his
uniqueness lay in a gayaki (style) which was perfectly developed in all respects
and perfectly presented…For instance, everybody has praised Buwa’s alapi,
design of cheej and vilambit, all of which he had picked up from Faiz-mahammed
Khan. Similarly, many writers have commented on the rhythmic accuracy,
layakari, boltan and tana he had picked up from Naththan Khansaheb Agrawale.
Govindro Tembe has talked about the complex, intricate and arcane gayaki picked
up by Buwa from Alladiya Khansaheb. He has also used the metaphor of a fully
grown luxuriant tree with spreading branches and sub-branches to describe the
beauty of Buwa’s fast passages (1989:53).
So, completeness is the byword here, along with the combination of a reverence for
tradition and a desire for uniqueness and individuality. Clearly, then, this is a style (in
the broadest sense of the word) that can only be perfected by performers of a high caliber,
whereas the (Balkrishnabua version of) Gwalior and Kirana styles are, to a large extent,
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appropriate for both amateurs and experts, another factor which helps explain why they
are more common in the Maharashtra region (and across India) than the Agra and Jaipur
styles. I should be clear that, if I were to be placing Rehmat himself in one of these two
categories, which is not my intent as I am dealing here with the music of the non-
hereditary singers in the Maharashtra region, he would belong more in this latter group.
He, like Bhaskarbua, who he seems also to have profoundly influenced, had a complete
and balanced approach. What Abdul Karim, Omkarnath, and others took from him was
the heart-rending, emotional quality of his singing (conveyed primarily through aalaap),
not his entire approach.
We also should not lose sight of the fact that the Gwalior, Agra, and Jaipur styles
have in common one very important element – the centrality of the bandiish or
composition. I believe this is important both as a legacy of Maharashtrian musicians’
contact with North Indian Ustads and as an example of the classicism of Maharashtrian
singers which, in turn, is indicative of the value they place on tradition and their
reverence toward their predecessors, a reverence visible in all realms of Maharashtrian
culture. In this regard, the Maharashtrian khyaaliya-s who still practice in this broad style
are swimming against the tide, as the most pervasive styles across India these days are, in
instrumental music, the late sitar maestro Vilayat Khan’s gaayakii ang and, in vocal
music, the Kirana style, particularly Amir Khan’s version of it. In these styles, the
composition takes a back seat, and the ragas are developed in a somewhat stereotyped
manner regardless of the composition being performed or the specific aesthetic of the
raga being performed. Also often neglected by followers of these styles is layakaari.
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Systematic rhythmic variations are prominent element in Dhrupad music, so it is not
surprising that the three gharanas with Dhrupad roots would include this in their Khyal.
It is important to keep in mind that layakaarii is, in Khyal music, inextricably tied to the
text of the composition, hence the name bol-ang, the section (lit. “limb”) featuring words,
or bol.
I will elaborate on these points more below (particularly in chapter 8), but before
proceeding, I should mention some other names who belong to this broad stylistic
category. The first is Ram Marathe. As I mentioned before, Ram Marathe (d.1989)
stands as the one link between Bhaskarbua and the present day singers of Maharashtra, as
Ram Marathe was a disciple of Master Krishnarao. However, whether his catholic
approach to musical style was an inheritance, second-hand, from Bhaskarbua, or was
totally due to his own temperament, Ram Marathe also fused a number of styles in his
music, namely Gwalior, Agra, and Jaipur (as Bhaskarbua had). Besides Krishnarao, he
learned from Bal Gandharva, Mirashibua (Gwalior), B.R. Deodhar (student of Vishnu
Digambar), Vamanrao Sadolikar (Jaipur), Vilayat Hussain Khan (Agra), and
Jagannathbua Purohit (Agra), and was strongly influenced by other Jaipur singers
(Nivruttibua Sarnaik and Mallikarjun Mansur) and Gwalior singers (Rehmat Khan,
Ramkrishnabua Vaze, and Gajananbua Joshi). 67 Gajananbua Joshi, as mentioned above,
also blended these traditions in his music, as have Ulhas Kashalkar (student of
Gajananbua and Ram Marathe) and his disciples Dr. Ram Deshpande (who has also
learned from Yashwantbua Joshi of Gwalior and V.R. Athavale and Babanrao Haldankar
67 see Soman (2000)
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of Agra gharana) and Shashank Maktedar. One more singer of this type would be the late
Jitendra Abhisheki who learned from Azmat Hussein and Jagannath Purohit of the Agra
gharana and Gulubhai Jasdanwalla and Azizuddin Khan (Alladiya Khan’s grandson) of
the Jaipur gharana. Jitendra Abhisheki has passed his music on to his son Shaunak, a
resident of Pune.
It is tempting to include the late Vasantrao Deshpande in this group, as he
definitely combined the styles of more than two gharanas in his music, and like many of
the above singers was known as a high quality Marathi stage performer and singer as well
as a khyaaliya. When we examine the elements that make up Vasantrao’s music,
however, we find a very different combination than in the case of the ‘Bhaskar Bakhle
type’ singers. Vasantrao again began his musical education with a Gwalior singer,
Shankarrao Sapre, a disciple of Vishnu Digambar, in Vasantrao’s hometown of Nagpur
(Mishra 1990:219). After this, however, he would go on to study with Gurus of the
Kirana gharana (Sureshbabu Mane), Patiala gharana (Asad Ali Khan), and the so-called
‘Bendibazaar gharana’ (Aman Ali Khan and Anjanibai Malpekar). 68 As such,
Vasantrao’s music had many of the elements more commonly found in the Bade Ghulam
Ali and Amir Khan influenced khyaaliya-s of Calcutta. The most notable of such
elements are the MerkhanD style alap (from the Bendibazaar singers) 69 and the extensive
use of sargam (primarily from the Kirana singers, but from the Bendibazaar side also).
This is not to say that Vasantrao Deshpande’s music does not resemble that of any of his
68
The Bendibazaar gharana is actually an off-shoot of the older Moradabad gharana based in the
Bendibazaar area of Bombay.
69
MerkhanD is a technique of aalaap in which every possible permutation of note combinations is
systematically explored.
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Maharashtrian contemporaries. It does, in as much as his singing, like so many of the
above musicians, was shaped by his experience as a stage singer. This means, among
other things, a more intense, pointed delivery than Bengali singers generally utilize, along
with a higher SA pitch. Vasantrao also included a fair amount of layakaari in his music
which is much more typical of Maharashtrian singers than Bengali singers.
Before proceeding I should note what might appear to be a slight inconsistency:
that I have placed Ulhas Kashalkar and his disciples in two different categories, Gwalior
singers and Bhaskarbua-type independent (non-gharana) singers. This inconsistency is
due primarily to the difference between musical style and social identification. In
musical terms, Kashalkar and his Guru Gajananbua, at least in my view, resemble
Bhaskarbua in that they have adopted much of the Jaipur style (which includes ragas and
compositions identified with the Jaipur gharana) into their music which otherwise is of
the Gwalior/Agra mould. However, in lineage terms, these two are tied rather directly to
the early Gwalior singers of Maharashtra. To reiterate, Gajananbua was the son of
‘Antubua,’ Manohar Joshi, disciple of Balkrishnabua. So, whatever the different
elements are which are present in their gaayakii, these singers identify with the Gwalior
tradition, again, the foundational style of Khyal in Maharashtra. If we look at such
instances of self identification where one part of a musician’s musical legacy is
emphasized above others as a strategy, we can see that Bhaskarbua’s ‘independent’ status
is a path that not all Maharashtrian singers have followed, even if they have emulated his
catholic approach to style. Kumar Gandharva and Jitendra Abhisheki, to name two
examples, also chose the route of independence, but many others, like Bhimsen Joshi and
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Kishori Amonkar, have experimented musically but adhered to their ‘membership’ in
their respective Gurus’ gharanas. I cannot speak as surely of Ulhas Kashalkar’s
motivations, but I can say that Ram Deshpande, as I learned through our lessons and
conversations, is a singer that, like many of his peers, wants to take the best from every
gharana and is happy to acknowledge his influences outside of his direct teachers, yet
identifies himself as a Gwalior singer. Perhaps in this way (and this is, again, only my
observation) he can honor the legacies of both Vishnu Digambar and Bhaskarbua Bhakle.
One more apparent inconsistency in my categorizations is that currently almost
every young Khyal singer (young, meaning here below the age of 40) in India employs a
style of aalaapi which is similar, if not identical, to that of the Kirana school. The
identifying point of this style is that it develops the raga slowly note by note and register
by register (not unlike the Dhrupad-style aalaap in this regard), rather than as in the
Gwalior style where raga development proceeds by larger melodic units and, as a result,
is generally performed in a shorter time span. Veena Saharabuddhe humorously
compared the Kirana aalaap style to a local train, where the train stops at every sub-
station, while the Gwalior aalaap more resembles an express train, stopping only at the
major stations (interview, 2005). This common inclusion of the Kirana style aalaap in a
singer’s overall stylistic approach is true even of relatively young performers such as
Ram Deshpande who I have categorized as ‘Bhaskarbua-type’ khyaaliya-s. There are
two points to be made regarding this phenomenon. First, considering its popularity in
Maharashtra and its complete dominance relative to other Khyal styles in Bengal (as I
will discuss below), it is clear that the Kirana style, in the loosest sense, has become the
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closest thing there is to an all-India Khyal style. In this sense, this very clearly is
evidence of the homogeneity which so many performers and scholars see as the essential
reality of modern Hindustani music. However, at the same time, I feel this adoption of
the ‘step-by-step’ aalaap style is also evidence of a particularly Maharashtrian impulse
toward completeness, as evidenced by the admiration so many Marathi performers felt
for Rehmat Khan during his lifetime. Along these lines, it can be seen as the last step in
the process of augmenting, so to speak, the basic Gwalior style. Bhaskarbua himself
incorporated the rhythmic aspects of the Agra style and the taan-s (among other things)
from the Jaipur style, so the only addition that remained for later generations was the
inclusion of the Kirana aalaap. This means, then, that if we are to distinguish between
Marathi and Bengali khyaaliya-s of the present generation, we have to look beyond this
one aspect of the music. There are, indeed, as many differences as similarities between
the general Maharashtrian approach to Khyal and the corresponding Bengali approach,
even if, as many would have it, regional differences in musical style disappeared at some
point in the 1960s or ‘70s. As we examine Khyal in Bengal, we will see that, considering
the very different historical scenario that played out in Bengal as compared to
Maharashtra in the period from the late 19th century until 1947, it would be very
surprising if there were not significant differences in the style of Khyal practiced in each
region.
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4. Khyal in Bengal
As stated above, the history of gharana, particularly of Khyal gharanas, is much
less extensive in Bengal than in Maharashtra. As opposed to Maharashtra, there were not
numerous princely states in Bengal that could attract North Indian Ustads seeking new
sources of patronage in the late 19th century, although Calcutta as a commercial center
held out many of the same possibilities to musicians as Bombay did in western India,
such as teaching ‘professional women artists’ and performing in ticketed concerts. In
Calcutta and elsewhere, there were wealthy merchants and landlords (zamiindaar),
Bengali and non-Bengali, willing to patronize classical music, but their interests ranged
from Thumri to Dhrupad to instrumental music. Also, the general middle-class audience
in Bengal has never developed a taste for Khyal, outside of a handful of charismatic
singers, i.e. Faiyaz, Bade Ghulam Ali, and Amir Khan, who created temporary surges in
Khyal’s popularity, unlike in Maharashtra where Vishnu Digambar, among others, helped
to cultivate a middle class audience almost exclusively interested in Khyal (among the
classical genres). The result of this situation has been that Khyal, on the whole, has not
been very popular in Calcutta or Bengal generally (among performers or audiences), and
that of the Khyal singers most often thought to be the best Bengal has produced, very few
have made a name for themselves nationally. Bengal does have the distinction, though,
of having birthed the only commonly recognized gharana to have been founded outside
of Hindi-speaking North India. This is the Vishnupur gharana which began as, and
remained until the last fifty years, a Dhrupad gharana. I will begin my discussion of
Khyal in Bengal with this group of musicians.
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As Charles Capwell, in his article “The Interpretation of History and the
Foundations of Authority in the Vishnupur Gharana of Bengal”(1991) explains, “The
Vishnupur gharana is considered the one true gharana of Bengal by virtue of the antiquity
of its status as a Seniya gharana…,” the aforementioned gharana whose lineage can be
traced back to descendents of Tansen, the legendary singer of the Mughal emperor
Akbar’s court (97). As with the Khyal gharanas mentioned in chapter 3, the Vishnupur
gharana takes its name from the town in which it was founded, the small former kingdom
in southwestern Bengal where the Mallo dynasty ruled for some 1,250 years. The link to
Tansen comes through the ostensible founder of the gharana, Bahadur Khan, who,
according to tradition, was brought as a court musician by Mallo ruler Ragunath II to
Vishnupur in the early 18th century. The succession from Bahadur Khan was then to his
Hindu student Gadadhar Chakraborty, who in turn taught Krishnamohan Goswami, who
in turn taught Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (Capwell 1991:99-100). This is all in line with
the lineage chart of the Vishnupur gharana given to me by (and drawn up by) Vishnupur
doyen Amayaranjan Banerjee, except that, according to that chart, Ram Shankar
Bhattacharya was the direct student of Gadadhar Chakraborty. Regardless, as Capwell
(citing evidence from Dilipkumar Mukerjee) explains, it is very unlikely based on the
available historical evidence that any musician by the name of Bahadur Khan would have
been a contemporary to Ragunath II. It is more logical to deduce that Ram Shankar was
himself the founder of the Vishnupur gharana. Amayaranjan’s chart describes Ram
Shankar as the “architect of the Vishnupur gharana,” but lists Bahadur Khan as the
gharana’s founder nonetheless. Mita Nag also credited Bahadursen (as she called him) as
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the founder of the gharana, noting the liberalism of Ragunath II in bringing a Muslim
Ustad to teach music in a “strictly Hindu province” (interview, 2005). The point to be
made, however, which is the main thrust of Capwell’s short piece, is that the Vishnupur
musicians maintain that Bahadur Khan founded the tradition instead of Ram Shankar
Bhattacharya because, not only was this Bahadur Khan from North India, the historical
center of Hindu and Indian culture (unlike the marginal backwater that many have
considered Bengal to be), he was also a descendent of the greatest Indian musician ever.
The latter part of the proposition is crucial because Ram Shankar’s teacher was a pilgrim
from North India known now known only as ‘Panditji,’ who himself could have been
given the status of gharana founder. However, as Capwell states, “In the eighteenth
century, only a Muslim Ustad carried the necessary authority of upcountry music culture
needed for the proper establishment of a professional lineage…”(1991:101). In other
words, even a gharana of Bengali Hindu Dhrupad singers (and composers, scholars, and
instrumentalists) could only be founded on the authority of a North Indian, Muslim,
gharaanedaar musician.
The second point to be taken from Capwell’s article concerns the musical style of
the Vishnupur singers. As Capwell explains, the style of the Vishnupur dhrupadiya-s
was “recognized as exceptionally plain and lacking in the heavy trills or gamak, the
portamenti or mir [meend], and rhythmic permutations of text phrases or bol bamt that
are featured in most styles [of Dhrupad]” (ibid.:98). While this is intended to be a
description only of the Vishnupur Dhrupad style, I would argue that this is also a fair
general description of Bengali Khyal singing as well, particularly the lack of layakaarii.
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Of course, it is all the more telling that Bengali singers of the Vishnupur school would
forgo bol-baanT in the context of Dhrupad, where it is one of the most fundamental
techniques, at least in the styles of other gharanas. It also notable that, as Capwell states,
many Vishnupur singers were also composers, and composed their dhrupad-s (meaning
Dhrupad compositions) in both Sanskrit and, more importantly, Bengali, to go along with
the more traditional language used for Dhrupad and Khyal, the Braj dialect of Hindi. As
I will explain further in chapter 7 when I discuss the regional music of Bengal, one of the
most common traits of Bengali music in general is a heavy reliance on the text of any
particular tune or composition. Bengalis, as most would attest, desire meaningful and
poetic texts, and as such, it is not surprising to find that Bengalis have experimented with
setting Bengali lyrics to both Khyal and Dhrupad compositions. Widdess and Sanyal,
while discussing the influence of the Betiya Dhrupad gharana of Bihar, note the
popularity of Betiya compositions in Bengal which is “at least partly because of the
poetic qualities of dhrupad compositions”(2004:31). The fact that Khyal texts are
generally thought of as dispensable (and routinely mangled by Khyal singers) is, then,
one piece in the puzzle in terms of figuring out why Khyal has never thrived in Bengal.
Regarding the Vishnupur gharana specifically, the real question is whether the Vishnupur
gharana has influenced classical music in Bengal in these specific directions, or whether
these stylistic tendencies represent aesthetic preferences specific to Bengali culture. I
would argue that it is some of both, although the latter is more likely true. That is,
Vishnupur musicians have certainly been influential in the Bengal region, particularly
gharana stalwarts such as Gyan Prasad Goswami, Girija Shankar Chakraborty, Satya
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Kinkar Banerjee (Amayaranjan’s father and Guru), and Jadu Bhatta (musical Guru of the
Rabindranath/Jorashanko branch of the Tagore family). At the same time, however,
these traits, particularly the simplification of musical form and style, show up in the
music of singers who do not have any real ties to the Vishnupur gharana. Indeed, I would
argue that the influence of Amir Khan (which I discuss below) in Calcutta is due to the
fact that, in many ways, his music fit very nicely with this Bengali aesthetic.
In terms of gauging the impact Vishnupur musicians and their music have had on
the musical scene in Bengal, it is very arguable that their most enduring legacy comes
through in Rabindrasangiit, the light songs composed by Rabindranath Tagore that are
ubiquitous across West Bengal state. I will discuss this genre further in chapter 7, but it
will suffice here to note that Jadu Bhatta, as the Guru of the Tagore family, taught
Dhrupad compositions from his repertoire to Rabindranath (many of which were Betiah
gharana compositions, one should note), who in turn used these as the primary foundation
for his own unique brand of music that draws on many styles and genres besides
Vishnupur-style Dhrupad, including Western songs and melodies. In terms of current-
day musicians who belong to this gharana by heredity or through their Guru, however,
the numbers are quite limited. The Vishnupur gharana was never at any point the
preserve of one specific lineage in the same way that most Khyal gharanas were in the
early days of their history. Rather, the Vishnupur gharana has always been a more
diffuse collection of various Bengali Brahman families. 70 So, while, again, there have
been a number of notable lineages (and individual musicians) who were or are members
70 Widdess and Sanyal note that this is a common trait of regional Dhrupad traditions (2004:32).
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of the Vishnupur gharana, two stand out now: the Nags and the Banerjees (of Satya
Kinkar Banerjee’s line). Of these two families, the Nags are seemingly the more well-
known nationally and internationally, primarily because they are sitarists. The first
notable musician of this line was Gokul Nag, a disciple of Ramprasanna Banerjee, a
contemporary of Maihar gharana founder Allaudin Khan, and an important early
influence on Ravi Shankar. His son is Manilal Nag, and his granddaughter is the
aforementioned Mita Nag. It is also arguable that these sitarists also have done the most
to preserve the Vishnupur Dhrupad style, although they have certainly incorporated non-
Dhrupad elements into their music. This is in contrast to the Banerjees, who, from
Amiyaranjan forward, have been Khyal singers. Amiyaranjan’s line, it should be noted,
is central to the gharana historically. Amiyaranjan learned from his father, Satya Kinkar,
who had learned from his uncle Gopeshwar Banerjee. Gopeshwar was the son of
Anantlal, a disciple of Ram Shankar Bhattacharya himself, according to the information
given to me by Amiyaranjan.
Amiyaranjan was quite forthright in our interview regarding his decision to leave
the Vishnupur Dhrupad style in order to concentrate on singing Khyal:
JG: Well, do you think, uh, something was there in your grandfather’s music, in
his style, that’s still here in your music?
AB: No, no, no.
JG: Your music is completely different than his? What about compared to your
father?
AB: Ah, yes, completely different – otherwise today’s audience will not take
my…will not accept my music. If I do not change the form, if I do not revise the
form…If I do not…reorganize, the audience will not accept.
JG: Because your gharana is a…
AB: It is a relation between the music and the audience. What audience demands,
we have to, we have to understand what they want…what is their demand. Uh,
so, we have to innovate in the style in that way (interview, 2005).
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As Amiyaranjan then explained, his primary influences have been Tarapada Chakraborty,
an important khyaaliya in the Bengal region (but little known outside), and the late Amir
Khan of Indore (as Amiyaranjan said, “Amir Khan is the best…he is unparalleled”). In
this regard, Amiyaranjan is not alone. Amir Khan is undoubtedly the most important and
pervasive influence on all current Bengali singers, with any other singer, for example
Bade Ghulam Ali, coming in a distant second. Amiyaranjan’s son Sanatanu Banerjee,
who is carrying on with his father’s Amir Khan-styled Khyal music, is but one example
of Amir Khan-influenced Bengali Khyal singers..
I will speak more of the impact of Amir Khan on the classical music scene in
Bengal shortly, but it is important to note the socio-economic situation that brought Amir
Khan and other Ustads to Calcutta and that determined the ways in which Bengalis were
able to access and learn about the music of these Ustads. As more than a few of my
interlocutors in Calcutta pointed out to me, Calcutta in the 19th and early 20th centuries
was the “marketplace of music” in India. Kumar Prasad Mukherjee explained to me the
economic conditions in Calcutta during this period and the effect these had on the nature
of Hindustani music quite succinctly.
You see, Calcutta used to be the marketplace, the biggest marketplace for music
at one stage. This was thanks to what we call ‘Babu culture.’ After the Britishers
came here, and I am talking about the 18th century, the baniyans, the stevedores,
the keepers, they were the people who benefited from the arrival of the Britishers,
the traders. Gradually they acquired land and started patronizing music, Sanskrit,
Pandits, wrestling, and, of course, women – not necessarily singers but
courtesans. So this is one of the reasons that Calcutta developed into a
marketplace. In fact, it was the biggest marketplace for music at one stage. But,
no Ustad, no eminent Ustad – I am talking about vocal music – ever settled down
in Calcutta. They came and sold their wares and went away (interview, 2005)
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The season for these North Indian performers to come and sell their musical wares, so to
speak, was the winter season, approximately mid-November through February. The
climate of Calcutta (and of the rest of Bengal) is quite mild during these months, while
during the other two major seasons, the hot season and the monsoon season, it is
unlivable, at least in the estimation of most non-Bengalis, due to factors such as intense
heat and humidity, the pervasiveness of communicable disease, etc. This pattern of
copious musical activity for two and a half to three months and very little during the
remainder of the year only intensified with the advent of music conferences (essentially
music festivals) in the early decades of the 20th century and continues to the present day.
The result is that Bengalis who were interested in learning Khyal simply did not have
access to proper taaliim from one of these Ustads. They could hear the music and
appreciate it, but not learn it correctly from a gharaanedaar Ustad. As Amit Mukherjee
pointed out, it takes years of intimate contact with a master musician in order for an
aspiring performer to imbibe that Ustad or Pandit’s knowledge and expertise. This is
especially true for Maharashtrians and Bengalis, as Khyal in the beginning was
essentially an “alien music” for them, music from a different cultural and geographic
region (Amit Mukherjee: interview, 2005). In short, then, Maharashtrians, as I have
explained above, had the advantage of long term discipleship with gharaanedaar Ustads,
but Bengalis, for the most part, did not.
I have qualified the above statement with the phrase ‘for the most part’ as there
were a few important Ustads who stayed for a longer period than just one or two months
at a time, and, not coincidentally, these Ustads have had the greatest impact on the style
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of singing practiced by Bengali khyaaliya-s. I am speaking here of Bade Ghulam Ali
Khan of Patiala gharana and, of course, Amir Khan of Indore. As KP Mukherjee
explained to me,
All the major gharanas flourished in Bombay. The only gharana which did not
flourish in Bombay was Patiala, and that’s of comparatively recent origin. But
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan [the most famous Patiala singer] came, and he became
quite well-known in Bombay…but he never settled there – just for a brief while.
He came and settled down in Calcutta in his last days. So, and Amir Khan used to
be a commuter – he used to commute. So these were the two Ustads whose
influence, and that too sort of, uh, not direct influence because very few people,
they taught very few people. But these are the two Ustads whose influence can
be…is noticeable among the vocal musicians of Bengal. Other gharanas are not
popular - Jaipur, Gwalior, Agra – these are not popular because no one really
came [to Calcutta]…(interview, 2005).
The key point to underline from this quote is that while Ghulam Ali and Amir Khan
stayed much longer in Calcutta overall than many of their North Indian contemporaries,
even they did not produce many notable Bengali disciples. They did produce many
‘Sunnii Shaagirds,’ 71 however, particularly Amir Khan. The one current ‘name’ Bengali
singer who has a direct tie to either of these vocalists is Pandit Ajoy Chakrborty, another
of the Gurus of ITC-SRA (and a graduate), and one of the top male Khyal singers
nationally. Ajoyda is a disciple of Munnawar Ali Khan, son of Ghulam Ali, as well as of
the late Gyan Prakash Ghosh, noted tabla player and music educator of Calcutta. While
Bade Ghulam is often cited (as above) as one of the main Khyal influences for Bengali
singers by performers and non-performers alike, Ajoy Chakraborty is, to my knowledge,
only one of perhaps two singers in Calcutta whose singing resembles the pure Patiala
style to any extent, the other being Meera Banerjee, a senior disciple of Munnawar Ali.
71 Sunnii Shaagird literally means ‘disciple who has learned by listening,’ i.e. not by proper first-hand
instruction. Sunnii comes from the Hindi word sunnaa, ‘to listen.’
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The influence of Bade Ghulam is there, no doubt, but it does not seem that many
vocalists have based their entire presentation on his style in the way that so many have
emulated Amir Khan’s gaayakii. If nothing else, though, Bade Ghulam’s sweet, flexible,
melodious, and yet powerful voice remains the ideal for many Bengali singers.
Amiyaranjan Banerjee, as noted earlier, is one of the many Calcutta vocalists who
have based his style on Amir Khan’s music. However, while openly acknowledging
Amir Khan’s influence, Amiyaranjanda felt that his style was more less the same as the
majority of Khyal singers across India; he termed this as the “modern Khyal style.”
According to his conception, this style could be described as “melody based,” with little
prominence given to layakaarii, and containing taan and sargam (interview, 2005).
Although for him, this is a style that has developed relatively recently and does not
correspond exactly to the style of any of the major gharanas, the Kirana influence, he
noted, is there. This Kirana influence, of course, comes through Amir Khan himself, who
never had Kirana taaliim but was highly influenced by Abdul Wahid Khan of that
gharana. Several other of my interlocutors, though, felt rather that, first, Amir Khan was
the one and only influence on this style; second, that it is not an “All-India” style, but
instead a very Bengali one; and, third, that this style, at least as practiced by most Bengali
singers, is a poor approximation of how Amir Khan himself sang. 72 Amit Mukherjee, the
former director of ITC-SRA and himself a disciple of Shankar Mazumdar of Patna (who
received some taaliim from Amir Khan), feels that almost all Bengali vocalists, save for a
72 I should note that, while I take Amiyaranjan Banerjee as a prime example of Amir Khan-influenced
singing, none of my other interlocutors singled him out as a particularly bad performer, as far as these
singers go.
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few exceptions (and not just Amir Khan followers, although, again, these have been the
majority in recent decades), are “xerox copies of something not very definite”(interview,
2005). KP Mukherjee, speaking with characteristic candor, was altogether less charitable
to the style practiced by most Bengali vocalists, particularly the Amir Khan followers:
It’s a, uh, poor imitation of Amir Khan’s gayaki, consisting only of three facets,
three angas: MerkhanD vistaar, which is what I call a mechanical approach, “NI
RE GA,” “GA RE NI,” “RE GA NI,” “NI GA RE,” this is not music…This kind
of thing even a child can do, and this is not music. And in any case it is a
mechanical, at best, an arithmetical exercise. So this is how they develop a raga,
without the raga anga. You see, every raga, the anatomy of a raga is recognized
by its main phrases. Every raga has its main phrase and subsidiary phrases. These
are the phrases which highlight the topography of the raga, the anatomy of a
raga…Now, even a child of eight when he draws an elephant, he doesn’t, the
trunk of the elephant is certainly not as long as the tail. He knows the difference,
but these people don’t. That is because they have not learned music, none of
them has learned music. Amayaranjan Bandopadyaya has learned Dhrupad and
Dhamar from his father, but he sings in a style that has nothing to do with his
father or his ancestors. It’s a pale imitation of Ustad Amir Khan’s gaayakii –
without Amir Khan’s virtuosity. Amir Khan’s style without Amir Khan can be a
pretty boring affair. I mean, in my book I have written, the Proustian
introspection of Amir Khan has become a labor of Sisyphus with his disciples…
Remember, the stone was to be taken to the top of hill?…that is MerkhanD
vistaar. And the other thing is, this is followed by sargam-s. And the sargam-s
are followed by taan-s which are based on the same sargam-s. I am talking about
the general practice of these people. There may be exceptions – there probably
are. I, naturally at my age, I fail to notice the exceptions. I am guided more by
my reaction to the average follower of Amir Khan. I find this extremely boring,
boring and simplistic and mechanical (interview, 2005).
Thus, for the most part, KP Mukherjee’s description matches up with Amiyaranjanda’s
“modern Khyal style,” except that what for Amiyaranjan are virtues, are vices for
Mukherjee.
The one aspect not discussed by KP Mukherjee in our interview was the
conspicuous absence of layakaarii, again a feature (or lack thereof) of Amir Khan’s style.
Amit Mukherjee, however, provided a detailed description of how, in his opinion, many
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Bengali singers have distorted what Amir Khan actually did while attempting to imitate
him:
That melody follows a strict tala and maatraa pattern. There is a distinct, you
know, very subtle…the best way to understand is to listen to Amir Khan very
closely. You’ll find intricate, the most intricate layakaarii has been done by him.
People like Suresh Talwalkar, who is a tabaliya of such…he says that, because
certain kinds of mukraa-s and all that I did, because I am a follower of Amir
Khan’s music, I learned from his close disciple, I also knew him, I have been with
him in his riyaaz and all…So, it took me many years to understand this, how to
put this highly melodic form into the structured form as well. It is not so easy –
you have to use a lot of this [pointing to his head]. And, Sureshji told me, these
small, that tabla bol-s, which do not exist even in North Indian tabla, but came
from the South Indian tala system. Also, the expanded jhuumraa, the ati-vilambit
jhuumraa, now it doesn’t mean that you do not have divisions, and very subtly
there are inflections, there are vowels, and you know, consonants which you use
to maintain this meter. While the consonants, how does this come? You know
the Kirana gaayakii came from Bande Ali Khan who was a biinkaar. So, while
this slided, he had to pluck, and this could not be out of rhythm, so he did this.
Kirana gaayakii took the vowels to slide, which are in meters which change and
flow…And the consonants are used for this. So, continuous maintenance of the
meter is what is required, as well as the melodic part. The Bengalis did not go
into this deep enough; they did not understand this (interview, 2005).
This is really the crux of how Amir Khan’s subtlety has been lost in translation, so to
speak. Amir Khan’s rhythm/layakaarii, as with the rest of his music, was subtle, but
complex. In the music of his Bengali followers, layakaarii is altogether absent.
Likewise, Amir Khan generally did not sing a great deal in the upper octave (taar
saptak), as he felt that “the mandra saptak [low register] was more important for serious
effects”(Wade 1984:269), and many of his Bengali followers continue this practice,
regardless of the quality of their own voice, i.e. even if their own low register is weak or
their own high register is polished and impressive, as Bengali sitarist Partho Bose pointed
out to me (interview, 2005). In other words, Amir Khan’s approach was limited in some
ways, but he transcended these limitations with his own genius and personality. Many of
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his followers, though, take on his limitations but do not have the resourcefulness or talent
to overcome these artificially (artificial for them, not Amir Khan) imposed limitations.
Hence KP Mukherjee’s statement, “Amir Khan’s style without Amir Khan can be a pretty
boring affair.”
This having been said, I would remiss if I made it seem that most of Amir Khan’s
imitators were and are amateurish and despised by all vocalists who have had proper
taaliim with an established gharana singer. On the contrary, many of Bengal’s most
beloved singers have been highly influenced by Amir Khan without having studied with
him directly. This list would include, among others, Pandit A.T. Kanan, a Tamil
musician who shifted to Calcutta after a short career with Indian Railways and
subsequently became one of the early and very influential Gurus of Calcutta’s ITC-
Sangeet Research Academy. A.T. Kanan was officially a disciple of Girija Shankar
Chakraborty, but his music bore the distinct stamp of Amir Khan’s style. This also is true
of Arun Bhaduri, a current Guru of ITC-SRA. He studied with Ishtiaq Hussein Khan of
Rampur-Sahaswan gharana and Pandit Gyan Prakash Ghosh, but is heavily indebted to
Amir Khan’s style. Sandipan Samajpati is a vocalist of the younger generation who is
currently establishing himself as a nationally known vocalist and who also sings very
much like Amir Khan, although his Guru is Manas Chakraborty, son of the
aforementioned legendary Bengali khyaaliya Tarapada Chakraborty. These singers are
exceptional in the sense that they have maintained some of the purity of Amir Khan’s
music and perhaps added to it (in contradistinction to most Amir Khan imitators), but the
point to be emphasized is that in Calcutta, Amir Khan’s style remains preeminent.
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If we look back to some of the notable Bengali khyaaliya-s of previous
generations who are generally cited as the best Bengal has produced historically, the most
notable being Bishmadeb Chatterjee and Tarapada Chakraborty (leaving aside Girija
Shankar and Gyan Prasad Goswami of Vishnupur gharana), we find that they also
imitated and appropriated aspects of the music of the Ustads that they heard and admired
and/or devised their own personal style. In other words, this phenomenon of imitation
and invention in lieu of gharana taaliim did not begin with the arrival of Bade Ghulam
Ali and Amir Khan in the 1960s. Neither Bishmadeb nor Tarapada ever gained much
popularity outside Bengal, and perhaps because of this are rarely mentioned in any
English language sources. K.P. Mukherjee, in his posthumously published monograph
The Lost World of Hindustani Music (2006), is one of the very few authors who offer any
account of either of these two musician’s lives or their musical style or anything more
than a few brief anecdotes about them. In the case of Bishmadeb Chatterjee, Mukherjee
explains only that his style was largely his own invention. The reason for this is that
Bishmadeb’s Ustad was Badal Khan of Sonepat (now in Haryana state), a saarangii
player who had immigrated to Calcutta from Lucknow along with his patron, the exiled
Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah. However, as Mukherjee writes, “No sarangi player can
give a vocalist his gayaki. Bishma Deb invented a style of his own that resembled no
school of singing before or after. The cognoscenti of Calcutta who heard him at his peak
swore he was potentially no inferior to the luminaries of his time”(2006:7). Tarapada
Chakraborty, according to Mukherjee, was a “self-taught musician of phenomenal
talent,” who, like Bishmadeb Chatterjee, had a “remarkable gift for imitation”(8). In
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chronological order, Tarapada had imitated the respective gaayakii-s of Narayanrao Vyas
of Gwalior gharana; Omkarnath Thakur, a disciple of Vishnu Digambar who himself
developed unique, idiosyncratic style independent of any gharana; Abdul Karim of
Kirana; and, finally, Faiyaz Khan of Agra. The last two proved to be the most influential
as Tarapada settled on a style combining Abdul Karim’s slow vistaar with the nom tom
aalaap, rhythmic bol-baanT, and bol-taan-s taken from Faiyaz Khan. Tarapada has been
succeeded by his previously mentioned son Manas Chakraborty who currently teaches
and performs in Calcutta. Bishmadeb, for his part, never trained a notable successor,
although he did teach, among others, the legendary light classical singer Begum Akhtar
and the famous film singer and music director S.D. (Sachin Deb) Burman.
Although this pattern of imitating the greats rather than taking direct taaliim from
them has been quite common among Bengali Khyal singers since at least the early
decades of the 20th century, it would be incorrect to state that no Bengali singer has ever
learned directly from any great gharaanedaar Ustad. My interlocutors in Calcutta most
frequently stated that Bade Ghulam Ali and Amir Khan taught “a few students” directly.
Again, though, determining who these individuals were is much harder to answer,
considering that there are and have been, without a doubt, a large number of individuals
who have claimed to have learned directly from these two, but in reality have not.
Leaving aside these two most influential singers, we find that a handful of singers were
able to learn directly from a few of the stalwarts of the Agra gharana, a gharana which
otherwise was never very popular in Calcutta or Bengal generally. This group includes
Kumar Prasad Mukherjee himself, Dipali Nag, Purnima Sen, and Kashmiri businessman
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and longtime Calcutta resident Vijay Kichlu. I was fortunate enough to speak with all
four of these artists during my research. KP Mukherjee, as he explains in The Lost World
of Hindustani Music, began as an imitator of Faiyaz Khan, but eventually received proper
taaliim with two Agra gharaanedaar-s, Ata Hussain and Latafat Hussain, both of whom
learned with Faiyaz Khan. 73 As Mukherjee states, “Between the two of them, I received
sustained talim fourteen years…”(2006:25), although he also states that he remained true
to his Faiyaz Khan-influenced, imitative style even after his time with these two Agra
maestros. Dipali Nag, a Bengali who was raised in Agra, learned from Faiyaz Khan,
Tassaduq Hussain, and Bashir Ahmed, and notably performed with Faiyaz Khan in her
early years (Wade 1984:101). Purnima Sen, for her part, learned with Vilayat Hussain
Khan in her youth, and then with Ata Hussain (Vilayat Hussain’s cousin), and finally
with Ata Hussain’s nephew, Sharafat Hussain. Vijay Kichlu, like K.P. Mukherjee, also
learned from Latafat Hussain after being inspired to take up the Agra gaayakii by Faiyaz
Khan’s music, taaliim that supplemented training in Dhrupad from the “senior” Dagar
Brothers, Nasir Moinuddin and Nasir Aminuddin (interview, 2005).
Besides their background of Agra gharana taaliim, these four share two other
important commonalities. First, all but Purnima Sen were raised in Uttar Pradesh (K.P.
Mukherjee was raised in Lucknow, Kichlu in Allahabad, Dipali Nag in Agra itself),
although both Dipali Nag and K.P. Mukherjee are ethnic Bengalis. While this aspect of
their background owes more to the vicissitudes of their own and their parents’ lives and
careers than to their musical ambitions, the Agra training they received likely would not
73 Ata Hussain was Faiyaz Khan’s brother-in-law; Latafat was his nephew.
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have been possible had they not lived outside Calcutta, as, of all their collective Ustads,
only Ata Hussain had ever settled permanently in Calcutta (though Latafat and Sharafat
were frequent visitors). Besides the access that their U.P. background granted these three
to their Agra Gurus, it perhaps also enabled them to better understand and appreciate the
Agra gaayakii and Khyal singing generally. Amit Mukherjee, himself a Bengali raised in
Bihar (where he learned from Amir Khan disciple Shankar Mazumdar), strongly
advocated this notion during our interview. While speaking of the striking difference
between the numbers of nationally successful Bengali instrumentalists versus nationally
successful Bengali khyaaliya-s, Mukherjee told me,
Barring of course one or two persons – there are always exceptions – there were
tremendously talented people, and yet because they didn’t go into the entirety of
this music that they did not, I mean, you do not know of very great Bengali
singers. Whereas, if you talk about the sitar/sarod, why is it that almost all of
them are from this part of the country? One of the main reasons is Enayet Khan.
Enayet Khan, that means, say, almost a hundred years, he came to Gauripur as a
state musician, and he had a whole lot of Bengali disciples. And, language wasn’t
a barrier. And because he was staying here, they could associate with him, you
know, continuously, and not like the Ustads who came for three-three and a half
years – although many of the Ustads later on like Amir Khan and all have stayed
here also at times for four or five years and have again gone out, again stayed –
but, in this respect, sitar. And then came Allaudin Khan who was from Bengal,
went to Rampur, learned from Wazir Khan, although he migrated to Maihar, but
he had a close link, his family were here, so all of them were going to Maihar and
learning, sitar, sarod, biin, whatever. So Nikhil Banerjee went, and so many other
people, of course Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar is again a person from Benares,
although Bengali. So again he was different. You talk to him, you find he reacts
like a Hindi speaking person, if you speak to him in Hindi. And even now he will
speak in the dialect, the Benaresi dialect, and I don’t know if you have been to
Benares, but the body language of a Benaresi is very different from a Bengali, but
for that music you need that body language, the mind works that way. So, what I
am trying to say is you have to get into the music…and it’s the entirety of the
expression. So that has been a very big drawback of Bengal (interview, 2005)
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So, within this excerpt, we find two intertwined notions regarding the limitations of
Bengalis as Khyal singers. The first, which I have already discussed, is having limited
time with one’s Guru or Ustad, even if the opportunity is there to study with a
gharaanedaar singer, which again has been relatively rare compared to cases of Bengali
vocalists who are essentially self-taught. A very important concept in Hindustani music,
as my vocal music teacher Dr. Ram Deshpande explained to me, is sahvaas, a Hindi word
roughly translated as “co-residence.” In the context of music, it means spending time
with one’s Guru outside of periods of formal instruction, for example going on walks
with the Guru, observing their lessons with other students, listening to their
performances, etc. (personal communication, 2005). In Ramji’s view, the majority of an
aspiring musician’s education actually comes in these contexts, but even some of the best
Bengali singers historically have not had this extended contact with their respective
mentors. The other limitation of Bengali singers has been, as Amit Mukherjee explained,
that they simply do not have the same innate feeling for Hindustani music as does a
person who was born and raised in the North Indian homeland of the tradition. Although
Mukherjee’s reference in this connection was Ravi Shankar, an instrumentalist, it is not
hard to imagine that this lack of the appropriate (North Indian) habitus would be a greater
limitation for a singer than an instrumentalist, considering that vocal quality and
pronunciation, like body language, are much more innate and subconscious than the skills
required to play an instrument (though no more or less difficult to master). The relative
number of proficient foreign (i.e. non-Indian) instrumentalists compared to proficient
foreign Khyal singers is further proof of this. Thus, individuals like K.P. Mukherjee,
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Dipali Nag, and Amit Mukherjee, in essence, serve as bridges between the North Indian
and Bengali cultures, having intimate knowledge of both.
The other connection worth noting between this group of Calcutta-based Agra
singers is that all of them have had some association with the ITC-Sangeet Research
Academy, either as executive directors (Vijay Kichlu and also Amit Mukherjee, as
mentioned above), as members of the expert committee (K.P. Mukherjee and Purnima
Sen), or in an advisory capacity (Dipali Nag). Leaving aside Amit Mukherjee, it is no
coincidence that all these vocalists with Agra gharana taaliim have had a connection with
this well-known and respected institution, as one of the primary goals of the SRA has
been to preserve and promote the traditional gharana styles and these four represent a
very small handful of Calcutta-based vocalists who have been trained in the Agra
gaayakii, one of the oldest, most important, and most prestigious of gharana styles.
To explain, SRA, or the ITC (Indian Tobacco Company) Sangeet Research
Academy is a private trust founded in 1978 in Calcutta as a gurukul-style music academy
that, according to the SRA website (www.itcsra.org), was “modeled as an institution to
epitomize the best of Hindustani Classical Music.” By gurukul is meant the traditionally
Indian arrangement referenced above where disciples live in close quarters with their
Gurus for long periods (some past scholars at the SRA have learned for periods
exceeding ten years) as de facto members of their Gurus’ families, immersing themselves
in learning music year-round, including daily direct instruction from their Guru and a
rigorous schedule of practice, without outside responsibilities or distractions. This
traditional plan of instruction is also supplemented by more modern methods such as the
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analysis of audio recordings of past masters and classes dedicating to studying the
theoretical aspects of music, i.e. raga structure. The three “basic objectives” of SRA,
then, are as follows:
1. Creation of on an effective training system
2. To rationalize traditional data with the help of modern research methods and
technology
3. Promotion and propagation of music
In other words, the SRA aims to improve the quality of Indian music, the heritage of
which, as the website explains, had become “imperceptibly diluted” by the time of the
Academy’s founding in the late 1970s thanks to the lingering ill effects of the shift in
patronage from aristocratic to public. The way the SRA seeks to improve music is, first
and foremost, to train high quality performers with a background in a traditional gharana
gaayakii and with a sound knowledge of the theory of the music. In this way, the
academy attempts to combine the best aspects of the Paluskar-style music schools and the
aforementioned traditional set-up. By improving the quality of musicianship through its
graduates, the SRA can then better present classical music to the public and raise the
general level of musical knowledge and, thus, the critical faculties of audience members,
so that they will in turn demand better music. Certainly, the influence of both
Bhatkhande and Paluskar can be seen in these various objectives of the academy. The
‘modern gurukul’ concept, with its semi-Sanskritized values, could be seen as part of the
Paluskar heritage. The primary emphasis on vocal music could attributed to both
Vishnus, and the emphasis on identifying “the correct structures of all major Ragas,” in
other words standardizing raga structure, was a major goal of Bhatkhande, one that the
SRA has addressed with its “Raga analysis project.” However, the SRA is primarily (and
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firmly) directed towards producing performers, so there are no degrees as such, and the
only examinations are performance-based and geared towards deciding only whether a
scholar has progressed adequately enough to justify continuing with their education at the
academy. Hence the open-ended nature of the training, made possible by funding from
the Indian Tobacco Company, one of the pioneers of corporate patronage of Hindustani
music in India. Needless to say, with his life-long financial problems, Paluskar could
only have dreamed of running an establishment like the SRA with such ample private
funding.
In the context of the present discussion, what is most notable about the ITC-SRA
are its efforts to promote authentic gharana gaayakii-s, and now, traditional styles of
instrumental music, as it has recently added sitarist Manilal Nag and sarodiya Buddhadev
Dasgupta as the first Gurus of its relatively new instrumental division, established in
2005. To fulfill this objective, the SRA has, throughout its history, employed Gurus
representing all the major Khyal gharanas and from all parts of India. SRA’s original
faculty included a number of luminaries, many of whom I have already mentioned above.
This first batch of Gurus included Maharashtrians Hirabai Barodekar of Kirana gharana
(Abdul Karim’s daughter) and Nivrutti Sarnaik of Jaipur Gharana; renowned light
classical singer Girija Devi of Benares; and North Indian khaandaanii vocalists Ishtiaq
Hussain (Sahaswan), Nissar Hussain (Rampur), and Latafat Hussain (Agra). The
question, then, is that, considering that the SRA is essentially a nationalizing force in
Hindustani music, as it seeks to restore the prominence of traditional gharana gaayakii-s
and to standardize the theoretical side of the music, and considering that it is based in
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Calcutta, has the SRA helped to de-regionalize the Calcutta music scene? This is a
difficult question, one that I have limited information with which to answer and that
would be best addressed by a more focused study on the SRA and its graduates. It’s hard
to imagine that the SRA could not have but had a positive effect on the community of
specifically Bengali musicians, as it offers them (or those qualified for admission to
academy, at least) a dependable source of top class gharana taaliim, which had rarely
been available in Calcutta before the SRA’s inception in 1978.
However, there is some evidence that suggests that the regional patterns I have
discussed above are continuing to play out in the context of the SRA. On the Bengali
side, the top Bengali vocalist ever to be involved with the SRA is surely Ajoy
Chakraborty, who not only is a current Guru at the SRA but is also likely the SRA’s most
well-known and visible graduate. The second most well-known former student (perhaps
the most well-known in the eyes of some) is Rashid Khan who, by all accounts, grew up
on the SRA campus training under the guidance of his now late uncle Nissar Hussain.
When we look at the styles of these two musicians we find, as explained above, that Ajoy
Chakraborty sings in the Patiala style of Bade Ghulam Ali and that Rashid Khan has a
large amount of Amir Khan in his style. So, even with these two renowned khyaaliya-s,
who, not incidentally, are easily the most famous Calcutta-based Khyal singers nationally
(Rashid Khan is ethnically North Indian, but has lived most of his life in Calcutta, it
should be noted), we find that they follow the same two styles, the styles of Calcutta’s
favorite two gharaanedaar vocalists, despite their SRA background. This is not to say
that the gaayakii of either of these singers has the flaws pointed out by K.P. Mukherjee
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when explaining what he called the “synthetic gaayakii” of most Calcutta singers – Ajoy
Chakraborty arguably sings in a purer version of the Patiala style than almost any other
singer in India these days – but they certainly do not stand out as major exceptions
stylistically compared to other Calcutta musicians. On the Maharashtrian side, the most
notable recent Guru at the SRA has been Ulhas Kashalkar, by consensus the leading
exponent of the Gwalior style in the last 10-15 years. If any Guru could be seen as
nationalizing the Calcutta musical scene it would be Kashalkar, who, after all, sings in a
style I have labeled as characteristically Maharashtrian, the Gajananbua version of
Gwalior mixed with Jaipur and Agra, three styles that are otherwise notably absent in
Calcutta and that have been rare in eastern India historically. Ulhas Kashalkar certainly
is not without his followers amongst the listeners in the city; indeed, Calcutta, like the
rest of India, has started to realize the greatness of this reserved and thoroughly
traditional singer. What struck me upon first meeting Ulhasji and some of his pupils in
his bungalow on the SRA campus, though, was that almost all of his students were
Maharashtrians. I even asked Ulhasji, and he told me, “Yes, there are a few others, from
the South or from Bengal, but the largest number are Maharashtrian”(personal
communication, 2005). So, even in Calcutta, a Maharashtrian singer attracts
Maharashtrian followers. The point, I feel, is that while the situation in India for last 50
years does promote a certain degree of homogeneity, it also offers choice to the young
aspiring musician, unprecedented choice, and it is through such choices that each
musician makes that regional aesthetic preferences and tendencies are most clearly
revealed.
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Before concluding this section on Khyal in Bengal, it is important to note that
while Bengal has never inherited many first-rate Khyal singers from the North, it has
inherited musicians representing other traditions of Hindustani music. The most
important of these is of course instrumental music, i.e. music of the sitar, sarod, and tabla,
an area where Bengal has dominated on a national basis since at least the middle of the
20th century. I will devote a larger amount time to discussing these instrumental
traditions below, but here I wish to mention Bengal’s largest inheritance in terms of vocal
music: Thumri, specifically the Lucknowi form of the genre. One might object to this
point, as I have already ruled out Thumri, so to speak, as a “classical” genre. This is
rather the point. It is this type of singing (and other light-classical forms similar to it),
not the raga-based forms like Khyal and Dhrupad, which has had the largest audience and
the largest number of adherents in terms of performers from the turn of the 20th century
forward in Calcutta and the rest of the region. In this sense, Thumri has a rather
important relationship with Khyal, as it has both competed with Khyal for audiences and
has crucially affected the style of Khyal singing in Calcutta.
There are a number of tawaaif-s (the main practitioners of the genre), tabla
players, and saarangii players, the latter two groups serving as the teachers and
accompanists of the tawaaif-s, who made their way from the North, primarily from
eastern U.P., down to Calcutta around the turn of the 20th century in order to exploit the
opportunities of the growing commercial center that Calcutta was at the time, a
movement which was precipitated the slow drying-up of princely patronage in the Hindi-
speaking regions. However, by far the most important migration in musical terms from
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U.P. to Bengal was due to the exile of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Lucknow to Metiaburuj
near Calcutta, along with his full retinue of actors, dancers, and musicians. Wajid Ali is
well-known as the epitome of the princes of the declining feudal era in India who spent
their time indulging themselves in ‘frivolous’ pastimes, be it sport or music or poetry –
anything other than ruling or administering to their kingdom. At the same time, Wajid
Ali is also remembered as a great patron of the arts and as an accomplished dancer and
poet who also learned music. However, his time on the throne in Lucknow was to come
to an end somewhat prematurely in 1856. As ethnomusicologist and Lucknow
afficianado James Kippen explains,
The British Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie (1848-56), had already annexed a
large number of states in India, and he saw the decedent behavior of Wajid Ali
Shah and his court a plausible excuse to add Awadh to his list of appropriated
territories. The British took over complete administration of the kingdom in 1856
by sending an armed force to Lucknow and issuing the king with the instruction
that Awadh was no longer under his rule. Intending to plead with Queen Victoria
in London for reinstatement, Wajid Ali Shah departed from Lucknow with his
retinue to travel to Calcutta, from where members of his family left for a royal
audience in England. During their absence, new and momentous events shook
Lucknow and the deposed king was to never see the city again. He remained until
his death in Matiya Burj, Calcutta, pursuing his eccentricities and fulfilling his
taste for the arts and luxurious living (1988:6).
The important part of this story is not that Wajid Ali himself landed in Calcutta, although
he did continue to patronize musicians (including some Bengali musicians), but rather
that all of his musicians did. K.P. Mukherjee singles out three of Wajid Ali’s darbaar
musicians as significant, the khyaaliya-s Taj Khan (Seni), Ali Baksh Khan, originally of
Gwalior, and the aforementioned saarangiya Badal Khan, who served as Guru to
Bishmadeb Chatterjee and Girija Shankar Chakraborty (2006:8). Chhaya Chatterjee
(1996), in a more carefully enumerated and less anecdotal account, adds a number of
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others to the list, including Niyamatulla Khan, sarodiya and father of the well-known
Karamatulla Khan; Pyar Khan, shahnaaii player; tabliya Nanhe Khan; and Sajjad
Mohammed, sitar, who as Ray notes, both give taaliim to Sourindromohun Tagore while
under the employ of that branch of the Tagore family and also influenced the playing of
Imdad Khan (212-213).
Again, though, the largest number of musicians that came from UP to Bengal
were tawaaif-s, including those in employ of Wajid Ali and others who were not. “The
Nawab [Wajid Ali] and the Baijis [tawaaif-s] of his court were trained musicians and
excelled especially in thumri. They influenced the music culture of 19 th -20 th century
Bengal by developing the taste and appreciation of music, particularly in the styles of
thumri and dadra”(Chatterjee 1996:213). KP Mukherjee, while discussing Calcutta’s
role as a marketplace for music and the relative paucity of khyaaliya-s who settled in
Calcutta explained,
Of course, tawaaif-s…courtesans…women singers, there were plenty because
they were part of the market, they settled down here. Right from Nikkibai of Raja
Ram Mohun’s time, down to Gauharjan…There were five Malkajans:
Gauharjan’s mother was Badi Malkajan, then there was Agra gharana Malkajan,
and there Chulbuliwali Malkajan, there was Chappachule Malkajan, I mean, there
were…Jaddanbai, Nargis’s mother, she stayed here for a long time (interview,
2005).
Ray and Mukherjee (2006) both also mention Zohrabai Agrewale as another notable
tawaaif transplanted from U.P.; according to Mukherjee, she was “possibly the most
accomplished female musician of her time”(9). These are among the most famous, but
undoubtedly there were many others, whose artistry was perhaps not on the level of a
Gauharjan or Zohrabai, who have been forgotten. Certainly, as many have pointed out,
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the historiography of Hindustani music in India has not been particularly partial to
discussing the contributions of singers who were also considered prostitutes, although it
should be noted that courtesans are more frequently included in discussions of the
Calcutta music scene than their counterparts in western India have been.
Regardless of the individual legacies of these women, their collective impact was
to establish a level popularity for Thumri which far exceeded that of Khyal from the
earliest days of the last century. As Purohit, in his inimitable style, explains,
The thumri was carried from Avadh and physically and firmly planted on the soil
of Calcutta. The zamindars and the residents of the red light districts greeted this
importation with enthusiasm. In fact, so strong was the influence of the thumri
ang on Calcutta that real classical music was completely swamped, and
throughout the princeling and zamindar periods of our recent art history,
respectively 1860-1905 and 1905-23, light classical and light music remained
predominant. It was not until the industrial bourgeois phase of 1934-56, that a
serious interest developed in Calcutta in khyal gayaki through the proliferation of
middle class music circles (1988:863).
However, as both Purohit and Sukumar Ray argue, Thumris were even more influential
as components of or models for the compositions created by Bengali poet-composers
such as Atulprasad Sen, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Rabindranath Tagore than in their
original, Hindi language form. That Thumri, as a genre, should have been incorporated
in such an indirect and piecemeal fashion should not be surprising, as it is itself a
“fundamentally anti-classical” style (Purohit 1988:861). 74 It is also worth mentioning in
this connection that Girija Shankar Chakraborty, doyen of the Vishnupur gharana and one
of the most prolific vocal music Gurus in the history of classical music in Bengal
(Mukherjee calls him “acharya of acharyas”), took taaliim from both saarangiya Badal
74
As Purohit notes, Gauharjan “managed to include in her repertoire the war tune ‘It’s a long, long way to
Tipperary’”(1988:861).
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Khan, who had migrated with Wajid Ali from Lucknow and had a long standing
association with Bhaiya Saheb Ganapat Rao, the illegitimate son of the Maharaja of
Gwalior and renowned harmonium player, and from his disciple Moijuddin Khan, who
was to become the most respected Thumri singer in Calcutta in the early decades of the
20th century. 75 Girijababu, as Bengalis fondly call him, was known as a singer of Khyal,
Dhrupad, and Thumri. It seems, then, that he passed on his fondness for the genre to his
many notable students, such as Gyanendra Prasad Goswami, Tarapada Chakraborty,
Pannalal Ghosh, Gyanprakash Ghosh, Chinmoy Lahiri, A.T. Kanan, Sunil Bose, and
Dipali Nag (Chatterjee 1996:364), both helping to make Thumri popular in its own right
and, more importantly, establishing it as a key influence on the more classical genres of
Hindustani music.
So, to briefly conclude, we can see from the above that the story of Khyal in
Bengal is a much more convoluted and complex one than is the case in Maharashtra,
where Ustads, rather simply, came to Maharashtra in search of royal patronage in the
waning years of the feudal era and passed their art on to Maharashtrian Hindu disciples,
who in turn propagate those styles up to the present day, albeit in often highly modified
forms. Indeed, if anything is complex about Khyal in Maharashtra, it is the numerous
ways in which musicians of the present and preceding generations have taken the styles
handed down to them by the gharaanedaar Ustads and combined them into something
more distinct, (ostensibly) individualistic, and, often, more Maharashtrian than the styles
75 Bhaiya Saheb Ganapat Rao and Moijuddin Khan are generally credited for popularizing the Benaresi,
rather than the Lucknowi, variety of Thumri.
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as practiced by those hereditary Ustads. In Calcutta, though, the situation is reversed –
the history, again, is complex, but the style of Khyal practiced by Bengali musicians in
Calcutta and elsewhere is remarkably homogenous, all things considered. The main
reason for this, of course, is that most Bengali Khyal singers since the 1960s have drawn
on the music of two key maestros as the primary source(s) for their own style. These two
musicians were, again, Ustad Amir Khan of the ‘Indore gharana’ (though in practice his
style was essentially identical to the Kirana approach), and, secondarily, Bade Ghulam
Ali Khan of Patiala. This side of the equation is deceptively simple because this certainly
has not always been the case. Earlier, other great Khyal maestros such as Faiyaz Khan,
Abdul Karim Khan, and V.D. Paluskar, similarly served as the models for aspiring
Bengali singers. However, as they passed on, other heroes and role models came along
and replaced them. One can never foresee the future, but it seems likely that yet another
batch of musical heroes will come along one day and replace AK and BGAK. The more
enduring factor in this case is the Bengali temperament, which, as in any case, is a
response or adaptation to their environment and circumstances, but is also, in a very real
sense, unique to Bengal alone. Some evidence supporting this view is the fact that, even
in the realm of classical instrumental music, where (in the Bengali context specifically)
there are a number of home grown, professional-level Gurus with whom students can
study directly, Bengali musicians continue to seek out and emulate famous role models,
even in cases where their own Guru is a very respectable, even regionally famous,
musician who plays in a different style than that of the aspiring musician’s role model.
This kind of emulation is present all over India, no doubt, but, in comparison to
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Maharashtra, this specific phenomenon of a student studying with a Guru but, at the same
time, actually playing or singing in a style associated with another musician, seems much
more common to Bengal.
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5. Tabla in the Regional Context
While in the case of both vocal music (Dhrupad & Khyal) and instrumental
music, we find very uneven distribution both of performers and of the different gharana
styles in Maharashtra and Bengal (i.e. Khyal is present in Bengal to a limited extent but is
dominant in Maharashtra, the sarod is common in Bengal but extremely scarce in
Maharashtra, etc.), it is not at all surprising that the paired tabla drums are present
wherever any Hindustani music is practiced. The tabla, after all, is a sine qua non for the
performance of every type of North Indian classical and semi-classical genre, save for
Dhrupad, which utilizes the larger, barrel-shaped pakhaawaj drum. However, while the
tabla is almost indisputably of West Asian origin, it can be seen as the ancestor of the
pakhaawaj as well, in the sense that it fulfills the musical role of the pakhaawaj and
replicates with its two drums the high-low pairing of the two differently sized heads of
the cylindrical pakhaawaj. Also, as in the case of the Khyal gharanas that are based in
Dhrupad traditions, there are a number of traditions of tabla which have been based in
specific pakhaawaj playing traditions and retain that influence to the present, so there is
that further connection between the two.
In classical music theory in India, there are said to be two major aspects of music,
swara and laya, or melody and rhythm. As in so many other areas of Indian culture,
these two aspects are not equally valued but rather stand in hierarchical relation to each
other, with melody taken to be superior to rhythm. This relationship finds its parallel in
the relationship between the performers who are responsible for each aspect of the music.
In other words, it is the soloist, whether singer or (melodic) instrumentalist, that is
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esponsible for the melodic aspects of a performance. The tabla player, however, while
largely responsible for the tala, or rhythmic cycle, the specific, practical manifestation of
laya, is subordinate even in that area. This is because, all other factors such as age or
seniority being equal, it is the soloist who determines the tala to be performed, the initial
tempo and any changes in tempo as the performance progresses, and when (and if) the
tabla player is allowed to perform a solo in the course of a raga performance. Thus, it
may be more appropriate to say that melody is the domain of the soloist, but rhythm is the
province of both soloist and tabla player. This notion is further supported by the fact that
many performers, particularly performers of Dhrupad or Dhrupad-derived styles, include
a more explicitly rhythm-oriented element (generally termed layakaarii) in their own
improvisations. At the same time, however, there are Hindustani soloist musicians who
almost totally eschew the rhythmic side of the music and even expect their tabla
accompanists to restrict their performance to nothing outside of playing a relatively
simple Thekaa. 76 This arrangement is most often present when the soloist is a singer
from a non-Dhrupad based Khyal gharana or is a sitar or sarod player who plays in a
mostly Khyal-derived style. It is only with this type of relationship that we can discern
something like the idealized separation suggested by the classical swara/laya dichotomy.
When we further refine our focus and begin to examine tabla in the context of the
regional classical music scenes in Maharashtra and Bengal, however, we find that, while
in some cases the history of tabla playing in these two regions can be seen as parallel to
76
Thekaa is the basic pattern a tabla player plays in order to clearly establish each beat of the rhythmic
cycle being performed.
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the other musical traditions I have discussed and will discuss below, the fact that the tabla
is primarily an accompanying instrument has greatly impacted the way the various styles
and traditions have been preserved, changed, and/or represented by the successive
generations of tabla players from the late 19th century to the present. Certainly, as with
Khyal, we can trace the migration of particular charismatic and influential tabliya-s from
the North into Maharashtra and Bengal and gauge from the number of notable current
exponents of each style which tradition has been most important in each region generally
and in Bombay and Calcutta particularly. The musical role of the tabla, though, has
meant that tabla players have had to pursue versatility and a ‘horizontal’ depth of
knowledge of different solo and especially accompaniment styles to an extent unknown
to most soloist musicians. A sitar player or Khyal singer might develop an eclectic style
by necessity to substitute for traditional gharana taaliim, or even develop an eclectic style
with gharana taaliim as its foundation, but ultimately soloists make their stylistic
decisions based on what they feel will emphasize their strengths and, more importantly,
what will make them most attractive to ticket- and CD/cassette-buying audiences. There
are certainly tabla players who are stars and audience pullers in their own right, with
Ustad Zakir Hussain at the top of the list, but these star tabliya-s represent a tiny fraction
of all the professional and professional-level tabla players in India and abroad. In this
sense, the tabla is much more similar to the saarangii than any of the ‘soloist’
instruments.
As noted above, the gharana concept is not applicable to saarangii playing
because saarangii players have to, in essence, learn every gharana style so that they can
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potentially accompany singers from each and every gharana. A very distinctive ‘voice’
for saarangii players is not a virtue, as saarangii accompaniment largely consists of the
saarangii echoing whatever the singer sings note for note. This would be the case for
tabla as well, were it not for the tradition of solo tabla playing. In this realm, there are
gharana traditions, gharana repertoire (including ‘secret’ and unusual compositions),
gharana techniques, etc., although this is not to say that there are not accompaniment
styles that correspond to specific tabla gharanas. I will return to this point shortly, but for
now, it will suffice to emphasize that accompaniment styles are, by nature, adaptable,
and, in modern tabla playing, relatively non-specific in comparison to solo performance
styles.
Regarding solo tabla playing, though, it is also important to note that this side of
the tabla tradition has been in decline for some time. Considering that the artistic profile
of tabla players has greatly risen in the last fifty years, thanks in large part to the great
popularity that tabla and tabla players have enjoyed outside of India, it may seem
counter-intuitive that traditions of specifically solo tabla playing would have declined
(i.e. become less popular with audiences) in recent years. Kippen (1988) argues that solo
tabla has declined for two reasons. The first is simply that the proper contexts for solo
tabla playing are no longer there. As Kippen writes,
Neuman (1980:70) has quoted Ahmedjan Thirakwa as saying that tabla solos
were, in fact, less common in the past and were heard only in mahfils [small
gatherings] by an audience of ‘brother musicians’. The evidence I collected in
fact points to the opposite being the case. Tabla solo was, I was frequently told,
more commonly heard in the past and was a feature not only of mahfils but also of
the courts and houses of the aristocracy, as well as being a popular item in the
early music conferences (100).
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The days of aristocratic and semi-aristocratic patronage are over, but music ‘conferences’
are still prevalent. So why then are tabla solos no longer popular even in that context?
The issue here, which was the common denominator between the courtly milieu and the
early music conferences, is the knowledge level of the listeners. Most middle-class
listeners today simply do not have the knowledge to appreciate the less frequently heard
genres performed in solo tabla recitals, or at least that is the belief of enough concert
promoters, artists, and/or patrons/audience members to keep solo tabla recitals rare in
comparison to Khyal or instrumental music performances. Another factor lacking
specifically in the music conference cum festival setting is a certain level of intimacy and
performer-audience interaction which characterized classical music performances during
the feudal and colonial eras. The most notable example of such interaction was the
farmaa’ish (request), in which an audience member would test the skill of the performer.
Kippen writes, “[r]equests were made for rare examples of certain types of composition,
or conditions and limitations were imposed upon the musician within which he had to
play. If the tabla player was unable to draw on material from his repertoire, he was
forced to compose spontaneously”(1988:101). In most modern ticketed performances,
neither the appropriate knowledge level on the part of the listeners nor the necessary
closeness and intimacy are present, and, as such, the farmaa’ish has become an all but
obsolete practice.
The most crucial factor in what Kippen calls the “demise of the tabla solo,”
however, is not simply the lack of a knowledgeable audience and/or appropriate context
for performance because, after all, other difficult and esoteric classical forms (most
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notably Dhrupad singing) have survived the changes of the 20th century and even
increased in popularity in recent years. Solo tabla, in Kippen’s view, has been most
affected by the changes in the manner in which tabla players have chosen (or have been
encouraged) to provide accompaniment to instrumental music recitals. As Kippen
explains, in the past (in the early 20th century or earlier), tabla players often provided
very simple, straightforward accompaniment that, as noted above, consisted of simply
providing the Thekaa with minor embellishments, if any. Historically, this style has been
particularly characteristic of tabla accompaniment of Khyal and remains so today. A
much different but also common style was referred to as laRant (fighting) or saath sangat
(playing together) which most often featured in instrumental recitals. In this style, which
is rarely heard these days, the tabla player tries his best to shadow the soloist by
attempting to play strokes on the tabla that sound similar to the patterns being played on
the sitar or sarod; this can be done as an echo, as in saarangii accompaniment, or, if
possible, almost simultaneously. Which of these two styles would have been preferred
by a particular soloist was of course dependent on that individual’s tastes (the two names
for this style would seem to reflect inter alia the differing opinions of musicians
regarding this type of accompaniment), but it also had much to do with the perceived
status of the tabliya relative to the soloist. The laRant style by nature involves much
more influence on and input in a performance on the part of the tabla player than is
otherwise the case, and not surprisingly, many soloists have found this to be undesirable.
However, in a situation where the tabla player outranked the soloist in terms of age
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and/or fame and popularity, the tabla player could choose to indulge in laRant style
playing whether the soloist desired this type of accompaniment or not.
Another, third style of tabla accompaniment arose in the last 50 years, again
primarily in the realm of instrumental music, one that Kippen refers to as the
“alternating” style. Kippen describes this style as “non-interference with the soloist’s
improvisations, thus allowing for the potentially unhindered development of the rag, and
the full exploitation of the many opportunities given for short, interposed tabla
solos”(1988:104). Kippen gives primary credit to Pandit Ravi Shankar for this
innovation. 77 Kippen seems to feel this development (in large part due to his informants’
opinions on the matter, to be fair) is largely a negative one, in that it has resulted in both
the laRant style of accompaniment and the tabla solo proper both becoming largely
obsolete, as tabla players can feature their skills in the context of a sitar or sarod recital
through the shorter solos they play that are interpolated into the raga performance without
the need for their own separate recital and without the need to “interfere” in what the
soloist is playing. My own feeling, however, is that while RS does deserve credit for
elevating the role of the tabla player generally (and for turning a few, such as his
longtime musical partner the late Ustad Alla Rakha, into bona fide superstars), he does
not necessarily deserve blame for marginalizing either solo tabla playing or the older
styles of accompaniment. From my own experience as a listener, I can testify that both
RS and other notable Maihar gharana exponents such as Ali Akbar Khan include all three
77 The idea of expanding the role of the tabla player started with Ravi Shankar’s Guru, Ustad Allaudin
Khan, but it was RS who undoubtedly refined and popularized this new way of featuring the tabla player
during a performance; see Shankar (1969 & 1999).
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styles of accompaniment, straight Thekaa, (at least some) saath sangat, and the
‘alternating’ style in their performances. This is not to mention that RS has made a
practice over the years of allowing his tabla accompanists to play longer, ‘proper’ tabla
solos (where the sitar plays leharaa accompaniment) between items in his concerts and
on his recordings. If the recent live performances and recordings of RS and Ali Akbar
Khan feature less saath sangat now than in the 1960s, it is perhaps as much due to the
tabla players themselves than to what soloists have expected from them. It should be
noted, though, that the strictest version of the ‘alternating’ style can be found more
commonly in the performances of heavily Khyal influenced instrumentalists such as
sarodist Amjad Ali Khan and the late sitar maestro Vilayat Khan. In the music of this
type of artist, the short tabla solos are mostly extraneous in terms of the overall
performance, outside of perhaps creating a sense of excitement and forward motion. In
this way, gayaakii ang instrumentalists, as in many other regards, can be seen as
occupying middle ground between Dhrupad musicians and strongly Dhrupad-influenced
instrumentalists on the one hand and Khyal singers on the other.
However, it is not only that all the credit or blame for this change in relative
emphasis on instrumental accompaniment rather than on solo tabla performance should
not go to Ravi Shankar or the Maihar gharana alone; it is unfair, I feel, to place the
blame even on instrumental soloists generally. To be sure, soloists have their
preferences, and by the nature of the relationship, there is more likelihood that a soloist
will impact the way a tabla player accompanies him than vice versa. Again, though, I
would like to emphasize that tabla players have never had more status and prestige or
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more commercial appeal than they do today, even if the disparity between the stars and
the rank and file professionals among tabla players is even more pronounced than in the
realm of instrumental soloists. Thus, it again seems somewhat surprising to find that, at
least in the eyes of some, today’s superstar tabla players have settled for what is actually
a more subservient musical position now than 50 or 100 years ago. The tabla player most
often criticized for accepting this arguably diminished role is Ustad Zakir Hussain, the
son of the aforementioned late Punjab tabla gharana maestro Alla Rakha. Pandit Shankar
Ghosh, senior tabla Guru and veteran performer of Calcutta, spoke most openly and
explicitly of the tabla players I interviewed regarding this subject. When I asked about
Zakirji’s accompaniment style (as a factor in his popularity among aspiring tabliya-s),
Shankarda responded thusly,
…in my time, it was, uh, he [Zakir] has brought a style…it is, he has diminished
the scope, uses of the tabla while in accompaniment. In my, you see, there is
one…did you see this one? [showing me the recently released Shankar Ghosh CD
boxed set] You can get in the Music World. You can see all these
accompaniment was so different than nowadays accompaniment, it was so
different! Because it was free – I was not being told like this and I was not being
told like this and when to play. I was the master of mine. So what was lacking in
that way is that it was only the instrumentalist’s own idea which was being given
to the audience. But what about the idea of the tabla player? It was not being
added. So that the result was that was not helping the music to grow. One side of
music was not there – which was the sport…which was the sport. Do you hear
me playing with Vilayat Khan in raga Darbari Kanada which is very famous?
Playing with Ali Akbar Khan? Playing with Ravi Shankarji? It was always like,
“He is doing something, I am doing something.” In that way we used to…that,
Zakir did not do that (interview, 2005).
This having been said, I should again note that this development (which is widespread
amongst tabla players across India) cannot be solely attributed to ZH because even if he
was the first play in the “alternating” accompaniment style - which is demonstrably not
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the case - other tabla players have had to choose to emulate him in that regard and clearly
many have.
Considering that I have not interviewed Zakir Hussain first hand, it is difficult for
me to speculate regarding why he would be content to play less of an active role in the
development of the music of the soloist he is playing with than his predecessors had,
other than that perhaps he plays in this style to be deferent to the great, senior artists he
frequently accompanies. Shankar Ghosh touched on this as our interview proceeded.
“Many times people told that he played under…like he played ‘underdog’ - he did not
use it [his popularity ],” Shankarda stated. In other words, he felt that Zakirji has the
clout, so to speak, and the musical skill and ability to impose himself on performances
much more than he generally does, or to use Shankar Ghosh’s words, “should do.” SG
did note that, at times, particularly when playing with santuur player Shiv Kumar Sharma
or flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Zakir does assert himself more in accompaniment.
This would seem to somewhat confirm the idea that Zakir Hussain is more apt to take a
more active role while playing with musicians he considers his peers and equals, as Shiv
Kumar and Hari Prasad are not much older than Zakir 78 and both have worked with him
frequently in various musical endeavors since the 1970s. An examination of ZH’s
recordings with Sultan Khan would seem to suggest that this is true of the relationship
between these two as well. While the nature of mass or public patronage has, to a certain
extent, leveled the hierarchy between the prestige and respect accorded Khyal singers
relative to instrumentalists or sitar and sarod players relative to saarangii or tabla players,
78 Both Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia are 13 years older than Zakir Hussain.
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there is no doubt that a tabla player of ZH’s stature is closer to the level of prestige of a
santuur, saarangii, or baansurii player than a sitarist or a sarodist, particularly a great
maestro like Ali Akbar or Vilayat Khan. At the risk of sounding cynical, perhaps ZH has
found that a stance of somewhat exaggerated humility before the great maestros has
gained him more opportunities to play with such high level musicians over time.
Certainly, if ZH seems to be utilizing such a strategy (which is by no means a fact), his
fellow (but lower profile) tabla-playing brethren are more than happy to follow his
example. Due to their by nature subservient musical position, tabla players, especially in
the current era, are relatively likely, it would seem, to take a conservative approach when
dealing with soloists, onstage and off.
Bikram Ghosh, Shankar Ghosh’s son and disciple, himself a successful performer
in both the classical and pop/fusion fields, addressed many of the same points as his
father had during my interview with him. Bikram Ghosh’s comments differed in tone,
however, as he approached the issues from the perspective of a (relatively) young
performer who is still trying to ‘climb the ladder,’ so to speak, and make himself
attractive as an accompanist to the top-level, ‘star’ instrumentalists. Thus, while he was
at times critical of other specific artists, he more frequently included himself as being
very much a part of whatever was happening in the field of tabla, good or bad. This is a
subject position much different from his father’s, a senior and well-established musician
who has earned the right to be critical of (relatively) younger performers who he sees as
having compromised the tradition. Bikram Ghosh did not focus on how or to what extent
current tabla players were or were not contributing to classical instrumental recitals
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outside of their allotted solos as his father had, and perhaps this is understandable as the
‘alternating’ style has been prevalent since well before the beginning of his musical
training. Along these lines, I found it telling when he explained to me rather
straightforwardly that tabla players were defined by their work as accompanists. As he
stated, “The person who is successful as a tabla player is basically successful as an
accompanist, not as soloist necessarily. Your first success as a tabla player comes with
all the people you are playing with.” Bikram Ghosh instead wanted to emphasize how
he felt that current players were compelled by the demands of soloists to compromise
their gharana identity (if they had had that background) and perhaps even their overall
musical identity. In explaining this notion, Bikram again pointed to Zakir Hussain as an
example of this current trend:
Today for us, we play with Pandit Ravi Shankar, he will want Alla Rakha
Khansheb’s accompaniment. You know - “Yeah, he used to play that.” That is a
specialty of Punjab gharana. So what do I do? I come home and quickly practice,
and I go play with him. You play with Amjad Ali Khansaheb, a fan of Benares
gharana. So you come home and practice Kishen Maharajji and all that. You
play with Buddhadev Das Guptaji – “Farukhabad tabla is the best!” So fine, you
are a Farukhabad tabla player. So at the end of the day you are performing with
all these artists who have different demands and needs, who believe in differentdifferent
styles, you know. And the tabla player has to deliver, so he goes and he
delivers. The tabla players who are the most successful today are actually the
least committed to the gharanas – it’s a strange irony, today. Zakirji…you listen
to Zakirji, I am not talking about solo playing, accompaniment.- sometimes you
will not be able to make out where he is coming from (interview, 2005).
And, it should again be emphasized that BG feels that he adapts his style of
accompaniment to please each artist just as he felt Zakir Hussain does (“I find myself
going south with Amjad Ali and north with Raviji.”)
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The larger point to be made here, though, as the primary concern of this study is
musical style, is that, as with the baani-s of Dhrupad, tabla gharanas have become
abstract style categories and have been largely shorn of their hereditary and certainly
their geographical associations. In the case of tabla, this transition happened apparently
much later than with Dhrupad, and although it seems impetus for this change was
basically the same for tabla as for Khyal and instrumental music, the process is almost
complete with tabla, while soloists (both vocalists and instrumentalists) by comparison
hold more tightly to their gharana identifications, even if in some cases this is merely
rhetoric. There are some tabla players who identify closely with their gharana, no doubt,
but most of these individuals are actual members (frequently by blood) of a recognized
lineage and, thus, are few in number. There seems to be a consensus among non-
hereditary tabla players, though, in terms of recognizing that today gharana in tabla
represents nothing more than style. The majority of the tabla players I spoke with during
my research unequivocally subscribed to this view. “The gharana distinction [in tabla]
comes clearly in technique only…and compositions”(Nayan Ghosh). “Actually, gharana
doesn’t mean anything other than style”(Shankar Ghosh). “The only relevance of the
gharana today has remained in information. ‘So, this bol came from Firoz Khan of the
Punjab gharana.’ - That is the only way it survived”(Bikram Ghosh).
Style and repertoire are associated with gharana in vocal music and sitar/sarod
music as much as in tabla. The Agra gharana has its bandiish-s which are traditional to
that gharana (and that were perhaps composed by a maestro of that gharana) and its own
distinct style, both in terms of voice production and approach to the development of
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agas. There is an important distinction, however, between tabla and soloist gharanas, in
that in tabla, style is determined by the gharana background of the composition itself, not
the gharana of the performer necessarily. So, a Lucknow tabla composition has to be
played with Lucknow technique, but a Kirana bandiish (Khyal composition) can be
performed in the Kirana style but in other styles as well. This is particularly crucial
because not every tabla gharana’s traditional repertoire includes every type of
composition. As Nayan Ghosh explained to me, this has been a major factor in gharana
mixing in tabla, as tabliya-s who want to build up a complete repertoire in terms of
playing most or all prevailing types of compositions by necessity have to turn to other
gharanas (interview, 2005). Anish Pradhan, disciple of the late Pandit Nikhil Ghosh,
explained this concept stating,
I have been lucky in that I have learned repertoire from all these gharanas and
have learned the approach to those compositions also. That means if I am playing
Delhi gharana, then I have been taught to approach those compositions in a
particular manner, both technically as well as aesthetically. So, whether or not I
can really do it in performance, that’s for the listeners to decide and for my
seniors to decide. But yes, I have been trained in that manner, if you play Ajrada,
then you have to [play in the Ajrada style]…(interview, 2005).
The term used for the technique identified with each compostion is nikaas (Hindi –
source; origin), and a repeating theme that arose in my conversations with the various
tabla players I met in 2005 was that if any aspect of tabla was being compromised by
younger tabla players, it was this. Arvind Mulgaonkar, senior performer, teacher, and
scholar of tabla, 79 in particular felt that this aspect of the general repertory was being
compromised, largely because students neglect proper technique, i.e. proper production
79 Arvind Mulgaonkar has authored a Marathi-language book on tabla, entitled Tabala (2004).
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of the individual strokes, in the name of pushing for more and more speed. The fact that
individuals rarely specialize in or identify strongly with one gharana was never portrayed
by any of my interlocutors as a negative development, however.
It is rather clear, then, that the shift in emphasis in tabla playing from solo playing
to accompanying has sped up the process whereby gharana has generally receded in
importance and been reduced to simply an indicator of musical style. Gharana, as
detailed above, has become similarly less important in the realm of soloist musicians, but
for slightly different reasons. The soloist in current day Indian music has an unparalled
amount of freedom in terms of choosing which style to pursue as a classical artist. There
have never been more instructional books, cheap instruments, websites, videos,
recordings, live performances, music classes, music colleges, and/or independent
classical music teachers than now. Considering that this music was largely unavailable to
the general public less than a century ago, this statement is somewhat less impressive, but
true all the same. All these resources cannot substitute for innate talent and ability or,
more importantly, for finding one or more competent Gurus who can properly guide a
young musician as a performer and a budding professional. Rudimentary training is
easily had, but professional level training is much harder to find. For the musician who
has the talent and the training, though, there is abundant access to the music of all the
important performers in India, historical and current, and there is abundant choice in
deciding how to incorporate the strong points of their different role models’ music into
their own. The difference between tabla players who specialize in accompaniment and
soloists, vocal and instrumental, is again that soloists make their stylistic choices
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positively, so to speak, in order to create the style of presentation that will help them to
achieve their goals, whether that means making money on stage or earning the respect of
connoisseurs and fellow musicians (or both). For tabla players, though, they have to
consider the demands of both the audience and the soloists who might choose them for a
concert or a tour. As Bikram Ghosh explained, this means that today’s tabla players have
to be chameleons who adapt to the demands of the top level instrumentalists, potentially
providing accompaniment in any of the major gharana styles.
The upshot of all this in the regional context is that it makes generalizations about
stylistic tendencies in Maharashtrian tabla playing and Bengali tabla playing more
difficult to arrive at than in the case of Khyal. To be sure, tabla players in any particular
location tailor their skills to fit the musical demands of the place where they live and
play. Pune tabla players play mostly with Khyal singers, Calcutta tabla players play
mostly with instrumentalists, Bombay and Benares tabla players play with both. So even
a distinction as broad as this one has had a hand in shaping tabla playing in each region.
Also, as mentioned above, there are certainly key historical figures in tabla playing in
each region, for example Gyan Prakash Ghosh in Calcutta and Munir Khan in Bombay,
who were crucial in terms of training disciples and spreading their style of tabla
throughout their respective regional bases of operation. In the next section I will detail
these figures and the differences in their stylistic approaches, but it is worth mentioning
now that almost all of the key figures in early 20th century tabla playing had a fairly
catholic approach to style (especially compared to their contemporaries in Khyal
singing), and definitely played their own roles in pushing tabla playing generally towards
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versatility and perhaps even homogeneity in terms of style. However, there is a parallel
with Khyal in that in tabla you have certain gharana styles that flourish in one area and
certain others that flourish in a different place, and in that the various styles that are
prevalent in one area are often related, stylistically if not genealogically. This is a
crucial point, as one of the larger assumptions guiding this study is that the gharana styles
that are popular or common in one region are popular as much because of the tastes and
preferences of the local musicians and audiences as because of historical happenstance,
as some would have it. As with the previous chapters on Khyal, however, I will limit
myself in this chapter to detailing the styles of tabla that are present and arguably most
important in Maharashtra and Bengal.
Before proceeding it is worth noting a few important differences, some that I have
already briefly discussed, that arise when similar questions are posed in regards to Khyal
singing and tabla playing. I have explained why I believe tabla players have to approach
their style differently than does a soloist. Tabliya-s, more than ever before, are
accompanists first and foremost and thus, to a degree unknown to soloists, have to at least
attempt to learn to how to play accompaniment in all the major styles. Many Khyal
singers try to take the best things from the music of their heroes/role models, but no
Khyal singer (outside of a incredibly talented mimic like a young Kumar Gandharva) has
ever mastered or attempted to master all the major gharana gayakis or tried to incorporate
elements of every gharana gaayakii in their composite style. Tabla players in modern
India are not unlike session players in the pop/film music world in as much as they have
to be able to replicate the style and sound of any major performer on their respective
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instrument, but also play their own original music where and when they can express
themselves in a more individualistic manner. Considering that many tabla players
(particularly in Bombay) actually do session work, this may also contribute to the
mindset of versatility, since the ability to able to play in different styles within the
classical tradition is not unlike having the ability to play many distinctly different styles
of music (pop, film music, jazz, devotional, fusion, etc.).
The interesting thing, though, is that while tabla players seem much more
resigned than any other similarly defined group of musicians in the Hindustani tradition
to the fact that gharana distinctions have collapsed and that the gharana styles are all part
of a shared repertoire common to all tabla players, they also recognized regional
distinctions much more frequently than any Khyal singers or sitar or sarod players I
interviewed. This was generally couched in terms of “Bombay tabliya-s” versus
“Calcutta tabliya-s” (or less frequently Delhi or Benares tabla players), but it was a
recognized distinction nonetheless. This is in marked contrast to Khyal singers who
might point out that one gharana gaayakii might be found in one place but not another or
that certain individual Maharashtrians or Bengalis might distort some aspect of the music
in a certain way, but at the same time maintain that good, properly executed Khyal is the
same wherever it is found. At the time, there certainly were cases where one of my tabla
playing interlocutors would assert that there are no regional distinctions in the field of
classical tabla but then later spoke of the contrast between Bombay and Calcutta players
in the same interview. In other words, when we are examining a subjective issue such as
the influence of regional culture on classical music, this type of ambiguity comes as no
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surprise. It can reasonably be taken to be the result of the contradiction inherent between
the ‘on the ground’ reality of regional variation and the pervasive ideology of music “as a
national tradition.” One very important fact aiding the regional view of tabla is that the
actual instruments are constructed out of different materials and are made differently in
Bombay and Calcutta. This creates a very audible difference in the sound of the tabla
players from each of these cities, and even determines the way that they produce the
sound, i.e. the way that they strike the drums. In the second section of this chapter, then,
I will detail what I see as the differences between tabla playing in Bombay and Calcutta
(and by extension in Maharashtra and West Bengal).
I will attempt first to provide an account of the development of tabla in
Maharashtra and Bengal in the last century, which will include a discussion of the
foundational figures in each of these two regions, a broad outline of their musical
contributions, and a summation of current tabla style. This task is again altogether more
difficult in the case of tabla than in Khyal, however, for two primary reasons. First, as I
mentioned above, many of the key figures in tabla in the early to mid-20th century,
particularly those who are most crucial in the Bombay and Calcutta scenes, most notably
Ustad Munir Khan, were students of a number of different Gurus (and are often said to
‘belong’ to multiple gharanas) and combined the established gharana styles into their
more eclectic and personal forms of expression. Due to this, the boundaries between
tabla styles began to disappear approximately a generation before the same phenomenon
began to happen on a large scale in Khyal. Broadly speaking, in the case of Khyal, the
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Ustads brought their comparatively pure gharana gaayakii-s to Maharashtra (primarily)
and to Calcutta, and then their Hindu disciples, who often learned with multiple Gurus,
began to shape these gharana styles into their own personal styles, which have since been
even further diluted. In the case of tabla, however, many of the Ustads themselves began
combining the core gharana styles together before or during their time spent in
Maharashtra or Bengal. It is, thus, somewhat difficult to catalogue these notable tabla
players according to gharana with much precision, at least in comparison to soloist
musicians and lineages.
The second and more important difficulty in tracing this stylistic progression from
the early 20th century to the present is a comparative paucity of available secondary
sources on tabla in English. Gottlieb (1993) has presented a summary of the major
gharana styles illustrated mostly by means of transcribing recorded performances by
prominent tabliya-s representing each established gharana. However, Gottlieb does not
venture far beyond musical style (which, to his credit, he covers thoroughly), only
addressing the historical progression of the field and giving biographical information of
the major figures to a limited extent. Kippen’s The Tabla of Lucknow (1988) is the only
major study of tabla which is truly ethnomusicological in approach, tying together
musical style with an ethnographic account of the Lucknow tabla gharana and its socio-
cultural context. Unfortunately, there are not similar studies of the other major tabla
gharanas, although Roach (1972) has contributed a shorter, article-length account of the
Benares gharana. The only other relatively comprehensive account of tabla and its
gharanas which I have located outside of Gottlieb’s study is Aban Mistry’s Pakhawaj &
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Tabla: History, Schools, and Traditions (1999). 80 Mistry’s work is not
ethnomusicological as such, but she does do a very exhaustive job of detailing the history
and style of, not only the six “major” tabla gharanas (Delhi, Ajrada, Lucknow,
Farrukhabad, Benares, and Punjab), but also of some of the important schools of
pakhaawaj playing and numerous other smaller, regional traditions of tabla and
pakhaawaj. Beyond Mistry’s and Gottlieb’s work, however, the only studies I am
familiar with that attempt to cover the basics of musical style and/or the history of the
major tabla gharanas comprehensively are instructional books (such as Aloke Dutta’s
Tabla: Lessons and Practice [2 nd ed., 1995]) which provide such information briefly as
introductory material. What is most lacking in comparison to the available studies on
Khyal singers and instrumentalists, though, are biographies on more recent figures in
tabla and even the most basic biographic detail concerning the founding fathers of
gharana tabla playing (i.e. those who died before the 20th century), and this then has
limited the few scholars who have aimed at presenting a detailed history of any or all of
the notable tabla gharanas.
It is not difficult to assess why tabla has been a neglected subject among scholars
of Hindustani music, particularly among Indian scholars. As is well known (and as I
have detailed above), tabla players occupy the lowest niche in terms of prestige among all
classical musicians. Some of this is ‘built in,’ so to speak, to the instrument. First, the
tabla is used primarily as an accompanying instrument and is thus subservient in purely
musical terms. Likewise, because its heads are made from animal hide, there has
80 Mistry’s monograph was originally written and published in Marathi.
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historically been a prohibition against upper caste musicians performing on these
instruments due to the issue of ritual purity (the animal skin, as a by-product of the life
process, was formally considered to be a polluting factor), although today many upper
caste tabla players can found. These are factors that have been in place long before the
tabla was either invented or introduced into India. In the colonial period, i.e. during the
period when, thanks largely to the popularity of Khyal and to a lesser extent kathak dance
and sitar music, it became the chief percussion instrument used in Hindustani music, the
tabla became associated with the courtesan tradition as tabla players accompanied and
were often the ‘business associates’ of courtesans. So, as the social standing of courtesans
declined thanks to the oft-discussed Victorian morality inculcated by the British
colonists, the tenuous position of tabla players similarly declined. Tabla players did not
suffer from their association with courtesans as much as saarangiya-s, perhaps because
tabla is necessary for the performance of even the chastest classical music and/or because
no workable replacement or substitute (like the harmonium for saarangii) for the tabla
has ever come into common use, but the social stigma remains. 81 Arguably the most
important issue, which can be seen as an extension of the above factors, has been that
Bhatkhande, as noted above, focused his scholarly attention totally on vocal music, and
most Indian scholars have followed in his footsteps. Taking this into consideration, it is
not at all surprising that, as in the case of Dhrupad, scholars outside India have seemingly
taken a greater interest in tabla than those in India.
81 Kippen relates an anecdote from his research where, after finding an apartment in Lucknow and agreeing
to terms with the owner, he was then subsequently refused upon explaining that he would be researching
and maintaining social relations with tabla players (1988:89).
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As with my discussion of Khyal, I will begin here with the Maharashtrian side of
the equation. Keeping in mind the limited historical and biographical information
available even for important tabliya-s, I will only attempt to present information
regarding either tabliya-s who my informants mentioned as being particularly important
and/or influential or tabliya-s who have genealogical or discipular ties to my informants
or to other notable tabla players in Bombay (or Calcutta). One can only assume, as in the
case of “women singers” in the 19th and early 20th centuries, that there have been many
very talented tabla players outside those few whose names have been preserved in the
historical record or in the memories of current senior tabla players. And, long these lines,
it is important to remember that, unlike in the case of Khyal, there is no figure we can
point to with confidence as the first Maharashtrian tabla maestro and as the starting point
of classical tabla in the region. So, again, I will begin with the earliest generation of tabla
players who can be seen to have ties to the current tabla scene.
The one North Indian Ustad of the tabla who could most appropriately be seen as
the godfather of tabla in Bombay and the founder of the only lineage that is truly native
to Bombay 82 is Ustad Munir Khan. Munir Khansaheb was born in Laliyana in the Meerut
district of Uttar Pradesh in the mid to late 19th century; Gottlieb (1993:14) gives his birth
year as 187? And Naimpalli (2005:94) lists 1863. Munir Khan was the son of Delhi
gharaanedaar tabliya Kale Khan, and for this reason is often referred to as a member of
the Delhi gharana. However, like many of the Maharashtrian khyaliya-s a generation or
82 Arvind Mulgaonkar, a disciple of Munir Khan’s tradition, prefers the term ‘Bombay gharana’ (interview,
2005), while others use the more commonly encountered designation ‘Laliyana gharana.’
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more later, MK studied for significant periods of time with Ustads of several different
gharanas. After his lessons with his father, MK studied with Ustad Hussain Ali Khan of
Farukhabad gharana (for 15 years, according to Naimpalli) and then with Ustad Boli
Baksh, also of Delhi gharana. Gottlieb also notes that some Farukhabad tabliya-s
maintain that MK also studied with Nanne Khan, another Farukhabad maestro. While it
is difficult to determine who exactly MK studied with and/or was a disciple of, all agree
that MK studied with many different Ustads, with most authorities putting the number of
MK’s gurus at 24, a figure cited to me by Shri Arvind Mulgaonkar, the aforementioned
senior tabla maestro of Bombay who is a disciple of the Munir Khan tradition. It is for
this reason that some deny the existence of a separate gharana with MK as the founder.
As Mr. Mulgaonkar explained, there were elements of MK’s style and compositions in
his repertoire from every major tabla gharana outside of Benares (interview, 2005).
Perhaps, then, it is better to look at MK’s major contribution to the field of tabla as one of
breaking down barriers between gharanas rather as founding an altogether new gharana.
Munir Khan moved to Bombay in his youth and lived there performing and
teaching for the rest of his 60 odd years (although he frequently performed outside
Bombay), and his contribution specifically to the musical scene in Bombay can be most
accurately assessed by the number of outstanding disciples he trained. The most famous
of these are Ahmedjan Thirakwa, Amir Hussain Khan, Shamsuddin Khan, and
Habbibuddin Khan, though by all accounts, there were many others. The most
productive of these disciples in terms of producing his own noteworthy disciples was
Amir Hussain Khan. AHK was born in Meerut, but, as his father was a saarangii player
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in the service of the Hyderabad court, he spent his childhood there. He received his early
musical training from his father, but later became a disciple of his maternal uncle Munir
Khan, who began teaching the boy on his visits to Hyderabad. Later, however, AHK
shifted to Bombay to be with his Guru, and stayed there from 1942-1967, according to
his direct disciple Arvind Mulgaonkar. As Mr. Mulgaonkar explained to me, after
moving to Bombay, AHK rarely visited Hyderabad or North India, largely restricting his
sphere of activities to Maharashtra, Goa, and Karanataka, where he taught “thousands of
disciples”(interview, 2005). Nayan Ghosh, the son and disciple of the tabla maestro
Nikhil Ghosh, who himself was also a direct disciple of Amir Hussain, spoke during our
interview of AHK’s personality and temperament. Nayanda explained that his father had
heard Amir Hussain in the former’s early days in Bombay more or less by accident but
was “blown away” AHK’s playing. After this, Nikhil Ghosh sought permission from his
then Guru Gyan Prakash Ghosh to begin learning with AHK. 83 With Gyanbabu’s
permission then, he met with AHK and “found him absolutely disarming. He was such a
simple, affectionate person, and he had no qualms about teaching just anyone… whoever
came to him. He found him like a very simple, naïve, I would say, saintly kind of a
person”(Nayan Ghosh: interview, 2005). That his personality was suited for teaching
many students was fortunate, because, as Mr. Mulgaonkar explained to me, early in his
career Amir Hussain grew tired of the low pay and subservient status generally granted to
tabliya-s of the day in their accompanist role and chose to make his living from then
forward primarily as a teacher and a solo player.
83
It is customary in India to seek permission from one’s current Guru before beginning study with another
musician.
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Turning to Amir Hussain’s disciples, Nikhil Ghosh was born in Barisal in East
Bengal (now Bangladesh). According to Nayan Ghosh, Nikhil and his older brother,
Pannalal, the pioneer of the bamboo flute (baansurii) in Hindustani classical music, were
the first professional musicians in their family, although Nikhil’s father was a sitarist and
his grandfathers were a dhrupadiya and a pakhaawaj player, respectively. Nikhil Ghosh
began his training in vocal music in Barisal, but after shifting to Calcutta in 1939, he met
Gyan Prakash Ghosh who was to become his first tabla Guru and who was also the
individual that eventually helped the young Nikhil Ghosh to settle on tabla playing as his
primary musical pursuit. As Nayan Ghosh related to me,
My father was perhaps very talented, uh, musically – there was a great deal of
musicality in him already as a child. And that is why, even before he found his
first Guru Gyanbabu, he was pretty good enough, as a tabla player and as a singer,
and it was at a point in his life when he began performing careers in both, that a
point came when he felt it that may not be wise to carry two careers at the same
time, vocal and tabla, and after long discussion spread out over many weeks with
his guru Gyan Prakash Ghosh, he finally decided that he would opt for tabla – he
was equally brilliant in both. The reason he opted for tabla was, uh, he agreed to
all the desires and requests or ideas that Gyan Prakash Ghosh had. Gyanbabu said
at that time, there was, he couldn’t see around for any academically educated
musician and especially a tabla player. So tabla was still kind of relegated to, you
know, the, uh, the traditional, especially the Muslim families who kind of seemed
to be clinging to their art and their knowledge so possessively and wouldn’t part
with it so easily…it had to come out from their clutches and reach, you know,
further, so he felt my father perhaps was the right medium to achieve that
(interview, 2005).
Nikhil Ghosh then was carrying out very much the same task in the field of tabla that
Balkrishnabua and Vishnu Digambar had earlier carried out in the field of vocal music,
which was to help improve the social standing of tabla players (largely by showing that a
middle-class Hindu from a respectable family could be a professional tabla player) and to
make knowledge regarding the tabla available to a wider public. Like his Maharashtrian
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predecessors, Nikhil Ghosh had to sacrifice much to accomplish his goals in this arena,
only his sacrifice was not surrendering himself to a whimsical, manipulative, deceitful,
and/or sadistic Ustad (although he also did this to a certain extent while studying with a
later Guru, Ahmedjan Thirakwa), but rather that, by committing himself to tabla, it would
always mean “playing second fiddle” to another artist, one that on occasion might even
be less talented and less skilled as a singer or instrumentalist than Nikhil Ghosh himself.
It, of course, goes without saying that it also meant getting paid much less in terms of
performance fees.
After only two years in Calcutta, Nikhil Ghosh moved to Bombay where he
would stay for the rest of his life and career. Nikhil Ghosh made this move for two
reasons. The first was that Gyan Prakash himself was frequently traveling to Bombay
during that period as he had taken up work as a music director (arranger/composer) for
Bombay films. The second was because older brother Pannalal who, according to
Nayanda, served as a guardian figure for Nikhil after the early deaths of their parents, had
also already moved to Bombay. It was shortly after moving to Bombay that Nikhil
Ghosh made the aforementioned decisions to focus his efforts exclusively on tabla
playing and then to learn with Amir Hussain Khan. After an extended period of learning
with Amir Hussain (some 15 years), a period in which Nikhil Ghosh established himself
as one of the leading young tabliya-s in Bombay and the rest of India, Nikhil Ghosh
began a period of study with yet another Guru, this time the great Ahmedjan Thirakwa, a
guru-bhaaii (co-disciple) of Amir Hussain under Munir Khan and one of the great
legends of tabla playing. It was Thirakwa, however, that initially took an interest in
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Nikhil Ghosh, not vice-versa. Thirakwa frequently heard Nikhil Ghosh play and became
an admirer of the young tabliya. When he eventually offered to teach NG, however, NG
was hesitant, as Thirakwa had a reputation as being a somewhat difficult person and a
poor teacher, in the sense that he had little patience for most students. Nayan Ghosh,
who himself studied briefly with the master as a child, had the following to say regarding
Ahmedjan Thirakwa:
Khansaheb was a very interesting, very colorful personality…On the one hand,
people respected and revered him for being without doubt the finest tabla player,
of his times and perhaps of all times. On the other hand, he had a very majestic
and a very regal way of carrying himself. And, he appeared to be a very serious
person, and so people feared him also. And then, there was another side to him –
he was notorious as a very bad teacher. He was a great performer, but he had no
patience as a teacher – which we realized much later, because people kept saying,
you know, he would not part with all his knowledge in tabla to anyone. Much,
much later, decades later, we came to know that that was not the case. It was
because he just was looking for the right kind of a disciple, you know. He was
very choosy about giving those things into [the] right hands. And certainly he
didn’t have much patience because he wouldn’t sit and teach someone, you know,
repeat something a few times. He would just play it once and you had to play it
right, exactly, then and there, or he would just shoo you out (interview, 2005).
This was a move that was again supported by Nikhil Ghosh’s Gurus, both by Gyan
Prakash Ghosh and Amir Hussain. Gyanbabu had had his own problems with Thirakwa,
having essentially attempted to bribe with him countless gifts of money, expensive liquor,
jewelry, etc., in order to get Thirakwa to teach him, but to no avail. Even having had
these frustrating experiences, Gyanbabu encouraged Nikhil to learn with Thirakwa,
telling Nikhil, “what I couldn’t achieve, I hope you will achieve”(Nayan Ghosh:
interview, 2005).
For Nikhil Ghosh, his time with Thirakwasaheb (and I will return to the topic of
Ahmedjan Thirakwa shortly) was the final polish that made him one of the great tabla
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players of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Susheela Mishra quotes Keramatullah Khan,
late doyen of the Farukhabad tabla gharana, as telling Nikhil Ghosh after a performance
in 1971, “Brother, Uncle Thirakwa has literally poured tabla art down your throat”
(2001:146). 84 Beyond his activities as a solo performer and accompanist, Nikhil Ghosh
was also a prolific teacher and scholar. Most notably, he founded the degree-granting
music institution Sangeet Mahabharati in Juhu (Vile Parle West), Bombay, a school
which is still run by his sons, Nayan and Dhruba. Also, he authored a number of
musicological works, including Fundamentals of Raga and Tala, With a New System of
Notation (1968) and a massive encyclopedia project on Indian music, dance, and theatre
which is only now nearing completion. As a Guru, he produced many fine disciples
including his son Nayan, a leading tabliya in Bombay and a proficient sitarist (both of
which he learned from his father), his other son Dhruba, a well-known saarangii soloist
who also received his early training from his father, and the aforementioned Anish
Pradhan. Dhruba Ghosh is a particularly interesting case because he sees himself as
extending his father’s mission of making the tabla socially acceptable and respectable to
the saarangii. The saarangii is no doubt the last ‘unreformed’ instrument or niche in
Hindustani music, in the sense that the general perception is that the saarangii is only
played by illiterate Muslims who are, for the most part, pimps. This is not to stay that
this stereotype is at all true or fitting (or that Nikhil or Dhruba Ghosh ever believed these
sorts of stereotypes) or to be disrespectful of the great saarangii maestros of the past, but
the point remains. Dhruba Ghosh then has combated this, not only by setting an example
84 The original quote in Hindi is “Bhaaiyaa, aapko to chaachaa Thirakwa ne tabla pilaa diiyaa.”
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as a respectable, middle class saarangii player, but also by focusing his attention on
further developing the saarangii as a solo instrument, building on the work of others,
especially Pandit Ram Narayan, the first great solo saarangii player in the estimation of
most.
To continue with Amir Hussain’s teaching line, the one other disciple of AHK’s I
would like to mention is Pandarinath Nageshkar. According to Naimpalli, Nageshkar
was born in 1913 in Nageshi, Goa (2005:108). As in the field of vocal music, Goa has
produced many fine pakhaawaj and tabla players who, like their counterpoints in vocal
music, made their way out of Goa to such destinations as Pune and Bombay to make their
mark in the field of classical music, since, as several of my informants with Goan roots
explained, historically and currently there is relatively little interest in classical music
there. Pandarinath Nageshkar learned from a handful of Gurus before coming under the
tutelage of Amir Hussain. Pandarinath’s first Guru was a tabla player attached to a local
music school, but his second, Guru, “Laya Bhaskar” “Khaprumama” Laxman Parvatkar,
another Goan, is particularly notable in this context. Parvtakar was born in Paravati, Goa
in 1880 (Deodhar 1993:285). Parvatkar is the only tabla player and one of the few non-
khyaliya-s that are featured in BR Deodhar’s collection of biographical sketches Thor
Sangeetkar (Pillars of Hindustani Music). Although this is mostly due to the fact that
Deodhar based these short biographies on personal familiarity with his subjects and it so
happened that Khaprumama was an acquaintance of his, it is worth mentioning that
Deodhar’s piece, even at a scant six pages, is one of the longest biographies available on
any tabla player of that generation, even if the subject is basically a regional figure.
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Khaprumama did not study with a famous Ustad; most of his training came with his
uncle, an amateur musician. Khaprumama must have been a prodigious talent, though, as
he apparently had an unmatched mastery of layakaarii, or rhythm play, though another
factor, as Deodhar makes clear, is that the young Khaprumama was obsessed with
solving whatever various rhythmic “problems” he could pose to himself. His primary
method, as demonstrated to Deodhar, was to practice fitting various numbers of equal
pulsations into the length of four beats, so 5 beats over four (1 ¼ speed), 6 over four (1 ½
speed), etc., all the way up to 64 over four, or in the space of four. The feat most often
mentioned in connection with Laxmanrao Paravatkar, however, is that he could tap out
four different talas with his hands and feet while reciting a fifth, all simultaneously. 85
Although his renown was limited to the Maharashtra region, it is noteworthy that artistes
of the caliber of Alladiya Khan (who often performed with Parvatkar and who gave him
the title Laya Bhaaskar, or ‘sun of rhythm’) reportedly recognized his mastery.
Besides Khaprumama, Pandarinath Nageshkar also learned, according to Mistry,
from yet another Goan, Subbra Ankolkar, a disciple of Munir Khan about whom little
other information is available. However, Pandarinathji is perhaps more noteworthy for
who he taught. One of his prominent disciples was the late Vasant Achrekar, longtime
accompanist of Kumar Gandharva and yet another Goan. A second was Pandarinath’s
brother Shripad. The most important in terms of the current music scene, though, is
Suresh Talwalkar. Sureshji has learned from a number of Gurus, including Pandarinath
Nageshkar, Vinayakrao Gangrekar (another Goan disciple of Ankolkar), and Carnatic
85
Both Naimpalli and Mistry also mention this in their accounts, with Deodhar as the likely but uncited
source.
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mRidaangam (barrel-shaped drum) player Ramnad Ishwaran. The latter has been
particularly important in shaping Sureshji’s style, as he includes much from Carnatic
rhythm in his own music. His most interesting innovation, though, (which I saw
performed twice in 2005, in Bombay and in Calcutta) is his solo tabla presentation where
he utilizes a vocalist singing a bandiish in place of the usual saarangii or harmonium
player who would provide leharaa, a simple melody meant to aid the tabla soloist in
keeping tala. Besides his solo playing, though, Suresh Talwalkar is also a popular choice
as an accompanist. He has accompanied many of the well-known artists in vocal and
instrumental music, but is a particular favorite of Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar. Finally,
Sureshji is also a prolific teacher. His disciples who are now active as accompanists in
Pune and Bombay (Sureshji’s twin home bases) are Vijay Ghate, Ramdas Palsule,
Vishwanath Shirodkar (one of my interviewees), and Charudatta Phadke.
Returning briefly to Munir Khan’s other disciples, there are a few more
noteworthy names to mention. The first is Habbibuddin Khan (b.1918 in Meerut), son
and disciple of Shammu Khan of the Ajrada gharana, the gharana Habbibuddin is most
often said to belong to. HK started learning from his father at the age of 12 and
continued for 15 years (Naimpalli 2005:105). After that, Habbiuddin studied under both
Ustad Natthu Khan of Delhi gharana and finally Ustad Munir Khan. Habbiddudin stands
as one of the few noteworthy Ajrada players (although his style was, again, a mixture of
other gharanas) mentioned by either my informants or by the written sources I have
consulted as an important historical tabliya in Bombay. Currently, there seem to be no
adherents to this style in Bombay or Pune; Habbibuddin’s son Ramzan Khan is carrying
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on the Ajrada tradition but is based in Delhi. Ustad Shamsuddin Khan was born in
Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, but spent his childhood in Moradabad, a town famous primarily
as the home of a number of prominent saarangii players. As Sadanand Naimpalli, who is
himself a disciple of Shamsuddin’s tradition, explains, in Moradabad Shamsuddin began
learning with Ustad Faiyaz Khan (not to be confused with the vocalist) of the Farukhabad
gharana. Shamsuddin’s Ustad also happened to be the maternal uncle of one Ahmedjan
(not yet “Thirakwa,” a nickname he earned later)(2005:96). When Shamsuddin went to
Bombay to seek his fortunes as a young man, Ahmedjan went together with him and both
were to become shaagird-s of Munir Khan. Shamsuddin also learned under Ustad Tega
Jaffer Khan of Delhi gharana, to complete his taaliim. Naimpalli notes that Shamsuddin
was famous for his tabla solos, as most of the great tabla players of his generation were,
but also that Shamsuddin did most of his accompanying for Abdul Karim Khan, doyen of
the Kirana Khyal gharana. Shamsuddin apparently had few disciples, but among them
were the late Taranathrao Hattiangadi of Mangalore, Karanataka, Naimpalli’s Guru, and
Ravi Bellare, a South Indian who lives in the USA who, in Naimpalli’s estimation, is the
only true representative of Shamsuddin’s style currently.
The most famous of Munir Khan’s disciples, of course, is Thirakwa, one of the
legendary figures of 20th century tabla. Thirakwa was born in Moradabad, the son of
saarangii player. Besides Faiyaz Khan, Thirakwa also received taaliim in his early years
from two of his other uncles, Baswa Khan and Sher Khan. Mishra quotes Thirakwa as
stating that he only became truly interested in tabla when he heard his future Guru, Munir
Khan (1981:91). It was Munir Khan’s father who gave Thirakwa his nickname, though it
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was originally ‘Thirku’ (from the Hindi verb thiraknaa, “to dance”) and was then later
modified to the more dignified, ‘Thirakwa.’ As most sources agree, Thirakwa made his
debut as a soloist at the age of 16 in Bombay, and would go on to become not only
arguably the greatest soloist in recent memory (Thirakwa died in the 1970s) but also a
regular accompanist of both instrumental and vocal music. Also, despite his limitations
as a teacher (noted above), Thirakwa taught both at Bhatkhande’s Marris College in
Lucknow and Bombay’s National Center of the Performing Arts (NCPA) (Naimpalli
2005:95). Thirakwa had a notable tenure as a court musician in Rampur, a tenure which
lasted for some thirty years starting in 1936 (Mishra 1981:92). As such, Thirakwa taught
a number of students both in North India and in the Maharashtra region. Among
Thirakwa’s more well-known disciples associated with Bombay or Maharashtra are
Nikhil Ghosh, Laalji Gokhale, vocalist/tabliya Jagannathbua Purohit (‘Gunidas’), and
Bhai Gaitonde. As Kippen points out, Thirakwa (who was most likely born in the 1880s)
was one of the few old-school tabliya-s who successfully made the transition to public
patronage, but did so as much on the strength of his impressive and charismatic
personality as on his prodigious skills and encyclopedic knowledge of the tabla repertory
(1988:78). It is notable also that he achieved such public acclaim as a tabla soloist,
considering that many people, even during Thirakwa’s heyday, believed and continue to
believe the middle class audience to be by nature uninterested in solo tabla playing. The
extent of his fame in Maharashtra can be partially gauged by the fact that he was
famously given nearly top billing (as an accompanist) while performing with
Balgandharva’s Marathi Music-Theatre company.
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Concerning the prominent tabla traditions in Bombay which are unrelated to the
Munir Khan tradition (in the sense of having no discipular ties), there are very few that
my informants deemed worthy of mention. There are basically two. The first is the
Gamme Khan branch of the Delhi gharana, although there are few representatives of this
lineage currently. Gamme Khan, the son of Delhi gharaanedaar Chote Khan is often
cited as one of the great masters of the early 20th century and spent much of his
performing career in Bombay. His son was Inam Ali, also a notable tabliya who served
as Gottlieb’s model for the Delhi gharana and who also spent his life and career in
Bombay. The only Delhi gharana tabliya I encountered in Bombay was Shiv Narayan,
the son of saarangii maestro Ram Narayan, who plays in the style of his late uncle
Chatur Lal, well-known as an accompanist of Ravi Shankar and a disciple of Haji
Mohammed Khan. Chatur Lal died young at the age 40 in 1965 (Naimpalli 2005:107).
Kippen has opined that the Delhi gharana, after the death of stalwarts Inam Ali and Latif
Ahmed, is basically obsolete as an important tabla tradition.
The most important tradition in Bombay outside of the Munir Khan ‘Laliyana’
tradition, however, is the Alla Rakha branch of the Punjab gharana, although more in
terms of influence and popularity than in terms of the number of currently practicing
disciples. Alla Rakha, according to Naimpalli, was born in Rattangadh, Gurudaspur,
Punjab in 1915 (2005:102). He was not from a musical family; they instead were
farmers. However, he was attracted to music and performing early in life, and both
joined a “roving drama company” and started to learn tabla as a teen. Alla Rakha’s first
Guru was Laal Mohammed Khan, a disciple of Punjab gharana khaliifaa Kadir Baksh II.
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After a later visit to Lahore where he heard Kadir Baksh II perform, he became a disciple
of the great master himself. It was in 1936 that Alla Rakha left the Punjab for Delhi to
work as a tabla accompanist for All-India Radio. A few years later, he moved to take a
similar position in Bombay, where he also worked as a music director and where he
based himself for most of the rest of his life and career.
Alla Rakha undoubtedly achieved his greatest fame as the regular accompanist of
Pandit Ravi Shankar. Alla Rakha provided accompaniment for many of Ravi Shankar’s
most memorable performances during the 1960s and 70s, including the George Harrison
co-organized Concert for Bangladesh and the appearances at the massive Monterey Pop
and Woodstock festivals. Much as Ravi Shankar inspired many non-Indians to take up
sitar seriously (and sometimes less than seriously), one can assume that Alla Rakha
served as the role model and inspiration for many of the earliest non-Indian tabla players.
It is also worth mentioning that Alla Rakha was one of the first tabla players to be
consistently taken as a regular accompanist by a famous soloist, a pattern which has
become much more common since that time. Beyond this, Alla Rakha, along with his
son Zakir Hussain, Ravi Shankar’s other regular accompanists, such as Chatur Lal and
Kannai Dutta, Ravi Shankar himself, and many other prominent instrumentalists, has
helped to profoundly change the way tabla typically accompanies sitar, sarod, and other
instruments, as discussed above. As I have explained, this change in the style of tabla
accompaniment, which has arguably resulted in the decline in popularity and visibility of
solo tabla playing, has not been viewed universally as a positive development, nor has the
“linear, virtuosic” (Dutta 1995:5) style - in contrast to the slower developing, more
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cyclical style of the older stalwarts like Thirakwa - practiced by his son Zakir and his
many followers, which has become a popular model for emulation by young tabla
players. Regardless, whether any of the changes that have taken place in regards to the
classical tabla is for the better or for the worse, the point to be made here is that whatever
changes have taken place, Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain have been at the forefront of all
them since the late 1950s. Regarding Zakir Hussain specifically, nearly all of my tabla
playing interviewees agreed that he was by far the most imitated tabla player in India
today. Several of my interlocutors, for example Nayan Ghosh, however, felt that too
often this imitation consisted of “aping,” in other words copying his appearance and his
mannerisms, not how he plays or not only how he plays. It should also be mentioned that
although Alla Rakha (during his lifetime) and Zakir have been busy and enthusiastic
teachers over the years, in spite of their often overwhelming schedules of international
travel, recording, and performing. Besides Zakir himself, Alla Rakha’s prominent
disciples include his younger sons Fazal and Taufiq Qureshi, Annuradha Pal, and Yogesh
Samsi, who continues his studies with Zakir. Aditya Kalyanpur is another noteworthy
young tabla player who has learned under Zakir.
Shifting our focus to the tabla scene in Calcutta and West Bengal generally, we
find another parallel between Khyal singing and tabla playing. That is, while in Bombay
we find nearly all the tabla gharanas represented, historically if not currently, as is the
case in Khyal, in Calcutta there seems to be one dominant gharana, just as the Amir
Khan-Kirana style dominates vocal music there. The dominant tabla style and gharana
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in Calcutta has basically always been Farukhabad, from the early 20th century up to the
present day. I will speak more about the parallels between Khyal and tabla in concluding
this chapter, but I should point out one important difference. While the number of
khyaliya-s in Maharashtra far exceeds the number in Calcutta, the opposite is true in
tabla. Bombay may have had greater stylistic variety for most of the last century, but
Calcutta, in the estimation of most, has more tabla players overall and more top level
tabliya-s than Bombay and has for at least 20-30 years. It may be an exaggerated claim,
but my interlocutors frequently mentioned to me, speaking of Calcutta, that there “you
find a tabla player in every other house” or “you hear tabla being played in every lane.”
By contrast, I never heard such statements regarding Bombay or anywhere else in
Maharashtra. It is hard to determine how many tabla players there are per capita in
Calcutta or Bombay, but we certainly can look at the top tabliya-s of today and determine
where they are from and where they are based. Choosing which players are currently the
best is no doubt highly subjective, but it is somewhat easier to choose based on the fact
that there seems to be general agreement amongst current musicians regarding who
belongs in this category. Most often this group includes Zakir Hussain, Swapan
Choudhury, Anindo Chatterjee, and, slightly less often, Kumar Bose. Of these, two,
Anindo Chatterjee and Kumar Bose, are based in and native to Calcutta and only one,
Zakir, is based in Bombay (and notably spends as much time abroad as in India). The
fourth, Swapan Choudhury, lives and teaches in the USA, but is a Bengali from Calcutta.
As in the case of Maharashtra, it is difficult to determine the specifics of the early
history of tabla playing in Bengal for the reasons stated above, mostly because of the lack
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of historical documentation. We know that Thumri-singing courtesans began basing
themselves out of Calcutta around the mid-19th century, and as tabla is necessary for
Thumri, we can assume that there were tabla players there who filled that role. And, just
as many courtesans found their way to Calcutta as part of Wajid Ali’s retinue, many tabla
players must have come from Lucknow as well, even if very few are mentioned by name
in historical accounts. Speaking of tabla playing, however, as a widespread middle-class
hobby or, less often, career, the history is undoubtedly much shorter. In the estimation of
Shankar Ghosh, veteran performer and Guru of Calcutta, this history properly begins with
the arrival of Masit Khan, khaliifaa of the Farrukhabad gharana, in Calcutta.
I think, uh, from the late 30s, [tabla] became very popular…in Calcutta. Before
that, throughout India, it was only either the, uh, maestro of the gharana or very
few students of music who are playing. But in Calcutta it was, really speaking,
uh, it was Masit Khansaheb…who came, settled and not only taught his own son
but was [inclined] to teach many students, and that made tabla a very popular
subject in Calcutta (interview, 2005).
Shankar Ghosh is of course part of the Farukhabad tradition – Masit Khan is his daadaa-
guru or Guru’s Guru – but it is no exaggeration to say that the history of tabla in Calcutta
is the history of the Farukhabad gharana in Calcutta. This, again, is easily verifiable, as
most of the prominent tabla players historically and currently in Calcutta are not only
Farukhabad style players, but most of them also trained directly under Masit Khan, his
disciple Gyan Prakash Ghosh, or from Gyan Prakash’s disciple Shankar Ghosh.
I will list some of the names of the current stalwarts of Calcutta tabla shortly, but
as has been my method heretofore, I will work forward rather than backward.
Interestingly, however, Masit Khan was not the first Farukhabad gharaanedaar to have
settled in Calcutta. That distinction belongs instead to Masit Khan’s father, Nanhe Khan.
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As I noted in Chapter 4, Nanhe Khan was one of the few tabliya-s we can be certain
migrated from Lucknow to Calcutta with Wajid Ali. So, when Masit Khan “came” to
Calcutta in the 30s, he was really just following in the footsteps of his father and Ustad.
As Gottlieb explains, Masit Khan was taken as a child to live in Rampur (now in western
UP state) with his uncle, Nanhe Khan’s brother Nissar Ali. Rampur, like Calcutta, but
perhaps to an even greater extent, benefited from the exile of Wajid Ali since many of his
musicians chose to make Rampur their new home and base of operations. Rampur was in
a relatively favorable position relative to Lucknow as Rampur had remained loyal to the
British during the ‘Sepoy’ Mutiny of 1857. The British returned this favor by not only
allowing the native rulers to continue patronizing music and the other arts, but also by
helping Rampur financially, which increased the number of performers who could be
supported by the darbaar. As a result, Rampur “ultimately became the leading center of
classical music in North India,” a position it arguably held until 1949 when the princely
courts were officially dissolved (Gottlieb 1993:13). Masit Khan’s years as a court
musician overlap with what was possibly the pinnacle of Rampur as a center of classical
music, the reign of Navab Hamid Ali (ruled 1899-1930), a great patron of classical music
who reputedly was himself a fine performer. Hamid Ali was notably the ruler who took
Pandit Bhatkhande as a disciple when the latter made it known he would like access to
some of the traditional compositions of Ustad Wazir Khan, the legendary Seniya
biinkaar. However, Hamid Ali’s successor, Raza Ali, was “not very interested in music,”
and many court musicians and dancers left Rampur in search of other opportunities after
Hamid Ali’s death (ibid.).
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Masit Khan, of course, wound up in Calcutta where he would live, perform, and
teach until his death in 1977 (ibid.). Masit Khansaheb, as all accounts agree, was another
prolific teacher, and, as Shankar Ghosh explained to me, was happy to teach outsiders
(non-family members), both Muslim and Hindu, and taught them to the best of his ability.
This is an important point, because for all the talk amongst musicians in India regarding
the importance of pedigree and family tradition and for all the talk of current
anthropologists and ethnomusicologists regarding what many see “accomodationist”
behavior on the part of Muslim musicians who have, in their view, had to curry the favor
of the Hindu middle classes in post-Independence India, the truth of the matter is that it
was due to open-minded musicians like Masit Khan that Hindustani classical music has
become as popular as it has across India. Further, Masit Khan not only helped North
classical music and tabla in a general way, he also paved the way for his gharana to
become the dominant tabla gharana and style in Calcutta. Thus, while many of Masit
Khan’s contemporaries likely disapproved of his teaching outsiders, as it would have
compromised the “purity” of the tradition, we can now see that this has actually
preserved and bolstered the Farukhabad tradition over time, even if in truth the style has
been diluted to some extent in the process. It is well-known that Khyal, tabla, sitar, and
sarod all grew and flourished because dhrupadiya-s, singers and instrumentalists, were
only willing to teach these new instruments and genres to non-family members while
keeping their knowledge of Dhrupad (and Dhrupad instruments like biin and rabaab)
within the family, a fact which would nearly doom Dhrupad to extinction. It can be said,
though, that this process has happened on the level of gharana style as much as on the
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oader level of genre. Also, not to belabor this point, but it should be emphasized that
Muslim musicians have played their role in democratizing Hindustani music as much as
Hindus have. For every Vishnu Digambar or Balkrishnabua, there is an Allaudin Khan,
Masit Khan, or Munir Khan, in other words.
Concerning Masit Khan’s disciples, there were no doubt very many, but only a
handful concern us here. The first is R.C (Raichand) Boral, a musician who was most
famous for his work in film music in both Calcutta and in Bollywood, but who came
from a wealthy family that patronized numerous great Ustads, including his Guru Masit
Khan. The second is Masit Khan’s son and successor as gharana khaliifaa, Keramatulla
Khan (not to be confused with the sarod player of the same name). Like his father,
Keramatulla was one of the truly brilliant tabliya-s of his day. Although according to the
sources I have consulted, Keramatulla learned only with his father, but both Gottlieb
(1993:51-52) and Naimpalli (2005:98) note that Kermatulla made use of the technique of
modulating the pitch produced by increasing or decreasing the amount of pressure on the
bayaan, or left handed/bass drum. As this is a technique that this typically associated
with Benares players, it seems reasonable to think that that gharana was the source of
Keramatulla’s inspiration in this regard. Nayan Ghosh agreed that Keramatulla took
from Benares, but also added that he also “transformed his style completely,” not only
including Benares elements in his style, but also moving “far, far away from” his father’s
style, to the extent that his own mature style bordered on the Ajrada and Delhi styles
(interview, 2005). According to most sources, KK had two noteworthy disciples, his son
Sabir Khan who is currently one of the top tabliya-s in Calcutta (and is now, after his
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father’s death, the Farukhabad khaliifaa), and one that he inherited from his father, Pandit
Gyan Prakash Ghosh. Gyanbabu, as he was often known, was a well-known tabliya and
singer, but his greatest legacy is the number of disciples he taught and prepared as
musicians. Gyanbabu was greatly esteemed for the amount of repertory he learned and
that he subsequently passed on to his students. Aloke Dutta (1995), who is not
incidentally a disciple of Gyanbabu’s disciple Shankar Ghosh, sees Gyanbabu as a
catholic figure who, not unlike Munir Khan, combined several existing traditions into a
new style. Gyanbabu learned most of his tabla from Masit Khan and son, but he also
spent time under Feroz Khan of Punjab gharana, so that style undoubtedly had the largest
impact on Gyanbabu outside of the Farukhabad tradition. The amount of tabla
knowledge Gyanbabu had acquired was recognized by no less a maestro than Ahmedjan
Thirakwa who, according to Nayan Ghosh, once stated that “[Gyan Prakash] is the only
man in Calcutta who knows tabla”(interview, 2005).
Gyanbabu was able to make use of his passion for teaching, learning, and
performing music to the extent he did because of was from a wealthy, semi-aristocratic
family, and as such, he was able to patronize a number of musicians, by among other
things, letting them stay in his home whenever they visited Calcutta. In that way,
Gyanbabu could serve as a facilitator for exposing North Indian musicians to the
interested students and patrons of music in Calcutta and vice-versa. Bikram Ghosh
referred to Gyanbabu as, for this reason as “one of the great patrons of classical music in
the 50s and 60s” and referred to Gyanbabu’s Dixon Lane residence in Calcutta as a “kind
of nucleus” for the rapidly growing Calcutta music scene. Gyanbabu’s resources enabled
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him to learn from some of the greats (besides his Ustads in tabla, he learned vocal music
from Girija Shankar Chakrborty and Seniya Mohammed Dabir Khan, among others) and
to teach many disciples. And, as Bikram Ghosh pointed out, not only did Gyanbabu
teach many very prominent disciples, a short and extremely impressive list that includes
Nikhil Ghosh, Shankar Ghosh, Kanai Dutta, Shyamal Bose, Sanjay Mukherjee, Anindo
Chatterjee, and his son Mallar Ghosh, he also taught many others who may not have been
famous performers, but were good performers and also active teachers. Also, while
Gyanbabu is best known as a tabla Guru, he also was one of the early Gurus of Ajoy
Chakraborty, perhaps the top Khyal singer in Calcutta and all of eastern India. Sitarist
Partho Bose described Gyanbabu as a “reservoir” of vocal music knowledge, the
knowledge which he had gleaned from his “close interactions” with Bade Ghulam Ali
and Amir Khan in particular (interview, 2005). Gyanbabu, according to Parthoda,
evidently pursued and embraced this role in vocal music, just as in tabla.
Gyanbabu’s most important disciples in terms of teaching the following
generations of tabla players and continuing to spread the art have been Nikhil Ghosh,
who made his name in Bombay, and Shankar Ghosh, who I have already referenced
several times above. Shankar Ghosh’s list of students includes Sanjay Mukherjee (who
started with Gyanbabu), Tanmoy Bose, Arup Chatterjee, and his son Bikram. Also, as
was the case with Gyanbabu, Shankarda teaches a large number of students who are not
professional level performers. Bikram Ghosh testified to the fact that his father continues
even today to teach a “humongous number of students.” Shankar Ghosh also resembles
his Guru Gyan Prakash in that he has learned from Gurus of different gharanas and has
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developed a unique style by drawing on these different influences. Besides Gyan
Prakash, Shankar Ghosh learned, as Gyanbabu had, from Feroz Khan of Punjab gharana,
as well as from Anath Bose, a Bengali who played in the Benares style (and father of
Shyamal Bose), and Sudarshan Adhikari, a disciple of the Lucknow gharana. Peter
Lavezzoli, in his book The Dawn of Indian Music in the West (2005), notes that
Shankarda’s playing is more kinaar- (edge of the tabla or dayaan drum) oriented than is
typical of Farukhabad players, evincing the influence of Delhi gharana technique (208).
However, while Shankar Ghosh’s life and career parallels that of Gyan Prakash,
his story also differs in some important ways. First, Shankar Ghosh is not from an
aristocratic background, but is from a solidly middle-class family. This meant that the
decision to pursue music seriously was much more problematic for him than for
Gyanbabu, in that members of Shankarda’s extended family were not totally approving of
his choice to become a professional musician, a common experience of most non-
hereditary Hindu musicians of his generation. More importantly, Shankar Ghosh has
been a much more prominent performer than his Guru had been, which is not necessarily
to say that Shankar Ghosh is far better player than Gyanbabu was. Shankar Ghosh came
along a different historical moment than Gyanbabu, and thanks to a number of factors,
including Ravi Shankar’s pioneering work abroad, the work of Gyanbabu and many
others in increasing the audience for and social acceptability of Hindustani classical
music in India, and, more specifically, his musical partnership with Ali Akbar Khan, who
he frequently accompanied in the 50s and 60s. This partnership with Ali Akbar would
eventually lead to Shankar Ghosh becoming a founding faculty member of the Ali Akbar
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College of Music in San Rafael, California and to collaborating with Western musicians
like the Grateful Dead. Of course, besides Ali Akbar, Shankarda has accompanied all the
great instrumentalists of his day, and was one of the top accompanists in India for many
years. More recently, though, he has chosen to limit himself to solo playing only, as he
grew tired of the way tabla accompanying has changed over the years, as noted above
(interview, 2005). He has also recently added his own wrinkle to the tabla solo by
performing totally solo, i.e. sans any instrument providing the repetitive leharaa melody.
Bikram Ghosh argued that Calcutta became the true “seat of tabla” in
approximately the 1960s, an era which saw both the continuation of the tabla boom, so to
speak, in Calcutta and the a beginning of what he saw as a decline in the tabla scene in
other places such as Delhi and especially Benares, a decline he attributed in the latter case
to a lack of disciples coming along in the 70s and 80s who followed those styles. Bikram
Ghosh mentioned Pandit Kishen Maharaj 86 as the “leading light” of that gharana for the
last 40 years or so, and it is worth mentioning that Kumar Bose, one of the leading tabla
players in Calcutta and internationally at the present, received much of his taaliim from
Kishen Maharaj. Kumar Bose’s father Biswanath was also a disciple of the Benares
gharana; his Guru was the great maestro Kanthe Maharaj. Benares tabliya-s are not very
numerous in Calcutta currently, though. Gopal Mishra is a native Benarasi (and the son-
in-law of Kishen Maharaj) who is a staff accompanist at ITC-Sangeet Research
Academy, but there are few other examples. The most notable Bengali tabla player in the
Lucknow style is Pandit Swapan Choudhury, who learned primarily under Santosh
86 Kishen Maharaj passed in away 2008, after I completed the research for this project.
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Biswas. Swapan Choudhury is a Calcutta native and, like many musicians, lives overseas
but visits Calcutta frequently. Swapanda has taught for a number of years at the Ali
Akbar College and currently teaches at Cal Arts. For the most part, though, the explosion
in tabla playing in Calcutta in the last half century has been thanks to the Masit Khan
branch of the Farukhabad gharana. Besides Swapan Choudhury and Kumar Bose, most
notable Bengali tabla players have direct ties to this tradition (even Swapanda is Shankar
Ghosh’s sister’s son). A list of the top senior tabla artistes in Calcutta would start with
Shankar Ghosh and, slightly junior to him, Anindo Chatterjee and Kumar Bose, and the
younger generation would be highlighted by names like Bikram Ghosh and Tanmoy
Bose. Subhankar Banerjee is a rare example of a Farukhabad style player that has no ties
to Gyanbabu or Shankar Ghosh. His Guru was Swapan Shiva, a disciple in turn of
Keramatulla Khan. It can be safely said, though, that Farukhabad is the tabla gharana in
very much the same way that Gwalior is the Khyal gharana of Maharashtra.
As with my discussion of Khyal in Maharashtra and Bengal, I would like to
conclude this chapter by making some generalizations regarding tabla style in these two
regions. While there are important parallels between tabla playing and Khyal singing in
Maharashtra and Bengal, a topic I have partially addressed above, there are also, needless
to say, some very important differences. The first difference, which I explained in the
introduction to this chapter, is that due to various social, cultural, musical, and, most
importantly, economic factors, the role of tabliya-s as accompanists for instrumental
music has now superseded their identity as soloists, at least in the eyes of the ticket-
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uying public, which in turn has resulted in tabla players performing in a much more
purposefully homogenous style across India than is the case in Khyal or in sitar and sarod
playing. This then is a factor that no doubt serves to obscure regional differences. On
the positive side, current tabliya-s seem much more prepared than soloist musicians
(vocal and instrumental) to recognize that there are notable differences between
themselves and their counterparts on the opposite side of India. This, again, was most
often couched in terms of Calcutta versus Bombay than Bengal versus Maharashtra, but
as I have argued, these two cities are the capitals and prime classical music centers of
their respective regions and in an age where Hindustani music is largely limited to large
urban areas, in the field of classical music, Calcutta is Bengal and Bombay is
Maharashtra. In the latter case, one might object that Pune represents an important center
outside of Bombay and that there are important differences between the two cities. I
believe that historically this has been true, but now, thanks to the construction of the
large, high speed freeway that links the two (and reduces travel time to about 2 hours,
rather than 4-5 hours as before), Bombay and Pune are increasingly becoming one center,
with musicians not only traveling back and forth to perform, which has been the case for
many years, but also with a number of musicians maintaining residences in both cities.
The second and more crucial factor that makes region-based generalizations easier
in the case of tabla than Khyal is that there are visible and audible differences in the way
tabla drums are constructed in Calcutta and Bombay. Mostly these differences can be
attributed to the different materials that are used in the construction of the drums. There
are also differences, however, in the size and shape of the drums from each city. As a
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esult of these physical differences in the actual drums themselves, it is no stretch to say
that this stands as the most commonly recognized and tangible difference between any
aspect of classical music in Bengal and Maharashtra. Presumably, if sitar playing was as
popular and prestigious in the eyes of Maharashtrians as it is for Bengalis, then we might
be able to observe similar differences between the string instruments constructed in each
region. However, as it is, there is currently only one center for string instrument makers
of any repute in Maharashtra. This is Miraj, the aforementioned town in southern
Maharashtra which was the home base for Abdul Karim Khan for a number of years.
At any rate, it is, again, commonly acknowledged and understood that tabla are
somewhat differently constructed in terms of size, shape, and materials in the different
areas of India where the Hindustani tradition is practiced. As Gottlieb explains, tabla
“are constructed according to local customs and individual preferences. Although
particular forms and shapes are adhered to, the dimensions and details vary
considerably.” Interestingly, Gottlieb makes no mention of Bombay, Calcutta, and/or
Delhi tabla styles, although, to be fair, his short blurb on tabla construction is offered as
simply a bit of introductory information. Gottlieb has this to say regarding the average
measurements of a set of tabla and the materials that are frequently used for their
construction:
The dayan [the higher-pitched, right hand drum] measures about 10 inches in
height. Its body tapers from a diameter of approximately 5 ½ inches on top
increasing to about 7 inches near the bottom. The core of the dayan is hollowed
out leaving a wall thickness of approximately ¾ inch. The wood of the “neem” or
“shishum” tree is used for making the finest drums. The deeper sounding bayan
[left hand drum] is about 9 inches in height. Its diameter at the top is 9 to 10
inches. Unlike the dayan, a variety of different materials have been used for its
construction. The most common is nickel, or some similar metal alloy. Clay has
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also been used, mainly because it produces an excellent sound. It is not practical,
however, since it is too fragile (1993:15).
Concerning the types of wood used for the dayan, my interlocutors generally agreed that
shiisham along with khair (catechu), two “heavier” woods, were most often used for
Bombay drums, while the lighter wood of the niim tree was typically used in Calcutta.
The downside of the lighter wood, though, is that, as Nayan Ghosh mentioned, Calcutta
dayaan drums almost invariably crack, whether it happens “after ten years or fifteen
years,” while the Bombay dayaan-s seldom ever break or crack. For this reason, NG felt
that these heavy woods were “ideal for tabla” (“They’ll be there for centuries,” NG said
of the shiisham and khair dayaan-s). Along these lines, Anish Pradhan noted that in
recent years, tabla makers in Bombay have been using a lighter variety of shiisham
imported from the Punjab, which is both cheaper and easier to work with. Because of
this, Pradhan said, many tabla players in Bombay seek older drums made from the more
durable woods.
Besides the types of wood used for the dayaan, the other significant difference
between the Bombay and Calcutta tabla set is in the skin used for the heads. The basic
difference there is that the Calcutta tabla head (or puDii) is thinner than that used in
Bombay. Mostly this is attributed to using either smaller or younger goats for their hides
in Calcutta than in Bombay. Shankar Ghosh mentioned that the hides of the goats
sacrificed in the famous Kali Ghat temple in Calcutta are often used later for making
tabla heads and that those goats are generally small in size (interview, 2005). It was also
noted by most of my interlocutors that in Calcutta the tabla makers tend to scrape the
heads much more thoroughly before they are affixed to the drums, again increasing their
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thinness. J. Massey, the veteran tabliya of Benares, added that in Calcutta, the heads are
also dipped in lime, improving their sound quality, but also making them more fragile.
Mr. Massey also felt that this difference in the preparation of the heads was the extent of
the differences between Bombay and Calcutta tabla (interview, 2005). Regardless, the
consensus was that, as in the case of the different woods used for the dayaan-s, the
different kinds of skins used in Bombay and Calcutta translate to the Calcutta head
sounding better but lasting for a shorter period of time. Nayan Ghosh gave the average
life span of a Calcutta head as “weeks or months” but said Bombay heads, by contrast,
often last “years and years.” The advantage of Calcutta heads, however, is that they, as
all agree, largely sound better. NG felt that Calcutta tabla makers in general have a
“better melodic ear” than their counterparts in Maharashtra and do a better job of
balancing the different layers of the composite tabla head. As a result, he said, they are
easier to tune once on the drum and they produce an “easily more impressive sound” than
the Bombay drums when miked and amplified.
Another result of preparing heads in the Calcutta fashion is that they are easier to
play, in the sense that it does not take as much force to produce the same tone as on a
Bombay-made set. Anish Pradhan said that the Calcutta heads were “more sensitive” –
“just a slight touch and you get a very resonant sound.” For Nayan Ghosh, however, this
ease in sound production can be a detriment to young tabla players as they develop:
…because of tabla playing becoming so easy due to such good instruments, there
is also – now I’m being a little critical – the tabla players also tend to find shortcuts
and easy ways out in techniques…the Calcutta tabla players. That’s not the
case here in Maharashtra. The tabla players here go through the grueling
technique also, and they practice it and they master that (interview, 2005).
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NG frequently used the term “weighty hands” when referring to the technique developed
by players who play on Maharashtrian tabla. For him, “the best of both worlds” is when
a player with these “weighty hands” performs on the more attractive sounding and
resonant Calcutta drums. Even this can be problematic, though, because heavier,
Bombay-style strokes can damage the Calcutta drums and shorten the already short life-
span of Calcutta-made heads. NG explained that when he ordered heads from Calcutta,
he made certain that the heads were made extra thick by Calcutta norms. I should be
clear, though, that of the eight tabliya-s I interviewed, NG was the only one who felt that
there was more to the Bombay versus Calcutta tabla issues other than simply that the
drums were made of different materials in each locale. In NG’s case, part of this is that,
as he clearly stated, he wished to be seen as an advocate of Bombay tabla, or as he termed
it “Maharashtrian tabla,” by which he meant tabla players of the Munir Khan tradition in
Maharashtra, not ethnically Marathi tabla players. However, considering that his
argument was a fairly logical one, at least from my perspective as an outsider, it was
surprising that none of the others I met would agree with or offer a similar explanation. I
generally asked my interlocutors a slightly different question – if they thought that
Calcutta tabla were designed to facilitate speedier playing (which they do) because that
was more appropriate for accompanying instrumental music, and they all said no. As
Shankar Ghosh explained, decades earlier, when there was more balance in terms of the
prevalence of vocal music versus instrumental in Calcutta (i.e. when sitar and sarod
players were less prominent and fewer in number), tabla were made essentially the same
way as they are today. Arvind Mulgaonkar, a tabliya senior even to Shankar Ghosh,
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agreed that neither the demands of gharana style nor the musical contexts of the tabla (i.e.
for use accompanying instrumental versus vocal music) had ever impacted the way tabla
were constructed, in Bombay or Calcutta.
I will return to this question of how the sound and sonority of tabla drums in
Bengal and Maharashtra affect musical style, but for now, I would like to look briefly at
gharana style in the recent past and currently in order to determine what, if any,
generalizations can be made on this basis about tabla in each of these two regions.
Gottlieb begins his short chapter entitled “Style” with the statement, “Tabla players
representing a particular gharana are generally convinced that their own tradition is very
different from that of another gharana”(1993:49). This, of course points to the age of
Gottlieb’s study, because as I have made clear earlier in this chapter, not one of the tabla
players I interviewed believed any gharana to be distinct from the others, in the sense that
any particular tabliya today follows anything like a pure version of the style of the
gharana they belong to (if they belong to a gharana). Gharanas do exist in the sense that
there is a style that corresponds to each of the six traditional gharanas. However, all the
tabliya-s I interviewed stated that not only did they mix the styles and compositions of
various gharanas in their own playing, they also believed this to be essentially true of all
other current tabla players. This is not to say that all tabliya-s mix the styles of all six
gharanas in their own playing equally; each player has his own pedigree in terms of what
he inherited from his (or her) own Guru to go along with whatever they have tried to add
from outside sources. And, as I have explained above, this mixing is really the legacy of
the Gurus and daadaa-guru-s (Guru’s Gurus) of the current generation. Gottlieb, of
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course, follows the above quotation by explaining precisely this, that while tabla players
in 1977 (when Gottlieb originally published his book) might have held on to their
gharanas as an important part of their musical identity, the reality at that time as much as
now is that no notable tabliya-s were actually following one gharana style exclusively.
This again makes stylistic generalizations difficult, as even players as close as
pupils of the same Guru or as close as father and son often display significant differences
in their playing style. Gottlieb’s solution, likely the most reasonable one, is to focus on
the individuals who most are representative of each gharana style, meaning either the
khaliifaa or most famous representative of the gharana at the time, and then to examine
their style in detail (by transcribing and analyzing solo performances by each). All the
same, Gottlieb does offer a few comments that generalize about gharana styles. This type
of generalization is crucial in this context, as the primary issue in this study, after all, is to
determine what, if any, generalizations can be made regarding musical style on a regional
basis. Fortunately, however, we are aided here by the fact that there are very real
interconnections, historical and to a certain extent geographical, between the six major
tabla gharanas that allow us to place these styles into two or three broad categories based
on technique, repertoire, and style. I am speaking of the division of tabla styles/gharanas
into, most commonly, either the Purab baaj or Paschimi baaj, the Eastern and Western
styles, respectively. According to this division, Delhi and nearby Ajrada (in Meerut
district) are the western centers, as they lie on the western end of what is traditionally
thought of as North India, and Lucknow, Farukhabad, and Benares are the eastern centers
(Mistry 1999:174). Farukhabad is actually fairly centrally located in this region, but it is
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logically included with the eastern group because it is thought to be an offshoot of the
Lucknow gharana and the two styles musically are in fact very similar. The inclusion of
Benares in this group, however, points to one inadequacy of this categorization for
analytical purposes. As Gottlieb argues, the Benares gharana in stylistic terms has much
more affinity with the Punjab gharana, as both are clearly pakhaawaj-derived styles; the
traditional inclusion of Benares in the Purab group is based strictly on geography. This
in turn points to the other inadequacy of this Purab-Paschim binary division, that it does
not even acknowledge the Punjab gharana, previously discussed as one of the most
influential styles in modern-day tabla. Mistry explains that many of “the nation’s
geriatric senior celebrities” in the field of tabla denied to her the existence of both the
Punjab and Benares gharanas, on the grounds that the former is a pakhaawaj gharana
only and that the latter has not contributed enough to be considered a distinct style
(1999:177). To these skeptical veterans, it apparently is not important where you place
these traditions relative to other tabla gharanas if they are indeed not tabla gharanas.
For our purposes, though, the Punjab and Benares schools are tabla gharanas, as
they are recognized as such by most performers, scholars, and listeners across India. I
think it is fair to say that if any current tabla player were to question the gharana status of
either Benares or Punjab, it would be strictly because that individual had an axe to grind
and/or stood to gain something financially or professionally by doing so. What is
necessary in this context then is a classificatory scheme that includes all six of the major
tabla gharanas, and thankfully Gottlieb provides just this. He argues for three categories,
Purab, Delhi (which includes Ajrada), and ‘Pakhawaj,’ with two gharanas in each
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(1993:50). The chief virtue of these categories, particularly in this context, is that they
are based primarily on musical style, not on discipular connections between important
figures in the early histories of these lineages (which often cannot be verified) or on
geographical proximity alone. As these are categories that are based on generalizations at
a broad level, the corresponding styles can be fairly easily explained. In terms of the
‘Pakhawaj’ gharanas, I feel it is enough here to note they are based in large part on
pakhaawaj techniques and compositions, although the Benares gharana does have some
real connections with the Lucknow gharana. For reasons I will explain below, reasons
that include but go beyond musical style, I see the ‘Pakhawaj’ gharanas as standing apart
from the other four in the Bengali and Maharashtrian contexts.
It is tempting to try to map the old east-west division onto Bengal and
Maharashtra, and state that the modern Purab baaj is now based in Calcutta and the
modern Paschimi baaj is based in Bombay (along with perhaps Delhi). After all,
Calcutta has definitely always been dominated by the Farukhabad tradition, and while
Lucknow does not come close in terms of popularity or prevalence, it has some presence
in Calcutta while it has very little historical or current presence in Bombay. On the other
side, in Bombay there has been an extensive history of Delhi tabla including players of
both the Munir Khan tradition and Delhi gharaanedaar-s such as Nattu Khan, Gamme
Khan, and Inam Ali Khan. Also, while there are no longer any Ajrada players as such in
Bombay, there have been some historically, while there have been relatively few that
have ever lived and taught in Calcutta.
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Before I explain the limitations of this view, I should note the hallmarks of each
baaj. The tabla, as noted, has composite heads on both the drums of the pair, the higher
dayaan and the lower bayaan. As Kippen explains, “[e]ach head is made from a circular
piece of treated goat skin partly covered by a second skin that is trimmed away to form a
rim (kinaar or chaanti) around its circumference”(1988:xiv). The area left exposed is
called the suur, and is composed of two parts, the exposed bottom layer hide, called the
maidaan (Hindi – “field”) and a circular patch made of metal filings and various other
substances called syaahii that is added in the middle of the dayaan and is placed off
center on the bayaan. For the sake of this discussion, the important portions are the suur
and kinaar, as the Purab and Paschimi styles are often referred to as “suur kaa baaj” and
“kinaar kaa baaj,” or “khulaa baaj” and “bandh baaj,” respectively. What these terms
imply is that traditional compositions of the Delhi gharana and of the Ajrada gharana, a
derivative of the Delhi style, heavily emphasize bol-s (strokes) played on the kinaar (the
edge of the dayaan), particularly the bol ‘TA,’ a crucial stroke in most tabla pieces. The
edge of a tabla drum, as with any type of drum, does not produce as resonant and ringing
a tone when struck as does the portion closer to the center, hence the name “bandh baaj,”
“closed style.” “Closed” in this case also refers to technique as well, as Delhi and Ajrada
players typically use two fingers on the dayaan, and their hand must have a “compact
look with fingers close together”(Naimpalli 2005:43). The virtue of this style is that the
strokes they play are very clear and sharply enunciated, even at high speeds. The suur ka
baaj, then, by contrast, features relatively more strokes played on the suur portion,
including ‘TA’ and is often called “khulaa baaj,” meaning “open style.” In terms of
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technique, this means lifting the third finger of the right hand off the dayaan head to
allow it to reverberate as fully as possible, unlike the Delhi and Delhi-derived styles,
where the third finger is always placed against the head (Kippen 1988:118). Most
authorities agree that this indicates the influence of pakhaawaj technique, and keeping
this in mind, it is somewhat more understandable then that Benares would be included in
this group. J. Massey, senior disciple of Benares tabla maestro Samta Prasad (aka ‘Godai
Maharaj’), certainly characterized the Benares style as “khulaa haath kaa baaj” (open-
handed baaj) in my interview with him (2005). This does not change the fact, though,
that on these grounds, Punjab should be included in this group also, but generally is not,
due to its location north rather than east of Delhi. At any rate, the relative advantage of
the Purab style is that the open sound is generally more “impressive” and “melodic” (to
borrow Nayan Ghosh’s descriptors), and playing more on the suur allows for greater ease
in playing fast, though the clarity suffers at a high speed.
Considering that vocal music is much more prevalent in Maharashtra and
instrumental music more so in Calcutta, it is tempting to hypothesize that all these
factors, regional instrument construction, the gharana style(s) prevalent in each region,
and the relative amounts of vocalists versus instrumentalists in each region, are all
somehow tied together. In Bombay, the Delhi style is pervasive, which means that
aesthetically, the tabla players strive for clarity above speed (Gottlieb 1993:50), and this
is reinforced by the thicker Bombay heads which restrict speed regardless of other
factors. So, this would seem to be ideal both for vocal music accompaniment, where a
clear, properly articulated Thekaa (accompaniment pattern) is the number one
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equirement, and for solo tabla playing, at least for the older cyclical style, practiced most
notably by Thirakwa, where musical development and subtlety outweigh speed and
technical virtuosity. On the other hand, the Purab style seems ideal for modern
instrumental accompaniment, where the order of the day is playing short, rapid fire solos,
and where the tabla player must show his skill in a short burst before again receding into
the background. This seems a style tailor-made for the Calcutta style tabla, as the thinner
heads allow for easier playing at a high speed and as the heads and lighter drum shells in
tandem sound better when filtered through a modern amplification system than does the
typical Bombay set. As I have stated, though, most of my informants thought that the
notions that either tabla were at any point in time specifically designed to suit either sitar
or Khyal accompaniment or that tabliya-s in these places had altered their playing style to
suit their instruments were incorrect, even laughable (with Nayan Ghosh as a partial
dissenter). It does, however, lead me to speculate that perhaps someone like Masit Khan
ended up settling in Calcutta because he liked the tabla there and found them to suit his
hand and his gharana’s style better than the drums in other places. This, of course,
cannot be anything but speculation.
This much is all true, but the problem with reducing the difference in
Bengali/Calcutta tabla and Marathi/Bombay tabla to the old Purab-Paschim distinction is
that it is not inclusive of all the tabla traditions that have been important in these two
regions. Specifically, as I mentioned above, it does not acknowledge the role played by
the Punjab and Benares gharanas in Bombay and Calcutta respectively. It is an arguable
point, but I do not feel that either presents any serious difficulty in making
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generalizations about tabla style in these two regions. The reason for this is that while
these two ‘Pakhawaj’ gharanas have been important in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta,
they have been less important outside these two large centers. This is more true in the
case of Maharashtra, where, unlike in West Bengal, there is a significant musical activity
outside of the capital and biggest city. So, Allarakha and Zakir have been key figures in
Bombay where they have and have had direct disciples, but it is hard to say their style has
been any more important and influential in places like Pune and Kolhapur than it is
anywhere else in India. These two are no doubt nationalizing figures and Bombay is the
home base for many such musicians. This is again a major difference from Calcutta. In
Bombay, there is a Maharashtrian scene which is similar in many ways to the rest of the
region and a very cosmopolitan, national scene. Indeed, it seems that Bombay took over
the role as the chief national center for Hindustani music from Delhi at some point in the
last 20-30 years. In Calcutta, however, there have been many important migrants in the
field of music (and other fields) from other regions, particularly eastern Uttar Pradesh and
neighboring Bihar, but, all the same, Calcutta has always remained a Bengali city,
especially in cultural terms. Benares and Calcutta have also had a long historical
relationship, as many wealthy Bengalis own houses and land in Benares and travel there
frequently. Beyond high profile examples like sitarist Mushtaq Ali Khan, there must
have been a number of Benaresi musicians who have tried their luck in Calcutta, just as
performers from other centers like Lucknow and Rampur had. While they may have
succeeded as individual performers, it is clear that the Benares style has not taken root in
Calcutta as a very prominent style, at least in terms of numbers of adherents. In a way,
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this proves regional preferences as clearly as any case (and this is not to slight the role
played by the great Farukhabad Gurus) because Bengalis have been exposed to Benares
tabla and have not embraced it on a large scale. It clearly shows that it is not as simple an
equation as, “if gharana X is present in city Y, gharana X’s style will be popular there.”
At any rate, Calcutta is always an easier city to generalize about than Bombay because it
is, in fact, such a Bengali city.
The bigger problem with taking the Purab-Paschim (or Purab –Delhi, by
Gottlieb’s categories) distinction as 100% applicable to tabla in Maharashtra and Bengal,
though, is that while Farukhabad (a Purab gharana) undoubtedly dominates Calcutta and
greater Bengal and Munir Khan’s ‘Laliyana gharana’ has played a parallel role in
Bombay and greater Maharashtra, Munir Khan’s style is not purely Delhi, or even Delhi
and Ajrada. His style was Farukhabad and Lucknow as much as Delhi, to the extent that
many refer to him as a Farukhabad tabliya or Lucknow tabliya, even though he belonged
by blood to the Delhi gharana. This is true of Thirakwa as well. As Gottlieb writes, “In
addition to having been a disciple of Nanne Khan of the Farukhabad gharana, Ahmedjan
Thirakwa also studied with Boli Baksh of the Delhi gharana. He performed the
Farukhabad and Delhi repertoires and also compositions from the Lucknow and Benares
repertoires”(1993:49). Keramatulla Khan stands as a similar example on the Calcutta
side. As Gottlieb explains, the traditional method of sound production of the Farukhabad
tradition has been the same as its parent gharana, Lucknow, i.e. largely on the suur.
Keramatulla, however, played TA “at the very edge of the kinar” in the Delhi fashion
(ibid.:51). Gottlieb notes, though, that “not until the time of Munir Khan” was this
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practice present in the Farukhabad. Thus, in the case of Munir Khan specifically we can
see that although his style is essentially an admixture of the Delhi and Purab gharanas, in
this crucial area his Delhi background won out, so to speak. Similarly, Keramatulla’s son
Sabir Khan, as Gottlieb notes, has reverted to the suur dominated style traditional to the
gharana of which he is now the khaliifaa. Whatever the cause is for the apparent stylistic
affinities between the various tabliya-s in Calcutta on the one hand and tabliya-s in
Bombay, on the other, whether they are due to instrument construction, the exigencies of
modern tabla accompaniment (including the dominance of Khyal in Maharashtra and
instrumental music in Bengal), or some other factor(s), these commonalities continue to
be reproduced by succeeding generations, including the present. Considering all the
forces which have pushed tabla playing in the direction of homogeneity for
approximately a century now, it is, I feel, remarkable that differences in style, technique,
and overall sound that are apparently regional in nature – even if these commonalities and
differences are at a fairly broad level – continue to prevail even in the 21st century.
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6. The Dominance of Bengal in Instrumental Music
At the outset of this chapter, I should explain the rationale behind my decision to
place my observations on the music of the North Indian classical plucked string
instruments after the section in which I dealt with tabla. This may seem, if not surprising,
then at least slightly odd, as most academic studies that cover the Hindustani tradition in
a comprehensive manner generally cover each category in the order assigned to it in the
aforementioned hierarchy of Indian musical forms and genres: voice before instrument,
instrument before tabla, and more specifically, Dhrupad before Khyal before Thumri, etc.
To be clear, then, I intend neither to challenge this hierarchy nor to implicitly valorize
tabla or devalue instrumental music. The issue, as I have noted in previous chapters, is
rather that, while the traditions of Khyal singing and tabla playing are well-represented in
both Maharashtra and West Bengal (though Khyal is more commonly associated with the
former and tabla with the latter), instrumental music is almost exclusively associated with
Bengal and eastern India. To be sure, there are a number of instrumentalists in Bombay,
but even then, the relevance of this fact is lessened by three factors: first, sarod, the
second most popular, important, and prevalent stringed instrument in the Hindustani
tradition after the sitar, is almost totally absent from the entire western side of India,
including Maharashtra; second, the vast majority of professional-level sitarists who are
based in Bombay and Pune are ethnically North Indian or Bengali; and third, the
instruments most commonly played by ethnic Maharashtrians are the baansurii (the
bamboo flute), violin, and the santuur, not the sitar, sarod, or biin. Of these three (the
former three, that is), the music of both the flute and violin is most commonly modeled
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on Khyal vocal music rather than on the music of the plucked string instruments. The
music of the santuur, for its part, is more akin to what is played on tabla than on vocal
music, but crux of the matter in this case is that the santuur is an instrument whose place
in the classical tradition has been carved out by and that is solely associated with one
artist, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, a musician originally from Jammu who has spent the
better part of his life and career in Bombay. This is not to dismiss Shiv Kumar Sharma,
his Maharashtrian disciples, or the santuur itself. The point rather is that at present,
santuur playing in Maharashtra is not a tradition – it is simply one maestro and a handful
of disciples. It may well become established as such in the future, but only time will tell.
We need only recall that sitar players have been present in Bombay since at least the
early years of the Indian film industry, and yet, to date, there has not been a single
Maharashtrian sitar player who has achieved fame on a regional, much less national,
basis.
Instrumental music is, however, still important in the present context. The most
obvious reason for this is that, as instrumental music is dominated by Bengalis, an
examination of the instrumental music and its most important traditions can tell us much
about the Bengali musician and their aesthetic choices. As we shall see, the approach to
form and musical style taken by the majority (though not all) of Bengali instrumentalists
in many ways resembles that of the average Bengali Khyal singer, thus reinforcing the
significance of those tendencies. Similarly, the Bengali passion for instrumental music, I
will argue, tells us much about their willingness to experiment and innovate, rather than
simply adhering to the traditions that were passed down to them, as is also true of Bengali
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Khyal singers. As we shall also see, though, instrumental music as a field harbors a
number of contradictions. Among the strictly classical genres, instrumental music in the
broad sense of the term (i.e. including every type of melodic instrument, not only sitar
and sarod) is undoubtedly the most popular form of classical music in terms of its appeal
to the casual listener (or to the ‘masses,’ as many of my interlocutors put it). Partly, or
sometimes solely, because of this, many Indian music purists, whether they are
musicians, scholars, or connoisseurs, see instrumental music as the lightest and least
classical form of purely classical music. Of course, most of these purists, including most
of my informants, are vocalists, and thus, the criticisms they pose, however objectively
stated, can and should be interpreted as the viewpoint of competitors, just as when
musicians from one gharana give their ‘unbiased, objective’ views on musicians
representing other gharanas. At the same time, though, a short list of the greatest
Hindustani musicians of the last fifty years would indisputably be dominated by
instrumentalists, and, as many of my non-instrumentalist informants clearly stated, the
ranks of instrumentalists include a large number of musicians who perform the North
Indian ragas in their chastest, most grammatically correct form, a hallmark of orthodox
classicism.
In the following, then, I will discuss this contradiction where by instrumental
music as a field includes some of both the most and the least classical musicians of the
Hindustani tradition. Also, while I briefly discussed the gharana concept as it applies to
instrumentalists in chapter three, I will briefly return to this subject again here, as there
are a handful of points remaining to be made in this regard. Finally, parallel to my
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approach in the chapters on Khyal and tabla, I will conclude with a discussion of the
primary gharanas of instrumental music, including their historical and regional roots;
their stylistic approach, including both each gharana’s unique contributions and the ways
in which they overlap with other gharanas; and the names of and, in select cases, some
biographical information regarding key figures in the growth and development of each
gharana. While instrumental music is a limited phenomenon in Maharashtra, I will also
examine the brief history of instrumental music in that part of India. Among other things,
this discussion of the various instrumental lineages takes us much of the way, though not
all the way, toward arriving at an answer to one of the overriding questions posed by this
study, i.e. why Bengali musicians have come to dominate this field so thoroughly.
Before proceeding, I should note that I will henceforth restrict myself in this
chapter to an examination of three instruments: sitar, sarod, and biin (rudra viiNaa). The
latter, the biin, is most important as a predecessor or ancestor of the sitar and sarod, but it
is also significant in its own right, as the biin tradition continues to survive into the 21st
century (even if the exponents of biin are currently few in number). This is as opposed to
the instruments seen as the antecedents of the sarod specifically, such as the Afghani and
Senia rabaab-s and the suursingaar, which have been totally superseded by the modern
sarod. The reason for this restriction in terms of instrumental traditions I will cover in
this context is twofold. First, many of the instruments outside of these three are, like the
santuur, associated with one maestro and cannot described at this point in time as an
established tradition. Other examples of this type of instrument would include the
shahnaaii, the double reed aerophone introduced into Hindustani classical music by the
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late Ustad Bismillah Khan of Benares. Other solo instruments, such as the baansurii, the
saarangii (as a specifically solo instrument), and, to a lesser extent, the violin and the
‘Hawaiian’/slide guitar, are slightly more prevalent, but when one examines the approach
taken on these instruments, they will find that these instruments tend to imitate either the
music of the sitar/sarod or, as mentioned above, Khyal vocal music, or in the case of
certain artists, both, although most often the baansurii, saarangii, and violin imitate vocal
music and the slide guitar sitar and sarod music. This leads to the second reason, which
is that ‘instrumental music’ per se is the music of the sitar and sarod. As opposed to
Khyal compositions which are referred to as khyaal or bandiish, instrumental
compositions are called gat and are primarily defined by typical patterns of plectrum
strokes. That these patterns form the basis of the style is rather logical considering that
one of the most prominent attributes (or limitations) of plucked string instruments is their
lack of sustain, which makes them generally unsuitable for imitating the voice (unlike
bowed string instruments or wind instruments). Thanks to improvements in instrument
construction over the course of the 20th century, the sustain of both the sitar and the
sarod have been greatly improved, allowing certain artists to develop an essentially vocal
style, generally referred to in Hindi as gaayakii ang (vocal style) as opposed to the
traditional sitar and sarod approach, referred to as gat shailii (lit. style based on gat-
playing), or sometimes as tantakaarii ang (style of string instruments).
When criticizing instrumental music as a whole (individual artists were rarely
mentioned by name), most of my informants couched their explanations in terms of why
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instrumental music exceeded vocal music in popularity, popularity being a common
index of the ‘cheapness,’ ‘vulgarness,’ or ‘lightness’ of music in India, as in most
cultures which feature a classical music tradition, though even in speaking generally,
none of my informants used such harsh adjectives – the term ‘popular’ itself is a damning
enough epithet. Dr. Prabha Atre offered perhaps the widest range of factors for the
popularity of instrumental music, though she did not elaborate on any one factor as much
as some of the other musicians I spoke with. For PA, the reasons for the mass appeal of
instrumental music include, first, the expanded role of the tabla player in instrumental
recitals (which, not incidentally, is frequently mentioned as a factor in why tabla is so
popular with non-Indian audiences); second, the general emphasis on speed and virtuosity
in instrumental music; and, third, the ‘tonal qualities’ of instruments versus the human
voice. In regards to the last of these, PA mentioned that the voice tended to be more
fragile in nature than the tone of an instrument, while an instrument also typically has
much wider pitch range than does the voice of most classical singers. All in all, though,
PA felt that the primary appeal of instrumental music was its visual aspect: the dramatic
(and often exaggerated) gestures and head movements of instrumentalists, the blinding
speed of their hands, the spectacle of the instruments themselves, etc. (interview, 2005).
To be sure, not every critic of the perceived excessive emphasis on speed and virtuosity
was a vocalist who singled out instrumentalists as the worst offenders, though many of
my vocalist informants did. Arvind Parikh, himself a sitar player - albeit one who
follows the Imdad Khani style of his Guru the late Vilayat Khan, a style which heavily
identifies with and is strongly influenced by Khyal vocal music – also agreed with PA’s
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comments on the whole. As AP stated, today’s artists place style over substance and
emotional comment, preferring “fast music, loud music, bout with tabla, in other words to
somehow impress the people, somehow get claps and applause, somehow become more
popular, somehow become more commercially successful”(interview, 2005). While AP
did not single out instrumentalists, preferring the more general term “today’s artists,” his
comments about “loud music” and “bout with tabla” were clearly in reference to
instrumental music.
Dinkar Kaikini, for one, explained to me in a bit more detail why speed in
particular represented such a challenge to the integrity of classical music, beyond being
simply a means of pandering to the uninitiated or uneducated listener. Interestingly, DK
was willing to single out one artist for the introduction of this element into instrumental
music. DK felt that the credit for this went to Enayet Khan, the father of Vilayat Khan,
noting that Enayet Khan made a practice of playing aalaap on the surbahaar (or bass
sitar) and speedy, taan-oriented music on the sitar. Although Miner attributes these and
other innovations to Enayet Khan’s father, Imdad Khan, the putative founder of this
gharana (1993:152), it is clear that this lineage has placed the greatest stress of any on the
sapat taan, or ‘straight taan,’ a straight, scalar movement up and down the main playing
string of the sitar, at very high speeds. 87 At any rate, as DK asserted, “Raga means no
speed,” “..if speed comes in, there is no raga, no ang.” While he is certainly not the first
or last to raise this point, it is a crucial one nonetheless. A raga is defined by a number of
factors, its basic scale, the emphasis on particular notes through repetition and structural
87 It largely to due his excellence in this one aspect of sitar that Vilayat Khan claimed a “victory” over Ravi
Shankar in a famous jugalbandii (duet) performance between the two in Bombay in the 1950s.
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prominence, the use of characteristic raga-identifying phrases, etc., but one of the most
important is the melodic shape of the raga, which includes not only straight or oblique
movement up and down the scale, but also emphasis on certain registers. In singing
straight, scalar taan-s, however, the tendency is to treat the raga as a scale and nothing
else. Taan-s, as DK said, are like a crown on a king, “not the head or body”; a king is
identified by his crown, but it is only one small aspect of who he is, in other words.
Vijay Kichlu concurred with this statement, noting that “If you start losing the
importance of the raga character, and uh,…the raga ras [mood], then you lose a lot,” as
well as that, unfortunately, this happens all too often - “Today raga is missing, everything
else is there”(interview, 2005). I should be clear, though, that for VK, a Kashmiri raised
in Uttar Pradesh, both Maharashtrians and Bengali “have a flair for speed” and both
groups are, thus, equally culpable of neglecting the elaboration of the raga. And, by
including both sides, he was obviously pointing to the flawed approach of both
instrumentalists and vocalists.
Having pointed out an artistic flaw which is associated most often with sitarists,
and particularly with those belonging to the Vilayat Khan/Imdad Khani tradition, I should
also note those excesses that tend to be associated (unfairly or not) with the their chief
rivals, the musicians of the Maihar gharana of Allaudin Khan, whose membership
includes both sitarists and sarodists, as well as players of other instruments, such as
baansurii and slide guitar. 88 These have already been alluded to in the comments of
Arvind Parikh (when he mentioned the ‘bout with tabla’), but Veena Saharabuddhe
88
Wajahat Khan, son of Imrat and nephew of Vilayat Khan, is a sarodist, but he seems to be exceptional
within this lineage.
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offered a more detailed critique of the artistic flaws or excesses of instrumentalists that go
beyond a penchant for speedy taan-s. As she told me,
In instrumental music, actually, there are two or three things I have noticed –
earlier also, that jhaalaa and now that sawaal-jawaab with the tabla. Now these
days the tabla and the sitar, I think it’s just a kind of a solo performance of the
tabla and a solo performance of the sitar, or sarod, or flute or whatever, it’s half
and half! The sitar plays two or three aavartan-s [repetitions of the rhythmic
cycle], after that, the tabla, he says, “OK, I’m now going to keep the leharaa, and
you…” It’s a kind of a jugalbandii now, but earlier, my father used to say, it’s
not like that. And this kind of a jugalbandii, it’s not there in vocal, when you are
singing. The aalaap part is so…the aalaap part is the main part. But here in
instrumental music, what these people are doing now, they have changed the
whole, you know, presentation. First they will do joD aalaap, and joD aalaap
also in a very long manner, quite good amount of time. And the same thing again
they will start with the tabla and the jhaala – the last part, the climax! The
listeners, they just love that. And that is really very irritating to me. They just
kind of, “jham, jham, jham, jham, jham”[imitiating sitar playing jhaalaa]. But the
listeners, they like…and that’s very loud. So, that is not there, that ‘show art’ is
not there in our [chuckling]…in our vocal artists (interview, 2005).
It should again be reiterated that neither Veena Sahasrabuddhe, nor any other vocalist
ever mentioned Ali Akbar Khan or Ravi Shankar by name, as either responsible for these
perceived excesses or as having committed any of these excesses themselves. In VS’s
case, this was clear enough, as at another point in our interview, she spoke in glowing
terms of Ravi Shankar and recalled fondly how her father had brought both Ravi Shankar
and Ali Akbar to perform for her father’s music circle in Kanpur, U.P. when she was a
child. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande and Shruti Sadolikar, two other Maharashtrian
vocalists also were quite happy to praise Ravi Shankar for all the good he had done for
Indian music as a whole. At the same time, these great musicians did introduce these
practices into the instrumental tradition (as the Imdad Khan sitarists had introduced
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Khyal-style taan-s into sitar), and so any criticism of these practices is, to a certain
extent, an indirect criticism of them.
Though I will speak more about the exact nature of these innovations below,
when I detail the stylistic contributions of the major sitar and sarod gharanas, I feel it is
worthwhile to cite one more quotation which covers much of the same ground. This
quote, however, is from Vamanrao Deshpande’s Indian Musical Traditions (1973), more
specifically from his chapter on Amir Khan:
Lastly one supreme quality of Amir Khan deserves particular mention. He
remained strictly uncontaminated by the present craze for showiness. He did not
believe in tricks which dazzle the listeners; he kept severely aloof from the
modern boisterous jugalbandi-s. Amir Khan was not enticed by temptations
which have ruined the art of many a senior artist. This fact enhances our respect
for him. He too received numerous invitations to music festivals along with Ravi
Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan or Vilayat Khan. If, therefore, he were to sacrifice his
art at the altar of public acclaim, he would have been in good company. But his
artistic sincerity was so austere that the surrounding hullabaloo has not made him
flinch. No master of an earlier era indulged in unseemly exhibitions of the
jugalbandi or other kinds; nor can all their representatives of the present day be
said to have deviated from the strict and narrow path. They merit our profound
respect. The usual excuse offered on behalf of jugalbandi riots and other species
of acrobatics is that the listeners want them. Actually no listener ever asks for this
kind of fare and the artist of genuine merit never needs to pass off a counterfeit
coin (66).
While at several other points in this monograph, Deshpande praises Ravi Shankar for,
among other things, popularizing Indian music with Western audiences and for elevating
the role of the tabla player, it is hard to interpret the above passage as anything other than
a direct attack. Apparently, as a senior (though clearly lesser) artist, Deshpande felt no
qualms about mentioning these three maestros by name.
So what, then, do we make of all of this? My first observation is that much of this
boils down to the fact that vocalists, traditionally the unchallenged kings (and
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occasionally queens) of Hindustani music, have lost much ground to instrumentalists, not
only in terms of commercial or popular appeal, but also in terms of artistic influence and
authority, and this is no doubt galling to many of them. Also, I regularly observed during
my time Pune and Bombay a general lack of respect for instrumental music on the part of
Marathi audiences and musicians. There is a variety of evidence for this: the lack of
instrumental music recitals scheduled in Pune, including at the prestigious Sawai
Gandharva music festival; inattention on the part of Maharashtrian audiences when an
instrumentalist performed on the same bill as a vocalist (as I observed first hand); even
very straightforward assertions from musicians and music lovers alike that vocal music is
‘Music’ and sitar playing is simply sitar playing. Also, while, again, none of my
informants ever directly criticized Ravi Shankar or Vilayat Khan or any other great
instrumentalist by name – if they did mention these artists, it was to praise them – it is
very clear that Maharashtrian artists are much more likely to dismiss instrumental music
altogether than are their counterparts in Calcutta. Thus, as Amit Mukherjee (a Calcutta-
based vocalist) asserted, when I mentioned the sitarists based in Bombay, “The best of
them, you will find at least ten such sitarists here [in Calcutta]”(interview, 2005). K.P
Mukherjee, while delimiting his comments to the Calcutta scene only, tended to criticize
vocalists more in general than sitarists for the defects in their style and performance
practice, noting that “the standard of instrumental music in this part of the country is
definitely distinctly higher than that of vocal music…” and that “Ravi Shankar, Nikhil
Banerjee, and Vilayat Khan were far more conscious about raga than their…counterparts
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in vocal music…not their counterparts - not that there are any counterparts, you see”
(interview, 2005).
This last comment is particularly crucial as most of the vocalists who were critical
of instrumentalists in particular, rather than all younger musicians (as K.P Mukherjee
was), pointed out that the speed and showmanship of most instrumentalists compromised
both raga delineation in general as well as the aalaap itself, the meditative, largely
arrhythmic portion of a raga performance which is dedicated specifically to the
elaboration of the raga. While a response to this might be that these great sitarists did not
compromise the raga or the music generally, but that many lesser instrumentalists do, this
precisely the point. None of these great instrumentalists can be held responsible for
younger artists imitating their ideas and innovations without possessing their overall level
of skill, artistry, and taste, but as K.P. Mukherjee attested, this is just as true of vocalists.
We need only keep in mind Amit Mukherjee’s comments (cited in chapter 4), about the
ways in which well-meaning but uncomprehending Bengali vocalists have distorted the
complex and subtle gaayakii of Amir Khan (he of faultless artistic integrity), turning it
into a pale imitation of the original. From my perspective, these are totally parallel cases,
and yet, not a single instrumentalist ever told me in an interview or any other context that
vocal music was ruining the Hindustani tradition. It is a rather clear double standard.
Beyond this issue of the harsher criteria by which instrumentalists are judged in
comparison to vocalists, however, I feel I should also point out that most of the
innovations introduced by Vilayat Khan and the Maihar stalwarts were modeled on
aspects of, if not Khyal itself, then Dhrupad or Carnatic (South Indian) classical music.
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Thus, for example, the sapat taan-s for which the Imdad Khan sitarists are famous came,
as mentioned, from Khyal; the jugalbandii format, although expanded by Ravi Shankar
and Ali Akbar, has been present in both Dhrupad and Khyal for hundreds of years; and
the sawaal-jawaab ‘question and answer’ technique used by Ravi Shankar and other
Maihar or Maihar-style musicians was taken from the Carnatic tradition, more
specifically the taani avartnam or percussion section solo, which features the echo
principle that has existed in Indian music since ancient times. And, lest we assume that
Carnatic influence is somehow distasteful or inappropriate in the Hindustani context, we
need only recall that Abdul Karim Khan, the de facto founder of the Kirana gharana,
himself took sargam [solfege] compositions from the Carnatic tradition. This practice
has not only become quite common in the gaayakii of singers representing numerous
different gharanas, it was also adopted by none other than Amir Khan. Keeping this all in
mind, we can see the truth in Partho Bose’s statement that “[Ravi Shankar] is a very
traditional musician when it comes to playing sitar” whose “style is a very old style based
on Dhrupad,” but who has also been frequently criticized because, although he did not
change the substance of the music, he did change the presentation for the benefit
attracting new listeners (for example, by playing a short piece first before launching into
the traditional full scale presentation of a single raga), and even then, when these new
audiences became more acclimated to the music, he reverted to a more traditional style of
presentation (interview, 2005).
My point here is not that vocalists are simply jealous, and as such their criticisms
of instrumental music are baseless, or that no instrumentalist has ever indulged in speedy
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taan-s or complex, overly intellectual, even unmusical, rhythmic play at the expense of
melody and raga, because many have. Rather, what I would like to say is that, to the
extent the tradition truly is being compromised or commercialized or diluted, both
vocalists and instrumentalists are responsible. If instrumentalists are more to blame, it is
only because they do in fact have a larger and more diverse audience, which, in my view,
is a credit to them, especially Ravi Shankar, as they, not vocalists, were the ones to
initially reach out to new audiences in hopes of bettering the tradition, particularly in
terms of the financial plight of musicians who depend on their earnings as a performer to
make a living. Again, I do not mean to suggest that the comments I quoted from Veena
Sahasrabuddhe and Prabha Atre are in any way baseless, misguided, or to be seen as
evidence of some sort of ulterior motives. What they both said is absolutely true of the
performances of many instrumentalists, instrumentalists who are, needless to say,
generally not as talented or as skilled as Ravi Shankar is or Vilayat Khan was, nor as
financially secure. I do, however, think that there is a stereotype which holds that
instrumentalists are more likely than not to be motivated strictly by money, while
vocalists are the preservers of the tradition, the true artists. In reality, though, however
many sitar players there are that are “in it for the money,” so to speak, there are more
than enough who are not, just as there are many celebrity vocalists who are absolutely in
it for the money. Painting all these musicians with the same brush is, as in any case, a
dangerous and damaging proposition.
This bias, I feel, is simply one aspect of a larger narrative regarding Hindustani
music which holds that, as time goes on, artistic standards in Hindustani music continue
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to decline and that there is very little that can be done to stop the rot. There is obviously
some truth to this, as the audience for classical music changed in a very drastic manner,
to say the least, during the 20th century. As such, it is hard to deny that untrained
listeners to tend to appreciate musically meaningless virtuosity, flashy kurtaa-s, and
attractive faces more than subtle and intricate raga elaboration. How to fix this, though,
is not only beyond the confines of this study, but also is a question that is nearly
impossible to answer. I would like, however, to quote one more of my interlocutors,
specifically tabla player Bikram Ghosh, as he was perhaps the only musician I
interviewed who not only mentioned the taste of the mass audience for showiness as well
as the penchant some musicians have for giving it to them, but also offered a defense of
sorts, not just for the performers, but for virtuosic, technical music itself. For BG, it is
not simply that economic pressures have forced classical musicians, especially junior
musicians, to “sell out” and compromise their ‘artistic integrity’:
You have to remember that it’s all about what you are trying to communicate.
Now, if somebody’s practicing more and has achieved a lot of speed, and is not
giving enough emotional content, then catch him, bad, he’s a bad artist. So,
emotional content is the main issue. If your emotional content is expressed
through a certain speed, then OK. So let’s not say this generation is only
concentrating on speed. This generation does lack emotional content, I agree with
that. Why? Look at the history. The generation of the Ravi Shankars, the Ali
Akbar Khans, and my father, Vilayat Khan, and all these people. They, on a
world level, there were these World Wars, the whole world was influenced by
that. On a national level, there was the independence movement, there were the
riots, there was so much - strife, life was topsy-turvy, they all went through this
whole churning process. And the new India had a focus, so passion levels were
high, automatically. We are monitored animals at the end of the day and so, we,
if you tell us, you know, “Independence must come on, give your life,” you know
this “blah, blah, blah,” all those values will come into your music. Automatically,
your passion level will be very high.
The 80s generation are scratching their heads for what? “What are we going to be
passionate about?” You can’t find anything to be passionate about. So,
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automatically the emotional content will be low. If…so, it is a generational thing
that will happen, you know. If you look at the history of literature, look at, you
know, the Renaissance, the Restoration, the, uh, the Age of Reason, the Age of
the Romantics, it will happen – automatically it’s a cyclic process. When you
have too much of passion and too much of romance, people will go towards
reason, and then from reason they’re going to go back to romanticism, you know.
So, we are, as a generation, generally, the reason has been the primary influence,
you know, it’s more intellectual. It’s something which I agree with, and I don’t
think it’s right also, because I personally am more of a romantic in my musical
approach. It’s true, though, that it’s a trend. But let’s not say that this is better or
that’s better or that’s worse (interview, 2005).
I should note that we reached this point our interview after discussing ITC-SRA’s annual
seminar, where one topic is chosen each year about which a variety of experts, mostly
scholars and practicing musicians, offer their views in a lecture format. The topic of
2005 seminar was, as it turned out, the declining standards of Hindustani music and what
could be done to fix this decline. What caught my attention most about the seminar was
that the majority of the senior musicians’ comments were along the lines of “the younger
generation is letting us down.” So, at least from my perspective, the proceedings boiled
down to older musicians blaming the younger, while the younger sat and quietly listened
(and at least of a few of the academy’s students, who will remain anonymous, thoroughly
agreed with this observation).
BG, then, was one of the very few musicians under the age of 40 that stood up for
the younger generation during the seminar. I largely agree with him, though at the same
time, as an established professional, he certainly had more ground to stand on than the
students still in training at the academy. There is no doubt that the period beginning from
the 20th century forward is uncharted territory for a tradition that was always shielded in
the past from day to day economic realities. His point is well taken, though. Every
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generation has its own set of challenges to face which, of course, it cannot choose or
avoid, and the kind or style of art the times demand is one of these. Also, to be sure,
much of what is reality for the young musician of today is the legacy of their
predecessors. Rarely, though, did any of the senior musicians I spoke with concede that
their generation or they themselves as individuals had ever made their own mistakes or
that, in retrospect, they could of made things better for their disciples or the tradition
generally, though a handful did blame other senior musicians. And yet, for all their
achievements, they clearly are responsible to some extent. We need only recall that many
of the WWII generation’s finest musicians have never trained a disciple of note. They
may have given their successors “the world,” so to speak, but many have done very little
to show their juniors how to negotiate the economic side of business while at the same
time keeping artistic standards high, which is, a difficult balancing act, needless to say.
Thus, as BG in part explained, many young musicians have to decide for themselves what
is right for the tradition and for the times they live in.
At this point, I will step down from my soap box and make some general
comments regarding gharana in the context of instrumental music before proceeding to
detail the major gharanas of instrumental music and the characteristic styles that they
each propagate. As most of the major instrumentalists of today are Bengalis, most of
what can be observed regarding how instrumentalists relate to the concept of gharana can
be taken equally as an observation regarding how Bengali musicians relate to the concept
of gharana. This might seem surprising considering that, as noted above, Bengali Khyal
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singers have rarely had access to training with top level, gharaanedaar musicians while
instrumentalists have. However, the similarities are there nonetheless, and I feel that this
is another important indicator of regional differences between Bengali and Marathi
musicians. Considering that Hindustani music is, if nothing else, defined by the
continuity of tradition and the manner in which that tradition is handed down from
generation to generation, the crux of the matter, in terms of the difference between
Maharashtrians and Bengalis, I feel, is this: Bengalis tend to feel a sense of loyalty
primarily to a specific musician, whether it be their Guru or even just their idol or hero
who they might never have met, or sometimes the gharana of their Guru/idol, while
Maharashtrians generally seem to feel loyalty primarily to their gharana, or more
diffusely, to the Hindustani tradition itself. The key word here is generally because there
are exceptions to every generalization, and as I learned first hand, while many of
musicians I met did not object in principle to generalizations based on region (though
some, as mentioned above, did), most of them objected rather vehemently when I offered
a generalization which they themselves did not agree with.
At any rate, there are several pieces of evidence I would like to offer in support of
this assertion. In terms of what I observed first hand, I would note that on the
Maharashtrian side, as detailed above, almost every musician (save, of course, for the few
exceptional individuals like Shruti Sadolikar who had received their entire training from
one musician) has a list, sometimes a very long list, of Gurus from whom they have
learned. This is not only what the musicians who I interviewed told me; it is also they
way they defined and explained themselves and their respective backgrounds in the
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public eye, e.g. in their introductions read out by the emcee before a recital or in the liner
notes of the cassettes and/or CDs of their music. To this I would add that many of my
Maharashtrian interlocutors also, both on and off the record, openly disagreed with the
views of (one of) their Gurus or, less often, were even openly critical of their Guru. It
was never very harsh criticism, but criticism all the same, and I have to say I found this
surprising, as one of the cornerstones of the Hindustani tradition, as with so many other
Indian traditions, is loyalty to and veneration of the Guru. I was tempted at first to think
this was more a generational issue than anything else, but in retrospect, looking back at
my notes and interviews, I do not see that age made a difference in whether or not a
particular musician held this view. The word that Maharashtrian musicians most often
used to describe themselves whether they were relatively young or old was “modern,”
though the better term might be “rational,” as Bengalis are modern as well, though in a
different fashion. The way most Maharashtrian singers described their training to me was
something like, “I started learning from musician X (who might be their parent or a local
musician), then I went to musician Y to learn such and such, and then I went musician Z
to learn something else,” etc. Rarely, though again there were exceptions, did a
Maharashtrian musician tell me that they were inspired to sing by one particular artist,
and then subsequently stopped at nothing to eventually learn with that individual. Rather,
their attitude on the whole was not unlike that of the Western musician who goes to a
teacher to learn something specific and then moves on when that goal is accomplished.
That is not to say that they are not respectful of and grateful to their Gurus; it is simply
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that they clearly do not treat their Gurus as godlike, infallible figures who are immune to
criticism.
This is also not to say that Bengalis always speak of or treat their Gurus with such
extreme reverence. I do think it is fair to say, though, that for Bengalis, the issue of who
a particular musician has or has not learned from is a much more emotional and, at times,
controversial subject. The truth of the matter is that, as with most Hindustani musicians
down through the ages and as with most of their Maharashtrian counterparts, the majority
of current, professional-level Bengali musicians have in fact learned from more than one
Guru. The difference, however, is unlike the Maharashtrians, Bengalis – and I am again
speaking generally here – do not tend to consistently publicly acknowledge all the Gurus
from whom they have learned, preferring instead to identify with their current or (for a
senior musician) last Guru. Considering their generally more emotional ties to their
Gurus, this is, then, where the controversy comes in. Several musicians from a variety of
regional backgrounds spoke about this quality of the Bengali musician. Arvind Parikh, a
Bombay-based Gujarati sitarist, scholar, and businessman, explained it thusly:
Calcutta people, Bengali people, are more, uh, traditional on one side –
Maharashtrians are also traditional – but they are very emotionally traditional, and
therefore they stick to one Guru, they will not leave him. And they worship
musicians. Here there was a time fifty years back when musicians were
worshipped, but not today – today Bombay city and the influence around, the
modern thinking…but in Calcutta even today people are still orthodoxly
traditional. Uh, they are, uh…and the unfortunate part, of course, is this
emotional traditionalism leads to, uh, leads to bickering and pulling down others.
If you are following this gharana, you will say, “All the other gharanas are bad,
and my gharana is the best.” Maharashtra is more tolerant than Calcutta, but then,
you know, there are good and bad things [on both sides](interview, 2005).
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This topic came up as well with Bengali musicians and scholars, though, perhaps
unsurprisingly, they tended to elaborate more on this subject off the record than in the
interview context. To give an example of the former, during a conversation with one
Calcutta rasik [connoisseur] who I frequently encountered during my time there both at
concerts and elsewhere, I remarked that I was somewhat surprised when, while attending
a concert which was a double bill of two of artists of approximately same age, status, and
renown, I noticed that after the first performer finished, half of the audience promptly got
up and left, only to be replaced by approximately the same number of listeners who
hadn’t come for the first half. To this, my acquaintance wryly replied, “Of course – those
people who left were his [the first artist’s] devotees. Most of them were probably his
students.”
Another anecdote, which perhaps illustrates the controversial side of these
extreme loyalties, came when I had an informal meeting with an amateur instrumentalist
in Calcutta whose name I will not divulge, but who obviously had no ties to the Maihar
gharana. In short, this individual proposed to me his that the lineage of the great Maihar
sitarist Ravi Shankar was in his words “cursed,” as, according him, RS had, among many
other things, never properly acknowledged all the great musicians who had influenced
him. Of course, I could have corrected him on certain points, such as the fact that RS has
trained some notable disciples (many of whom are not based in Calcutta) and has publicly
acknowledged some of his early influences, 89 but not only did I tend to avoid arguments
while conducting my interviews, preferring to let my interlocutors speak their peace
89 see Ravi Shankar’s English autobiography Ragamala (1999)
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(even if I disagreed), I also was somewhat in shock because he had only launched into his
tirade after I told him that I was a student of one of RS’s disciples! Curiously, though,
the other Maihar gharana stalwart, sarodist Ali Akbar Khan, was evidently OK in his
book, and thus not cursed.
The late Nikhil Banerjee, also of the Maihar gharana, could perhaps be termed the
paradigmatic case of a controversial shift from one Guru to another, even more than
twenty years after his death. Even ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel has entered the fray
on this account, stating in his 1989 monograph Thumri in Historical and Stylistic
Perspectives that NB received most of his training from sarodist Radhika Mohan Moitra,
in spite of the fact that he was “generally publicized as a student of Allaudin Khan”(176).
Manuel’s source on this issue was Moitra’s disciple and Manuel’s Guru, Dr. Kalyan
Mukherjee, and Manuel, it should be noted, is by no means alone in making this
assertion. I myself heard this claim - namely that NB learned first from Moitra and then
shifted to Allaudin Khan, essentially disavowing any connection to Moitra - repeated at
several points by several different individuals, including those both affiliated and those
unaffiliated with these two gharanas, during my period of research in Calcutta.
Interestingly, according to Nikhil Banerjee himself, though, before Baba Allaudin, his
Gurus were Mushtaq Ali Khan, who NB learned sitar with “for three months only,” Gyan
Prakash Ghosh, who taught him some tabla and vocal music, and Birendra Kishore Roy
Chaudhuri, amateur musician and zamiindaar, from whom NB also learned some sitar
(Landgarten 1991). If we are to take NB at his word (and there is no reason not to, to my
knowledge), he never formally learned from Radhika Mohan Moitra. It is difficult to
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understand, then, why certain individuals continue to harbor some amount of bitterness
on this account when, again, NB has been gone for many years now. If nothing else, the
durability of this apparent rumor is testimony to the hard feelings that can be created
when a Guru and/or his loyal followers feel, for whatever reason, that that Guru has not
been properly credited for whom and for what he or she has taught.
Considering, then, that Bengalis indisputably dominate instrumental music in
terms of numbers and stylistic influence, as well as that Bengalis, as my informants have
suggested, also tend to form very strong emotional bonds with their Gurus and even, by
extension, with their idols who they may have never learned with directly, then we can
better understand the general attitude among instrumentalists regarding gharana. No
doubt, the social and cultural conditions in modern India – including the democratization
of the tradition, both in terms of listeners and musicians, the influence of modern media
(perhaps the single most homogenizing factor per se), and even the expansion of the
tradition into South India and, more crucially, overseas – have taken their toll on all the
gharanas of Hindustani music, vocal and instrumental, and their stylistic integrity.
Keeping in mind, though, that as I mentioned in passing in chapter 3, most sitar and/or
sarod gharanas have been relatively recently founded and that, as such, most of them are
still represented hereditary members of their respective central lineages, it should come
as no surprise that Bengali instrumentalists are generally more loyal to ‘their’ gharana
than are their Maharashtrian Khyal-singing counterparts. I still maintain, based on the
ethnographic evidence I have collected, that Bengalis most often hold their primary
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allegiance to their Guru. The point here, though, is that the great Bengali instrumentalists
are, in a manner of speaking, identical to their gharana. This is not to say all the
members of each gharana are identical in their stylistic approach – this has never been the
case, even when the original Muslim khaandaan-s of Khyal were at their respective
peaks. Rather, if one has studied with Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan or Vilayat Khan,
then they have studied with the prime exponents of the Maihar and Imdad Khani
gharanas, their living embodiments, so to speak. In Maharashtra, conversely, musicians
who have very direct ties to khaandaanii vocalists of their gharana are relatively rare.
Even those who are removed by one generation (i.e. those who have studied with a non-
hereditary disciple of a khaandaanii vocalist) are relatively uncommon. In Bengal,
though, most top level sitar and sarod are, at most, one generation removed from a
khaandaanii maestro. Of course, I am expanding the definition of khaandaanii
somewhat here to include, as in the aforementioned case of the Alladiya Khan gharana,
non-hereditary disciples, who, as with Mogubai Kurdikar, have received the full gharana
taaliim from their Ustads. As I shall detail shortly, this goes for both the Maihar and
Shahjahanpur gharanas.
Based on all this, it is tempting to think that as these instrumental gharanas
continue to grow and expand, eventually their ‘membership,’ as it were, will begin to feel
less and less attachment to gharana qua gharana, as the Maharashtrian khyaaliyaa-s have.
One bit of evidence for this is that, although I did not interview enough Marathi
khyaaliyaa-s who had learned from a bona-fide gharaanedaar Ustad, those that had
seemed to feel a stronger sense of loyalty than those (especially the many of the members
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of the Gwalior tradition) who had no such ties. Srikrishna ‘Babanrao’ Haldankar is one
such vocalist, as he studied with the Agra gharaanedaar Ustad Khadim Hussain.
Srikrishna-ji exhibited a rather interesting mix of views, at one extolling the virtues of
open-mindedness (“Music doesn’t end with gharana – music is beyond gharana”), while
at the same time arguing for the superiority of the Agra gaayakii over its competitors in
terms of completeness and balance, though, to be fair, this was as much a defense of the
most common criticisms of the Agra style as an unabashed declaration of its superiority
(interview, 2005). While it is hard to generalize based on such scant evidence, it seems
that this might be termed as the representative outlook of a Marathi artist of his
generation. Whether or not gharana will similarly recede in importance in the Calcutta
instrumental music scene remains to be seen. I would argue, though, that the more
enduring aspects of each regional group’s outlook are, on the Bengali side, the emotional
attachment to the Guru and his style, and on the Marathi side, a relatively rationalistic
approach to style and to learning music. These attitudes themselves are, of course,
historically determined and contingent and may well change over time – very likely they
will. I do strongly believe, however, that they are currently more stable and less in flux
than are Hindustani musicians’ attitudes regarding gharana specifically.
To proceed, then, to the most prominent instrumental gharanas of the late 20th
and 21st centuries, I will begin by noting two important facts. First, as Neuman has
explained, one of the key factors in gaining legitimacy as a gharana in Hindustani
instrumental music has been a tie, hereditary or discipular, to the lineage of the legendary
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dhrupadiya Tansen of the court of the Moghul emperor Akbar. As Neuman writes,
“Virtually all instrumentalists belong in one sense or another to the Seniya gharana…,”
and “To the extent that association with the Seniya tradition is used, it is in the sense that
some musicians are more Seniya then others”(1990:107-108). And, indeed, all major
instrumental gharanas outside of the Imdad Khani sitar gharana have some sort of
relatively clear and generally accepted tie along these lines, and two in particular, the
Maihar (also sometimes called Seni-Maihar) gharana and the so-called “Senia Sitar
Gharana” associated with Ustad Mushtaq Ali Khan of Benares, derive much of their
identity from their Senia heritage (although it is hard to compare these two traditions, as
in the last 50-60 years, the former has unarguably dwarfed the latter in terms of
popularity, number of adherents, and stylistic influence). Second, I should note that, in
instrumental music as in tabla, there has historically been an east/west (Purab/Paschim or
Pachvaa) stylistic distinction in sitar playing specifically (sarod, conversely has always
been associated with eastern India), and, not coincidentally, this dovetails with the issue
of Senia ties, as the western style of these was essentially the style of the early Delhi- and
later Jaipur-based sitar-playing descendants of Tansen while the eastern style was a
creation both of Senia rabaabiya-s and biinkaar-s and their sitar- and sarod-playing
disciples. And, again, as in tabla, “western” refers to Delhi and its neighboring regions
and “eastern” refers to eastern U.P., historically known as Awadh or Oudh, and its key
center, Lucknow.
Over time, of course, this distinction has lost much of its relevance, as
instrumental music in general gravitated over time toward greater Bengal and then to
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Calcutta specifically in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More importantly, though,
not only did the instrumental tradition shift geographically to the east, the two distinct
idioms, i.e. the purabii Raazaa Khaanii gat and the western Masit Khaanii gat which
earlier largely distinguished east from west became part of the common repertory of all
sitar and sarod players. The prime distinction in modern day sitar and sarod playing is,
instead, between those that attempt, through various means, to replicate Khyal and
Thumri vocal styles and those which stay truer to the gat shailii or tantakaarii ang, who
also, in general, can be said to be more Dhrupad-influenced, in the sense that these styles
are more directly descended from Dhrupad instrumental and vocal music (though the
actual, audible resemblance to Dhrupad of the music of any of these gharanas varies from
case to case). As in most forms of categorization in Indian classical culture, there is
generally a “mixed” category, i.e. a mixture of the ‘pure’ styles, and many would argue
this is true as well of sitar as well, if not of sarod to quite the same extent. Thus, there are
sitar players whose music is essentially tantakaarii ang, but who incorporate the
sweeping miinD-s (vocal-style glissandos) associated with gaayakii ang to at least some
extent in their presentation. As Manuel writes, “Since the late fifties, so many sitarists
(and sarodiyas) not directly associated with Vilayat Khan [essentially, the pioneer of the
gaayakii ang on sitar] have adopted this sort of extended gayaki mind that it has become
practically, but not entirely, the norm”(1989:171). At any rate, it is these three
interrelated paired distinctions, western vs. eastern, tantakaarii ang vs. gaayakii ang, and
Khyal influenced vs. Dhrupad influenced, that form the parameters for the rest of my
discussion of modern instrumental music style.
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Of the two types of gat (instrumental composition) mentioned above, the earliest
and most important, as it remains a key part of the repertoire of both sitar and sarod to
this day (though generally in altered form), is the Masit Khaanii gat, thought to have
been created by the musician of the same name. As Allyn Miner in her comprehensive
account of the growth and development of the sitar, sarod, and their respective
repertories, Sitar and Sarod in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries (1993), explains, Masit Khan
was a sitarist who lived and worked in the last impoverished days of the Mughal court in
Delhi, with his life spanning approximately 1750 until around 1825. Miner says of his
contribution to instrumental music:
Masit Khan turned the course of sitar music. He is famous for introducing the
genre called gat-toda, a term that came to stand for all solo sitar music in the
early period. A gat is a composition on the sitar or sarod that is set into tala, a
fixed rhythmic cycle. It has both fixed strokes and a fixed melody…Todas are the
melody lines played in sitar music which expand on, and are interspersed with,
the gat…
All the melodic, ornamental and rhythmic content of the Masit Khani-style
outside the gat was contained in the todas, the extension of the gat (1993:93).
Miner also notes that many of writers of the period, as well as later sitar players, place a
great deal of emphasis on the Dhrupad influence on his sitar music, which included
composing the melodies of his gat-s on the basis of the strict, rule-bound Dhrupad
approach to raga and even perhaps basing some of his gat-s on pre-existing Dhrupad
compositions. At the same time, however, the sitar at this early stage of its development
likely “had relatively little capability for sustained tone and elaborate pulling techniques”
which would have been necessary to imitate the essentially vocal style of the biin (or
vocal Dhrupad). To whatever extent the sitar could accurately imitate aspects of
Dhrupad, though, emphasizing the Dhrupad roots of Masit Khan’s style was clearly one
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way for subsequent generations of sitarists to raise the status of the sitar in the classical
realm.
Indeed, although Miner notes that the historical record is not entirely clear in this
regard, Masit Khan is traditionally thought of as a descendant of Tansen, and his
followers and descendants trace their lineage through him to the great singer of Akbar’s
court. While Masit Khan had a number of followers, including most notably his son and
nephew, eventually the Senia sitar tradition, as it came to be known, shifted to Rajasthan,
as the musical scene in Delhi completely dried up with end of royal patronage there. The
first of the well-known Rajasthan-based sitarists was Rahimsen, a court musician of a
small princely state called Jhajjar – the “sen” affixed to his name indicated that he was
descendant of Tansen. More precisely, Rahimsen traced his connection back to Tansen
in two ways: first, he was married to the daughter of Masit Khan’s nephew Dulha Khan
(and thus belonged to this lineage of sitarists); second, he was himself said to be a direct
descendant of Tansen through Tansen’s son’s line (ibid.:105). Rahimsen and his
followers, the most famous being his eldest son Amrtsen, for the most part performed in
Masit Khan’s gat-toDaa style, a style which came to be known as the Delhi baaj or the
Masit Khaanii baaj, though they did develop and expand on this basic format. As Miner
notes, although, as in the case of Masit Khan himself, historical sources tend to
emphasize the Dhrupad-oriented aspects of the Senia sitarists’ music, other evidence
seems to support the notion that their style contained elements of both Dhrupad and
Khyal. The latter influence is particularly notable, because, as mentioned above, the
sitarists of the Imdad Khan gharana are most often thought to have first introduced Khyal
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elements on a large scale into sitar music. Along these same lines, the Senia sitar style
never seems to have featured solo (i.e. unaccompanied) aalaap, one the key traits of
Dhrupad.
The most well-known representative of the Senia sitar gharana (sometimes called
the “Jaipur Senia sitar gharana” as Amrtsen eventually settled in Jaipur) in the twentieth
century was the late Ustad Mushtaq Ali Khan, a sitarist born in Benares to a lineage of
Dhrupad singers and biinkaar-s who spent much of his career in Calcutta (Chaudhuri
1990). Mushtaq Ali’s connection to the Senia sitar lineage came from his father Ashiq
Ali who had learned from the famous Senia-trained, early 20th century sitarist
Barkatullah Khan, who in turn had been trained by Amrtsen’s nephew Ustad Amir Khan
(Das Sharma 1993:72). Mushtaq Ali trained a number of disciples, most of them
Bengali, but of these, the most well-known is Professor Devabrata ‘Debu’ Chaudhuri, a
Calcutta-born Bengali, who recently retired after serving as a long-term member of the
music faculty of Delhi University. In terms of the modern Jaipur Senia gharana, the main
appeal of their style comes from their adherence to tradition. The most obvious and
visible example of this is their continuing use of the 17 fret sitar, as opposed to the 20 fret
version which is the modern standard. There have, though, been some concessions to
modern style on the part of both Mushtaq Ali and Debu Chaudhuri. As Jody Stecher
explains in the liner notes to Debu Chaudhuri’s 1991 recording of Raga Desh (India
Archive Music – CD 1002), Mushtaq Ali, as with most 20th century sitarists,
incorporated the fast-paced Raazaa Khaanii style fast gat into his overall presentation,
and Debu Chaudhuri has further deviated from his Ustad’s style by performing
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unaccompanied, solo aalaap, as well as by using the chikaarii (side-mounted drone
strings) much more frequently than Mushtaq Ali had. At the same, though, Debu
Chaudhuri and his followers, again, see their legitimacy as a gharana as being based
primarily on their fidelity to older Senia tradition. The strength of this approach, as
Chaudhuri explains in his presentation on the Jaipur Senia sitar gharana originally
delivered during ITC-SRA’s “Seminar on Sitar” (1990), is their insistence on the
presenting both raga in general and the Masit Khaanii idiom specifically in their purest
forms. Conversely, though, in comparison to the music of Ravi Shankar and Vilyat
Khan, the two giants of 20th century sitar, Debu Chaudhuri’s style seems greatly
delimited, lacking as it does both the pure Dhrupad style aalaap and rhythmic complexity
of Ravi Shankar’s music and the extended use of miinD and the Khyal style aalaap and
high-speed taan-s associated with the late Vilayat Khan’s approach. Up to this point in
time, Debu Chaudhuri has not trained a disciple of note.
Outside of the Jaipur Senia sitarists, whose Delhi-derived style later became
known as the Paschim baaj or “Western style” (Miner 1993:135), most of the other
instrumental styles historically associated with Western India are traditions of biin
playing or biin-oriented sitar playing. As sitarist Bimal Mukherjee explains, “Another
strange phenomenon of Rudra Bin music is that its practices and cult developed in a
geographical tract between the Deccan plateau covering mainly what we know call
Rajasthan and extending to some areas of the North West”(1990:20). Mukherjee, who
passed away in 1996 (Misra 2001:40), had been the prime representative of a lineage
commonly referred to as the Jaipur Binkar-Sitar Gharana. Mukherjee’s connection to
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what he called “The Rajasthan Binkar Gharana of Jaipuir and Alwar” came through his
Ustad, biinkaar Abid Hussain Khan, son of Jamalluddin Khan, and grandson of
Amiruddin Khan. Interestingly, though, as with Mushtaq Ali’s Senia sitar tradition, this
“Jaipur Binkar-Sitar” also (as the surname Mukherjee indicates) ended up being
represented in the latter decades of the 20th century primarily by a Bengali musician.
The difference, however, is that while the Senia Sitar tradition moved east due to
discipular ties between Barkatullah Khan and his Benaresi follower Ashiq Ali and his son
Mushtaq Ali (who later migrated to Calcutta and there taught Debu Chaudhuri), Bimal
Mukherjee himself was raised in Western India, in Baroda. There he not only learned
from Abid Hussain, but also, according to Misra (2001) from the great Agra vocalist
Faiyaz Khan. Mukherjee would, though, eventually settle in Calcutta later in life.
Besides being a Bengali like Debu Chaudhuri, Mukherjee likewise has never produced a
disciple of note, which is perhaps more understandable in Mukherjee’s case, as he spent
his professional life as civil servant rather than as a professional musician. Regardless, it
remains to be seen if either of these traditions of sitar will carry on in the future or
become obsolete.
Regarding the continuing tradition of biin playing, as distinct from biin-based
sitar, Raja (2005), lists six living biinkaar-s with “training in a well established lineage of
bina music”: Asad Ali Khan, Shamsuddin Faridi, Pandharinath Kolhapure, Bindumadhav
Pathak, Hindraj Divekar, and Bahauddin Dagar (289). Of these, the two who are
undoubtedly the most famous and respected as performers on a national and international
basis (as music of the biin, like Dhrupad vocal music, has a substantial overseas
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following in terms of listeners and students) are Asad Ali, the senior-most of this group,
and Bahauddin Dagar, one of the youngest. The latter, as his family name indicates, is
heir to the Dagar gharana Dhrupad tradition. His father was Z.M (Zia Mohiuddin) Dagar,
who, as Raja notes, as a young man shifted to Bombay from Udaipur, the ancestral home
of the Dagar lineage, in hopes of making a career as a sitarist. However, upon finding
that his biin-inspired sitar “failed to enthuse music lovers in the city,” Z.M. Dagar shifted
to biin and subsequently became famous as a performer on that instrument, not
incidentally becoming the first of his lineage to specialize primarily in biin playing. 90 In
terms of his biin style, Raja notes that Z.M. Dagar (as with the Dagar style singers) stuck
mainly to the unaccompanied aalaap-joD-jhaalaa “as the primary vehicle of his
performing presence,” thus emphasizing the main strength of the biin, i.e. its ability to
imitate the voice, while simultaneous de-emphasizing its lack of melodic agility in
comparison to the sitar (ibid.:287). Bahauddin Dagar, thus, carries forward his late
father’s style and approach. Asad Ali, for his part, is the son of Sadiq Ali, and, as such,
traces his lineage back to the same lineage of Jaipur-based biinkaar-s to which Bimal
Mukherjee’s Ustad Abid Hussain belonged. However, Sadiq Ali, according to Raja,
“spent many years in Rampur [in eastern Uttar Pradesh], centre of the aggressive
Khandar Bani style”(283). Specifically, this translates to a slightly faster paced and more
rhythmic or joD -like aalaap (in comparison to the leisurely and meditative Dagar baanii
aalaap) and a more aggressive, layakaari-oriented approach while performing
90
Like most Dhrupad gharanas, the Dagars had cultivated the biin for generations, but did not perform on it
publicly.
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percussion-accompanied pada-s (compositions). Asad Ali, then, has propagated this
style for many years in his home base of Calcutta.
Without slighting Shamsuddin Faridi, the other biin players I would like to briefly
discuss are Pandharinath Kolhapure, Hindraj Divekar, and Bindumadhav Pathak,
primarily because Kolhapure and Divekar are ethnic Maharashtrians and Pathak is a
native of Hubli in northern Karnataka. The key to understanding the connection between
the larger biin tradition and these musicians native to the Maharashtra region is one
legendary Ustad, biinkaar Bande Ali Khan of Indore (now located in modern day
Madhya Pradesh state), a musician to whom a number of important historical and current-
day instrumentalists are tied, either through blood or, more commonly, discipular ties. In
his account of what he calls the “Indore Binkaar Gharana” (1989:25-26), J.S. Hamilton
states that Bande Ali Khan (1826-1890; also the dates given by Miner 1993:127) became
a court musician of the darbaar of Maratha king Tukojirao Holkar II in the 1860s, having
essentially created his own biin style after studying Dhrupad vocal music with the great
Bhairam (sometimes spelled Bahram) Khan of the Dagar gharana, though the details of
his musical training are far from clear. To this, Miner adds that Bande Ali was born in
Kirana and is often referred as the founder of the Kirana Khyal gharana (although Abdul
Karim was the progenitor of the musical style with which the modern Kirana gharana is
identified), as well as that Bande Ali spent his early career in Gwalior before shifting to
Indore. In Gwalior, Bande Ali married his first wife, a daughter of the great khyaaliya
Haddu Khan (ibid.:136). Although Bande Ali did apparently produce some offspring, he
did not have a son to carry his tradition forward after his death. Thus, most of the
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musicians who have ties to Bande Ali’s tradition are linked to him through his disciples.
One such current musician is Pakistan-based sitarist Rais Khan, whose great-grandfather
was a disciple of Bande Ali named Wahid Khan. However, while he is most often
referred to as a member of the “Indore Gharana,” Rais Khan’s style is clearly indebted to
his uncle Vilayat Khan, his mother’s brother. Biinkaar Shamsuddin Faridi, not
incidentally, also belongs to Wahid Khan’s biin tradition, as Miner notes.
The aforementioned Marathi biinkaar-s, Hindraj Divekar and Pandharinath
Kolhapure, along with Kannadiga (native of Karnataka) Bindumadhav Pathak, are tied to
Bande Ali through Bande Ali’s disciple Murad Khan of Jawra (now located in Madhya
Pradesh state). Briefly stated, Murad Khan taught both Krishnarao Kolhapure, who
would then become the Guru of both his son Pandharinath as well as Shivrambua
Divekar, father and Guru of Hindraj, and Dattopant Pathak, also the disciple of Bande Ali
disciple Rajab Ali (of Dewas, M.P.), who later taught his son Bindumadhav (Divekar
2001:34). What I would like to emphasize here, however, is the specific nature of the
style passed on from Murad Khan to his disciples. B.R Deodhar in his monograph
Pillars of Hindustani Music, includes a chapter length account of Murad Khan’s life
along with several anecdotes regarding the relations between the two. In this chapter,
Deodhar explains that he had arranged a number of recitals to help expose Murad Khan
and his biin to the music lovers of Bombay and that, in terms of audience response, they
were very successful. However, after writing an article on Murad Khansaheb for the
Bombay Chronicle newspaper, Deodhar by chance met with Pandit Bhatkhande who
explained to Deodhar the deficiencies in Murad Khan’s style as compared to the style of
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traditional biinkaar-s, who as Bhatkhande noted, were mostly based at that time (in the
1930s) in the east, in Rampur. The crux of Bhatkhande what explained to Deodhar was
that Murad Khan had departed from the traditional biin baaj or style first by including
tabla accompaniment in lieu of pakhaawaj and, second, by including Khyal style
ornamentation, in particular high speed taan-s and murkii-s in his presentation. When
Deodhar responded by noting that Murad Khan was a disciple of Bande Ali whose style
Bhatkhande did approve of, Bhatkhande countered that despite having a large number of
disciples, Bande Ali never really taught his students who were left, then, to develop their
own style based on what they heard when Bande Ali performed and/or practiced along
with whatever they had learned from other sources (1993:80-82). Considering, then, that
Murad Khan’s father Muglu Khan was a sitar player of the Jaipur Senia tradition, it
seems reasonable to assume that Murad Khan had simply filled in gaps in his biin
training by substituting what he had learned on sitar from his father. This, then, is the
inheritance of the biinkaar-s of Maharashtra – not biin-influenced sitar, but sitar- (and
Khyal-) influenced biin. This music was not only passed down to other biinkaar-s, it
should be noted. Another of Murad Khan’s disciples was the sitarist Babu Khan of
Indore who, while famous in his own right, is also remembered as the Guru of sitarist
Jaffer Khan and his son Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan, a well-known performer based in
Bombay (Miner 1993:136). Considering that AHJK bases the legitimacy of his style
(which he calls the “Jafferkhani baaj”) on his biin heritage, it should be noted this
heritage is decidedly not that of Dhrupad and the orthodox biin baaj. Also, it should
mentioned, that, to my knowledge, AHZK has no noteworthy disciples.
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Beyond the above, there is little more to say regarding instrumental music in
Maharashtra. Miner references a few sitar players in late 19th century who were active in
Maharashtra, again primarily in Bombay and Pune. However, none of the musicians
mentioned are remembered as important or influential (in fact most were amateurs or
vocalists who pursued sitar more or less as a hobby)(ibid.:156-158). There is, however, a
continuing tradition of sitar making in Maharashtra based in the former princely state of
Miraj. As Deodhar explains, this tradition was started by a craftsman by the name of
Faridsaheb Sitarmaker, the “first man in Maharashtra to make string instruments” and a
descendant of a family of weapons makers who, before Faridsaheb’s time (mid to late
19th century), served the Muslim princes of Bijapur (1993:261-262). I myself traveled to
Miraj during my stay in Pune in 2002-2003, and in terms of both their appearance and
their sound, I found Miraj sitars to be almost invariably of a lower quality than those
produced by makers such as Rikki Ram and Sons in Delhi and, of course, by the
numerous quality sitar makers in Calcutta. 91 I can only assume that the difference is due
to the lack of interest in classical instruments amongst potential customers across the
region, which also means that if Miraj sitars were ever comparable to those constructed in
North India and Bengal, they have now fallen far behind. I suppose, then, that this could
be considered a type of regional difference, but for me, this is more a historical
difference, with the Miraj sitar essentially representing an earlier stage in the
development of the construction of the instrument. This theory is given great support by
the fact that there is high demand for taanpuraa-s in Maharashtra, and Maharashtrian
91 There are, of course, differences in quality between ‘high-end,’ i.e. made to order, and off the rack sitars.
In other words, the sitars I sampled were not necessarily the finest Miraj sitar makers have to offer.
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vocalists almost universally use Mirajkar (i.e. Miraj-made) taanpuraa-s and consider
them to superior to any other make. This could be seen simply as a matter of regional
pride or easy access, but it should be noted that most professional level sitar players in
Bombay, for their part, perform on Calcutta-made sitars. There is no doubt that
professional pride far exceeds regional pride when it comes to classical musicians. This
apparent stagnation in the tradition of sitar-making is not, of course, the cause for the lack
of a healthy and robust tradition of sitar playing in the region – if anything, it is the
opposite. Rather, it is, if nothing else, simply one more victim of the craze for Khyal
music in Maharashtra that began with Balkrishnabua Ichalkaranjikar.
The Purab or eastern baaj of instrumental music is conventionally associated with
a 19th century musician based in Lucknow by the name of Ghulam Raza (sometimes
written Reza) who is thought to have invented a type of gat performed at relatively fast
tempos (as compared to both Dhrupad and the largely Dhrupad-inspired Masit Khaanii
gat) which was modeled on the Thumri genre that was extremely popular with the
nobility and lay audiences of Lucknow at that time. As Miner states, “Today the Purab
baj is virtually identified by modern musicians with Ghulam Raza through the term
Razakhani”(1993:123). However, as Miner explains, historical evidence seems to
indicate that this is a bit of an over-simplification. Most importantly this is because there
are “no gats available in written or oral traditions attributed directly to Ghulam Raza…”
Also, there is ample testimony from observers at Wajid Ali Shah’s court where Ghulam
Raza served, including from the British resident (one Colonel Sleeman), that Ghulam
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Raza derived his position primarily from the fact that he was a favorite of Wajid Ali
(whom, many felt, Ghulam Raza frequently manipulated), that he was a man of
questionable morals and character, and that he was not a musician of a particularly high
caliber (1993:112-117,123). Miner concludes that Ghulam Raza’s experimental style,
which was based on Thumri and which paid little attention to raga, was perhaps, due to
its popularity with non-connoisseurs, one influence on the Purab baaj. The main content
and substance of the Purab baaj, however, seems to have been developed by a rather
different class of musicians, namely Dhrupad instrumentalists of the Tansen tradition and
their non-hereditary, sitar- and sarod-playing disciples. Three Senia rabaabiyaa-s (the
line of Tansen’s family who specialized in performing on the now obsolete plucked lute
called rabaab) - the three sons of Chajju Khan - Basat Khan, Pyar Khan, and Ja’far Khan,
were particularly important in early 19th century Lucknow. Miner says of these three
brothers:
Ironically, their later fame comes less from the rabab than from their roles in
founding and teaching the Purab baj of sitar and sarod music, some of which was
influenced by the thumri music of the time. They composed gats that are
preserved in performance tradition and written records, and produced numerous
disciples who were important figures in the history of this style (119).
Besides these three rabaabiya-s, another important musician was Senia biinkaar Umrao
Khan, who, like Chajju Khan’s sons, was an outstanding musician of the day on the biin
but, again, was ultimately as much or more important from a historical perspective for
whom he taught. In terms of non-hereditary disciples, this includes Ghulam Muhammed,
the sitarist who, among other things, was famous for developing the suurbahaar, a larger
bass sitar used for performing solo, Dhrupad-style aalaap. So, while Ghulam Raza’s
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gat-s may or may not constitute a part of the Purab baaj (Miner notes one source that
considers the Raazaa Khaanii baaj and Purab baaj to be distinct styles), Miner argues
that the larger part of the Purab baaj, besides the Dhrupad/biin-influenced aalaap and
jhaalaa, consisted of fast and medium tempo gat-s that were likely inspired by the
medium tempo Firoz Khaanii gat style (named after an important musician who had
earlier migrated to Rampur from Delhi) and the music of the Afghani rabaab, a plucked
lute associated with Afghani soldiers and another predecessor of the sarod (1993:121).
As noted in the previous chapter, although Rampur had been an important musical
center for some time by the mid 19th century, it became much more so after the exile of
Wajid Ali from Lucknow and particularly after the Mutiny of 1857, as Rampur has
remained loyal to the English during that uprising and benefited accordingly. Among the
most important musicians of the later 19th century was Bahadur Hussain, sometimes
called Bahadur Sen, the nephew and disciple of Pyar Khan, who was known both as a
rabaabiya and perhaps the greatest ever player of the suursingaar, another predecessor of
the sarod. The leading biinkaar of the period was Umrao Khan’s son, Amir Khan, whose
son Wazir Khan would later serve as the Guru of the founders of two of the primary
instrumental gharanas of the 20th century, Allaudin Khan and Hafiz Ali Khan. As
McNeil explains, there was somewhat of a drop-off in quality and amount of musical
activity in Rampur beginning in the 1870s after the deaths of Bahadur Sen and Amir
Khan, a decline that was greatly exacerbated by removal of Nawab Mushtaq Ali from the
throne of Rampur by the British in 1889 and his replacement by Hamid Ali Khan, who,
as a minor, could not take complete control of state affairs for several more years. The
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“reputation of the Rampur nawabs as cultural patrons was rekindled in 1899,” however,
when Hamid Ali appointed Wazir Khan, expert singer of Dhrupad and Dhamar and
expert performer on biin, suursingaar, and rabaab, as chief court musician of Rampur
(McNeil 2004:139).
It would only be a few short years later (in 1915, according to McNeil 2004:158)
that a young Allaudin Khan would arrive in Rampur hoping to become to become a
disciple of Wazir Khan. He would, of course, eventually succeed in his goal, albeit after
a great deal of hardship and struggle, including a period after tying the ganDaa with
Wazir Khan where the great Senia maestro simply ignored his young Bengali disciple. It
was thanks to his training with Wazir Khan, though, as well as his contact with a number
of other important instrumentalists in Rampur, that Allaudin Khan would become the
primary conduit for making the Dhrupad-based instrumental music of Rampur available
to the general public, including both the non-hereditary musicians he taught as disciples
and music-lovers generally. Of course, the inputs, so to speak, for the style of
instrumental music Allaudin Khan created did not come solely from the maestros of
Rampur. By the time he had made his way there, he had already learned music from a
number of sources, including the classical vocal music he had learned from Nulo Gopal
(Chakraborty), tabla and pakhaawaj (which he studied concurrently with his lessons from
Gopal) from Pandit Nandlal, Western violin from Habu Datta (Amritlal Dutta), clarinet
from various teachers in Calcutta while working for a theatrical company there,
shahnaaii from one Hazari, and some limited sarod which he learned from Ustad Ahmed
Ali Khan, who, not coincidentally, originally hailed from Rampur (Slawek 1991:169).
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The full-scale Dhrupad aalaap which Allaudin Khan learned from Wazir Khan, however,
became the foundation of Allaudin Khan’s (and later the Maihar gharana’s) style, and
certainly is the prime factor in terms its legitimacy in classical music circles. Of course,
this is not to say that the lineage of Allaudin Khan is universally regarded as a gharana.
Every lineage has it detractors, of course – for example, as I mentioned in an earlier
chapter, some question the gharana status of the Imdad Khan gharana on the grounds that
Vilayat Khan’s father died early, and thus, Vilayat Khan’s music is more of his own
creation than it is the legacy of his grandfather Imdad Khan. However, the Maihar
gharana has had perhaps more than its fair share of detractors. Allaudin Khan’s family,
according to most (including his son Ali Akbar Khan), did not “belong to an occupational
category of musicians” (McNeil 2004:157), while most other major sarod gharanas were
founded by ancestors of the Afghani paThaan-s who introduced the Afghani-style rabaab
into the Hindustani tradition (a point I will expand on shortly). Along these same lines, it
should be noted that Allaudin Khan is among the very few major figures in 20th century
Hindustani music who was both a Muslim and a non-hereditary musician.
In terms of Allaudin Khan’s contributions to the broader tradition of Hindustani
instrumental music, I would like to mention two. The first concerns the style of music he
pioneered; the second deals with modifications he made to the sarod itself. If there is one
term that sums up AK’s style of music, it might be synthetic, in the sense that he took all
the varied experiences he had had as performer and disciple of various Gurus and
combined them into a style all his own, a style that covered all the varied styles of both
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instrumental and vocal music prevailing at the time. In My Music, My Life (1969), Ravi
Shankar says of his Guru,
Above all, I feel, [AK] is responsible for enlarging the scope and range of
possibilities open to an instrumentalist. He has led us away from the confines of
narrow specialization that prevailed in our music really through the first quarter of
this century…Because Allaudin Khan, as a young man, was taught by so many
masters, he learned a variety of styles of singing and playing and acquired a good
many instrumental techniques – wind and bowed and plucked-string instruments,
and even drums. And so he very naturally incorporated in his playing of the
sarod some of the characteristics of diverse vocal styles and of the playing styles
associated with a number of different instruments (55).
As Ravi Shankar notes in the same context, this synthetic quality has been used as
grounds of criticism for both AK and for he himself. In both cases, the criticism is the
same – AK did not play “authentic” sarod baaj and RS does not play “authentic” sitar
baaj. In the case of RS, it should be noted that while AK was primarily a sarod player
and secondarily a violin player, he was also, as all agree, an expert on sitar. Deepak
Chaudhuri, in his presentation on the Maihar gharana for ITC-SRA’s “Seminar on Sitar,”
gives the names of Kallu, Hafiz, and Nasir Ahmed Khan as sitar Ustads who greatly
contributed to AK’s knowledge of sitar while he was living in Rampur (1990:11). 92 The
point, then, is that Ravi Shankar’s sitar is not simply sarod music transferred to sitar, as
some would have it. Instead, RS’s style, like AK’s, represents an amalgam of both
different sitar styles and various styles and approaches taken from a number of other
instruments, including sarod, but also biin, suursingaar, rabaab and others. Calcutta-
based sarodist Anindya Banerjee noted the use of zamzamaa in AK’s music, a technique
transferred more or less directly from sitar, as an example of the sitar influence on the
92 Slawek (1991) corroborates Allaudin Khan’s relationship with Karim (Kalu) Khan and Hafiz Khan.
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Maihar style (interview, 2005). Of course, the fact that, thanks primarily to RS and Ali
Akbar Khan, the Maihar style has become one of the two most dominant and influential
styles of both sitar and sarod is itself proof of the value of AK’s innovations. Besides
this, though, it should also be kept in mind that in assimilating the approaches of so many
different instruments and vocal styles to his sarod music, AK was doing what so many
other instrumental music pioneers have done. The difference with AK was that instead of
attempting to play the music of the biin or rabaab on the sarod or Khyal-style music on
the sarod, or Dhrupad or Thumri, he did all the above.
Sitarist Deepak Choudhuri gives a good summary of the Maihar gharana approach
as it pertains to the use of various different ang-s of vocal music:
[AK] heard and learnt from any musicians [in Rampur] and thus after this
Beenkar Gharana talim from Wazir Khan Saheb along with his associations with
the musicians there, he assimilated the whole thing and created a style of his own,
which was enriched by the alap, jod of the dhrupad style of Beenkar gharana. At
the same time in vilambit gat, the Vistar and Tan-s etc., had the Khyal style. In
all Tempo-s from Ati Vilambit, Madh-Vilambit, Madhya Drut, Ati Drut he
progressed gradually and tried to set his own style to start with slow alap and
finish with Ati Drut Gat Jhala. On the top of it, he was very fond of folk Dhuns
which has got a very lilting quality. So starting from alap, which has got
“Adhyatmic” or spiritual quality; then ‘Gat’ having ‘Romanticism’ and finally
ending with Dhun which has got that earthy and lilting quality. Baba was very
fond of playing Dhun. So it was a pattern which was followed and further
developed by Guruji [Ravi Shankar], Ali Akbarji, and Nikhilji [Banerjee]. And
now it is a very popular pattern and mostly you can hear it anywhere (1990:
11-12).
Besides combining so many different styles into his own, McNeil (2004) takes particular
note of two of AK’s of innovations, the aforementioned full-scale Dhrupad style aalaap
and his use of ati-vilambit (lit. “very slow”) tempo in elaborating the Masit Khaanii style
gat on sarod. In terms of the former, McNeil states that AK “expanded the musical
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structure of his performance by adapting and transposing the full structure of seniya raag
alap onto his sarod performances” (159), while explaining somewhat equivocally in an
end note that AK’s “contribution in this regard came more from the establishment of a
systematic approach to alap than from actually being the first to introduce the full raag
alap on sarod”(174), as a number other lineages have claimed that their ancestors
performed full-blown Dhrupad-style aalaap on sarod before AK’s time. In terms of the
latter, McNeil says that “By decreasing the tempo at which the Masit Khani gat was
played, he was able to exploit intricate melodic and rhythmic techniques of dhrupad style
to further ornament the raag”(159), thus increasing the Dhrupad orientation of the
instrumental idiom most often associated with the Khyal ang.
Similarly, in terms of the manner in which AK and his cousin Ayet Ali altered
the sarod itself, the general effect was to increase the likeness of the sarod to the Seniya
rabaab and the suursingaar, the two predecessors of the sarod whose repertories and
playing styles, not coincidentally, were so influential on AK’s innovative new style. The
changes that the two effected to the sarod were as follows:
Working with his cousin Ayet Ali, [AK] fashioned a new type of instrument
which could more easily facilitate the style of playing he had developed. This
aim was achieved by enlarging the overall dimensions of his sarod and, in
particular, the size of the main resonator which became rounder in shape than was
evident on other sarods at the time. More changes included lengthening the
fingerboard and adding a broad upper resonator to the back of the pegbox in the
manner of the been, sursingar and surbahar. A number of extra strings were also
employed on his sarod. Of these, the number of taraf [sympathetic] strings were
increased to fifteen from the existing nine or eleven along with a separate set of
four jawari strings. These last strings take their name from the small flat bridge
jawari, attached to the nut of the instrument over which these drone strings pass.
These jawari strings were then affixed to the extra pegs added to the extended
pegbox and were tuned according to the raag (ibid.:160-161).
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To this, Raja adds that AK and his son Ali Akbar have also developed what he refers to
as the “modern” system of sarod tuning, where the first four melodic strings are tuned to
“Middle-octave ma, the tonic [sa], lower-octave pa, lower-octave sa”(middle 4, middle 1,
lower 5, lower 1), as in the “traditional” system of tuning favored by sarodists of Radhika
Mohan Moitra’s lineage. However, in the Maihar tuning, the fifth melodic string,
normally tuned to “ultra-lower pa,” is omitted altogether, and “In addition to the
conventional cikari [side-mounted drone strings] set, this system…includes a set of three
strings, mounted at a lower level, and tuned either to a chord or a melodic phrase
compatible with the scale of the raga”(2005:306-307), a feature to which McNeil also
alludes in the above quotation. 93
Besides the Maihar gharana, the lineage of instrumentalists which undoubtedly
has had the most impact on instrumental music generally is the aforementioned Imdad
Khan gharana represented in the modern period by the late Ustad Vilayat Khan and his
brother Imrat. The impact of this gharana, it should be noted, extends to the music of
both the sarod and the sitar, as does the influence of the Maihar gharana, even though,
unlike the Maihar gharana, the membership of the Imdad Khani lineage is essentially
limited to sitar players. I have already referenced the innovations of this gharana several
times above, but, to recap, Miner gives a pithy summary of this lineage’s contributions:
As instrumental music entered the 20th century, several great contemporaries
gave new direction to gat style, elaboration and alap. In sitar, the brilliant Imdad
Khan and his son Inayet Khan introduced striking new developments in high
speed work and in melodic movements and ornaments imitative of sung khyal
(1993:232).
93 As Stephen Slawek pointed out to me, an examination of an Allaudin Khan-style sarod will reveal that
there are actually four, not three, such strings (personal comm., 11/2008).
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The Khyal influence in the music of this gharana should be particularly emphasized, as it
explains so many of the stylistic choices and innovations attributable to this group of
musicians, much as Dhrupad informs the style of the Maihar gharana. Their strategy for
gaining legitimacy in classical circles is somewhat different, though, than the strategy of
the Maihar gharana musicians and those belonging to other lineages. While the Maihar
gharana and other gharanas such as the Seniya Sitar Gharana derive their prestige from
their ties to the tradition of Tansen, the sitarists of the Imdad Khan gharana seem rather to
rest their laurels on first, their connections with the primary Khyal gharanas, particularly
the Kirana gharana (some believe Imdad Khan learned from the aforementioned biinkaar
Bande Ali Khan,) as well as the age of their tradition, which stretches back at least five
generations to Imdad Khan’s father, saarangii player Sahabdad Khan (Miner 1993:152).
Also, similar to the Maihar gharana and their modified sarod, the Imdad Khani
sitar tradition has made important changes to the construction of the sitar, changes that
both emphasize the Khyal-oriented nature of their music and which set them apart from
sitarists belonging to or stylistically influenced by rival gharanas. However, it should
again be emphasized that these changes were not pioneered by Imdad Khan, the
ostensible founder of the gharana, but instead by his grandson, the late Vilayat Khan. VK
changed the sitar in a number of ways, but the upshot is that he wanted to increase the
capability of the sitar to imitate Khyal-style vocal melismas. There are two changes that
relate to this particular goal. First, as Deepak Raja, a disciple of the Imdad Khani
tradition relates, VK changed the sitar to increase the sustain of each plucked note. His
solution was to deliver more forceful strokes with his right [plucking] hand, which in turn
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meant that the sitar had to be strengthened to withstand such powerful strokes of the
mizraab [plectrum]. As such, VK “designed a thicker tabli [cover of the impact-
receiving resonator], increased the height of the bridge that received the impact of the
stroke, and introduced a metallic reinforcement of the joint between the chamber
resonator and the stem [column-resonator]..”(Raja 2005:296). Also, VK removed the
lowest of the four primary strings on the traditional sitar, in order move the baaj wire or
primary string back (i.e. closer to the inside of the instrument or the player’s body) in
order to give more space to pull the string obliquely. More generally, the Vilayat Khan
sitar is smaller than the traditional sitar (especially the slightly larger-sized sitar preferred
by Ravi Shankar for most of his career), and thus, higher pitched. They are also
distinguishable by their characteristic black lacquer finish and the lack of an upper gourd
resonator. Considering that Vilayat Khan has often emphasized what he considered the
Persian and Arabic roots of the sitar and Hindustani music more generally, his remodeled
sitar could be seen as an attempt to make it resemble more closely resemble the Persian
sehtaar, a much smaller plucked lute that some feel is the direct ancestor of the Indian
sitar (while Ravi Shankar’s sitar more obviously resembles the biin).
In his presentation for UTC-SRA’s “Seminar on Sitar” (1990), Arvind Parikh, a
long-time disciple of Vilayat Khan and an active musicologist, describes the “Vilayat
Khani style,” as he calls it, as a “lucid and methodical amalgamation of the Imdadkhani
and Enayetkhani baj, added to which, are the new dimensions introduced by Ustad
Vilayat Khan.” Parikh then proceeds to helpfully explain what he sees as the specific
contributions of Imdad and Enayet Khan. Regarding the former, Parikh notes that his
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aalaap, performed on suurbahaar rather than sitar, was “impressive” but simple and was
ornamented mainly by Dhrupad-style miinD-s rather than Khyal-style murkii-s; that his
gat-s were of the Masit Khani style and elaborated by gat-toDaa-s; and that in his
Raazaakhaanii gat-s, Imdad Khan relied on bol-s that were executed with 2-3 “or even 6”
mizraab strokes per note. In terms of the latter, Vilayat Khan’s father Inayet Khansaheb,
Parikh states that he added “a contemplative quality” and an “introspective and
devotional undercurrent” to his father’s style. More specifically, he added “pleasing and
deftly executed Khyal type murki-s” in the aalaap portion; he performed full octave
miinD-s on the suurbahaar, and 3 to 4 note miinD-s on sitar; and he added the
aforementioned “swiftly executed” sapat taan-s in the fast gat-s (1990:48-49). Vilayat
Khan, then, subsequently brought his gharana’s music as close as ever to the Khyal style
of vocalism with the changes to the design and construction of his sitar.
Vilayat Khan ended the practice followed by his father and grandfather of
performing the aalaap on the bass sitar or suurbahaar, instead performing each stage of a
raga performance on sitar alone. As Raja notes, Vilayat Khan “ceded the surbahara
territory to [his brother] Imrat Khan…,” a “bifurcation of territories” that has been “most
rewarding for the two brothers, and for the world of music in general”(2005:301). It
should also be noted that, in terms of VK’s stylistic approach to unaccompanied aalaap
and joD, Khyal style development predominates in this aspect of his playing as well, in
spite of whatever Dhrupad elements may have prevailed in the styles of his father or
grandfather. To give one example, Slawek (1998) explains that the approach to joD on
the part of (current day) Imdad Khani sitarists features a “pronounced tempo rubato
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effect,” in which the tempo slightly increases as over the course of short improvised
passage before ending in a climatic flourish and a reduction in tempo, which, in turn,
precedes a brief moment of repose and another such passage. This pattern seems highly
suggestive of Khyal vocal music, more specifically when “singers take a few moments to
catch their breaths before volleying forth with cascades of taans”(1998:355). This is in
sharp contrast to Ravi Shankar’s approach to joD in which he does execute “graduated
tempo changes,” but also maintains a very clear and unwavering, “clock-like” pulse
within each section of improvisation, a reflection, precisely, of the strong Dhrupad
influence in the music of Ravi Shankar and other performers of the Maihar gharana
(ibid.:354). As Slawek concludes, then, “In many respects, one can say that [the Imdad
Khan] gharana has overlaid both alap and jor, formal units originating in the dhrupad
genre, with all the accoutrements of the khyal genre”(ibid.:355).
Beyond the use of more extended and elaborate miinD, Vilayat Khan’s most
radical departure from his family’s tradition has been to literally play bandiish-s or vocal
music compositions on sitar, a practice which he would typically highlight by singing the
text of the bandiish before playing it on sitar. This, of course, is not to say that he left the
gat style altogether, as his music still featured uniquely instrumental elements, most
notably his extremely high speed jhaalaa-s. As Peter Manuel explains, Vilayat Khan
would take this practice of singing the vocal compositions he played even farther during
his renditions of Thumris. More specifically, instead of simply singing the main text as
when he performed a Khyal bandiish on sitar, he would, while performing a Thumri, sing
longer bol banaao phrases, in which short units of text are combined with various
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melodic phrases, and then subsequently perform the same phrases on sitar. “In effect,
Vilayat Khan is apparently trying to attain the best of both worlds: the purity and
abstractness of instrumental music, and the word-expression of singing”(Manuel
1989:172). I would like to emphasize the importance of semi-classical (particularly
Thumri) and light music in Vilayat Khan’s overall style, because so often, his music is
portrayed simply as Khyal on sitar. That the Khyal side of his music is so frequently
emphasized is not surprising – Khyal is, after all, the most popular and widespread of
modern classical vocal music genres, and vocal music is generally the most prestigious
form of classical music in India. Although different singers have varying opinions about
both instrumental music and the great maestros of sitar and sarod, I would say that, based
on my first-hand observations and experiences, Khyal singers tend to respect Vilayat
Khan above all other sitarists for this simple reason. However, non-classical genres were,
in fact, a large part of his repertoire. On the one hand, VK certainly deserves credit for
having popularized (or having helped to popularize) a number of regional tunes as light
pieces to be performed at the end of classical sitar recitals, particularly the bhaTiaalii or
boat-men’s song of East Bengal (now Bangladesh). It is less frequently pointed out,
however, that the influence of Thumri in Vilayat Khan’s (among other reasons) seems to
have resulted in VK taking a fairly liberal approach to his renditions of the various
classical ragas, introducing new (i.e. untraditional) notes and phrases often almost at will.
Of course, VK was known for the tasteful and artistic manner in which he played with
these traditional structures, and most of his experiments were both interesting and
artistically satisfying. What is less often observed, though, is that his influence may be
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partly to blame for inconsistent and often haphazard way in which many young
musicians, sitarist and otherwise, approach raga in the current period.
Regardless, it seems that Vilayat Khan’s style is the most frequently emulated of
all by sitarists of the current generation. This influence has been so strong that it has
seemingly infiltrated the world of sarod playing. More specifically, VK’s style,
consisting of Khyal-style melismas in the aalaap and slow gat portions and blindingly
fast sapat taan-s and jhaalaa during the fast gat, seems to have been imitated to some
extent by the sarodist frequently held up as the greatest in India, Amjad Ali Khan. Raja
states as such when, while describing the current state of sarod playing, he states that
“The influence of the post-dhrupad genres, mainly khyala vocalism and contemporary
sitara music of the Imdad Khan/Etawah gharana, dominates the music of the next
generation of maestros, especially Ustad Amjad Ali Khan”(2005:309). Similarly,
Manuel, who, as mentioned above, is a student of the Radhika Mohan Moitra tradition,
also notes that two of Pandit Moitra’s most notable disciples, Kalyan Mukherjee
[Manuel’s Guru] and Buddhadev Dasgupta also “acknowledge the prodigious influence
of Vilayat Khan…”(1989:176). While this influence is present in the style of Amjad Ali,
Dasgupta, and Mukherjee, as well as in the music of Amjad Ali’s two sons (his only
notable disciples), we have to again take a step back in time to fully appreciate the history
of both Amjad Ali’s and Radhika Mohan Moitra’s lineage.
In Inventing the Sarod: A Cultural History (2004), Adrian McNeil refers to the
discrepancies regarding the varying accounts of the genesis of the modern sarod. While
the details of this debate do not concern us here, it is important to note that the primary
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issue boils down to which broad geographical area “gave the sarod its origins.” McNeil
writes:
In this study, an important and significant distinction is made between those lutes
which in centuries gone by belonged to the northwest cultural orbit in which
Persian culture prevailed, and those that fell within the cultural orbit of ‘inner’
India, roughly the doab region between the Yamuna and Ganga rivers (2004:8).
The issue, then, is not simply where the sarod (or its closest ancestor) originated
geographically, but rather whether the instrument is to be seen as another of the
contributions of Persian culture to India and the Hindustani classical music tradition or as
essentially Indian, an issue thrown into to sharp relief by “the sectarian agendas currently
active in the political climate of contemporary India” which equate Persian with Muslim
and ‘Indian’ with Hindu. In a number of ways, this also replicates the manner in which
the major instrumental gharanas represent themselves both within the musician
community and to the broader audience of listeners. In this sense, the Maihar gharana
musicians are the representatives of the “Hindustani music as an Indian tradition” side
and the Imdad Khani Sitar and Gwalior Sarod gharanas represent the “Hindustani music
as essentially Persian/Afghani/Arabic” side. Of course, this is a very broad
generalization that almost certainly does not do justice to the complexity and especially
the individuality of the views of each of the members of these three gharanas. With each
group, there are very likely musicians who stand at one or the other of these ideological
poles - at the extremes, that is - but most probably fall somewhere in the middle. The
crux of the matter, however, is that the Maihar gharana is a gharana of non-caste
musicians who stake their classical credentials, so to speak, both on their discipular ties to
the Seniya tradition and on the creativity and innovations of their founder and most well-
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known representatives, while their opposite numbers base their legitimacy primarily (but
not exclusively) on their status as part of a continuing lineage of hereditary musicians, in
the case of the Shahjahanpur and Gwalior sarod gharanas, lineages that trace directly
back to Afghanistan. This distinction, then, dovetails with the issue of ‘cultural orbits’ to
a large degree, again, whether or not any particular musician makes this connection at
any particular time.
However, the position that each of the major sarod gharanas takes on the origin of
the instrument are indeed a very clear and unambiguous indicator of these opposing
positions, regardless of the broader implications of taking one stance or the other. Thus,
McNeil quotes Ali Akbar Khan, son of Allaudin and khaliifaa of the Maihar gharana, as
stating that “the sarod played by Hafiz Ali Khan is based on the Pathan instrument [the
Afghani rabaab] but [Allaudin Khan’s] was based on the ancient chitra vina”(2004:161).
The “Pathan instrument” Ali Akbar Khan is referring to is the ‘Afghani’ or ‘Kabuli’
rabaab, a short-necked lute associated with Afghani tribesman who first entered India
while serving as musicians and horse traders for invading Afghan armies. The Afghani
rabaab is, as both Miner (1993) and McNeil agree, one of three instruments that likely
served as models for the modern sarod, which emerged in the 19th century, the other
prototypes being the suursingaar and the so-called Seniya rabaab, two instruments
associated with the Seniya instrumentalists in Lucknow and Rampur. Of these two, the
later is arguably the more important, as it seems to have been the direct inspiration for
adding a metal plate fingerboard and metal strings to the sarod, two of its defining
elements in terms of sound production (Miner 1993:71). That these three instruments
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would have contributed features to a common descendant is not surprising, as not only
was Rampur a leading center for the patronage of Hindustani musicians in the 19th
century, it was also squarely located in the historical region of Rohilkhand, an important
paThaan heartland named for an Afghan tribe (the Rohillas), and was ruled by a lineage
of paThaan kings. As such, it was the milieu in which both the sarod and much of
modern instrumental music emerged.
The Gwalior and Shahjahanpur gharanas both trace their lineage back to one
specific paThaan musician, Ghulam Ali (not to be confused with Khyal maestro Bade
Ghulam Ali of the Punjab). While he likely had only tangential connections to Rampur
or Lucknow, Ghulam Ali is a particularly important figure, as he is not only a common
ancestor of two important gharanas, but also is widely considered to be the musician who
took the crucial step of adding the metal fingerboard and strings to the sarod and, as such,
is considered the first sarod player. One of Ghulam Ali’s sons was Murad Ali Khan, a
sarodiya who also received training from Seniya musician Amir Khan (son of Umrao
Khan) and served in the courts of both Rampur and Darbhanga, a small state located near
the modern day border of India and Nepal (McNeil 2004:111). Murad Ali had no sons,
so he adopted an orphan, Abdullah Khan, who was originally from Shahjahanpur, the
town which eventually gave the name to the gharana centered around this lineage. It was
Abdullah Khan and his son Mohammed Amir Khan (generally known as simply Amir
Khan), then, that were “responsible for introducing the playing style of Rampur sarodiyas
into Bengal,” with Amir Khan eventually settling permanently in Bengal. Amir Khan was
initially employed in Bengal by Lalit Mohan Moitra, a zamiindaar in Rajshahi (now in
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Bangladesh), and the father of Amir Khan’s primary disciple, Radhika Mohan Moitra,
and later shifted to Gauripur, a nearby town also associated with the Imdad Khani sitar
tradition (ibid.:140-141). The late Pandit Moitra passed on his art, which he also learned
at the feet of Dabir Khan, a dhrupadiya and grandson of Wazir Khan, to many disciples,
the foremost being Buddhadev Dasgupta. The latter, as mentioned above, has also taught
a number of disciples, is currently on staff at ITC-SRA, Calcutta, and was also one of the
musicians I interviewed while doing research for this study in 2005. Stylistically, this
gharana is somewhat analogous to the Seniya Sitar gharana, in the sense that the gat-s
they play are largely traditional, and while the Dhrupad influence is present in their
aalaap, the emulation of vocal styles as expressed through extended use of miinD is
limited compared to both the Maihar and Gwalior styles. Besides the Dhrupad influence,
the music of the Shahjahanpur sarodiyaa-s (taking BDG as the prime example) also
harkens back to the specifically paThaan aspect of the Rampur milieu. This is because
the gat-s traditional to this gharana are heavily rhythmic and based on tabla and
pakhaawaj bol-s, or strokes, foregrounding rhythm and percussiveness over melody, a
necessity on the Afghani rabaab which had gut strings and, thus, very little sustain (Raja,
liner notes to India Archive CD 1072).
To further extend the comparison of sitar and sarod gharanas, if the Senia Sitar
gharana is analogous to the Shahjahanpur sarod gharana, then the counterpart of the
Imdad Khan gharana is, as mentioned above, the Gwalior sarod gharana (while the
Maihar gharana occupies the same artistic territory in the realm of both sitar and sarod).
To be sure, the similarities stretch beyond the affinities between the respective stylistic
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approaches of Vilayat Khan and Amjad Ali; examination of the history of the Gwalior
gharana reveals that they are the pioneers responsible for introducing more and more
elements of Khyal vocal music into sarod playing over time much as Imdad, Enayet, and
Vilayat Khan had. The Gwalior gharana traces its lineage back to Ghulam Ali through
his son Nanhe Khan, the father of Hafiz Ali, and grandfather of Amjad Ali. Nanhe Khan
was employed at the court of Gwalior (where Hafiz Ali was born), and according to his
son, introduced “certain fast sweeping taans” in the vocal style of the great Gwalior
gharanedar singers Haddu-Hassu Khan into his sarod style (Khanna 1975, cited in
McNeil 2004:142). While Hafiz Ali was, according to McNeil, “credited with having
incorporated khyal and gayaki (khyal vocal) style into his playing”(144), most accounts
emphasize the Dhrupad side of his music. And indeed, Haifiz Ali was, like Allaudin
Khan, a ganDaabandh (formally initiated) disciple of Wazir Khan of Rampur. All in all,
though, Hafiz Ali’s playing style, at least according to written accounts, seems to have
resembled that of the sarodists of the Shahjahan line of the Ghulam Ali tradition in its
broad outlines. As Raja states, while Allaudin Khan steered the sarod tradition towards
the “rudra vina model,” Hafiz Ali Khan and Mohammed Amir Khan “reinforced and
refined the percussive bias of its rababa legacy”(2005:105). Amjad Ali has, then, moved
even further toward the Khyal aspect of his father’s music, while moving away from the
Dhrupad ang. Amjad Ali has become particularly well-known for his blindingly fast
taan-s, which are essentially of the sapat type, but are more often referred in the sarod
context as ekhaar taan-s, i.e. one note per stroke (ek is Hindi for ‘one’). This is an
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especially demanding technique on sarod, where multiple strokes per note has
traditionally been the norm.
At this point, I will make a few more comments by way of conclusion. The first
regards the above discussion of the major gharanas of instrumental music, particularly the
general stylistic tendencies I have mentioned in each case. Before beginning this
discussion, I explained that I would be basing my synopses of each gharana’s history and
style around three parameters, Purab vs. Paschim (“east” vs. “west”), Khyal influence vs.
Dhrupad influence, and gaayakii ang (“vocal style”) vs. tantakaarii ang (“instrumental
style”). Of these, the first, as I mentioned earlier, has all but lost its relevance in modern
Hindustani music, as instrumental music is now dominated by Bengalis and, for Bengalis
and non-Bengalis alike, Calcutta is now essentially the center of the Hindustani
instrumental music universe. For sarod, this never was a significant distinction, as there
never has been any noteworthy traditions of sarod playing in any center west of Delhi, In
the case of sitar, though, there are two gharanas generally considered to be major
traditions that were historically based in Jaipur and other courts of western India, but, as
we have also seen, the primary exponents of both the Senia Sitar gharana and the Jaipur
Binkar-Sitar gharana in recent decades have been the Bengalis Dr. Debu Chaudhuri and
the late Bimal Mukherjee. Although I have referred to the ties between the other
gharanas mentioned above and Bengal, I should make these ties clear for each tradition.
The most Bengali of any instrumental gharana is the Vishnupur gharana, which I detailed
at length in chapter 4, though it is not an exclusively instrumental gharana. The Maihar
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gharana is equally as Bengali in the sense that, while the style with which it is associated
is distinctly North Indian and Allaudin Khan spent most of his professional career in
Madhya Pradesh, all of its most important members have been Bengalis – Allaudin Khan
himself was born and raised in east Bengal (now Bangladesh), Ravi Shankar is a Bengali
Brahman from Benares, and the late Nikhil Banerjee was a Bengali Brahman and life-
long resident of Calcutta. The Shajahanpur branch of the Ghulam Ali tradition has, for
its part, been dominated Bengalis from Radhika Mohan Moitra forward. The least
Bengali of the major instrumental traditions are the Imdad Khan and Gwalior gharanas,
and, not coincidentally, these are the gharanas which, as noted above, base their appeal
and legitimacy as gharanas on their status as lineages of hereditary musicians, lineages
which, to be truly legitimate, must trace back to North India. 94 So, in terms of the
Gwalior gharana, their tradition is based in Gwalior itself where Amjad Ali Khan
continues to maintain a residence. The Imdad Khani gharana, though, has been based in
Bengal since the time of Imdad Khan himself, who was born in Etawah (a city in eastern
U.P. that is sometimes taken as the name for this gharana) but spent most of his
professional life in Calcutta (Miner 1993:152). The Gwalior gharana is, then, the
proverbial exception that proves the rule. Even though Amjad Ali maintains more of a
presence in the Delhi area, both he and his father before him have performed extensively
over time in Calcutta. While Amjad Ali is perhaps the single most famous sarodiyaa in
India, his potential impact on music in Delhi and the surrounding region has been
minimal, primarily because he seems to have chosen to not teach music actively outside
94 see chapter 4 and my discussion of the Vishnupur gharana of Bengal
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his family. As such, his sons Ayaan Ali and Amaan Ali Bangash are his only two
disciples of note.
At any rate, regarding the other two stylistic parameters, instrumental style versus
vocal style and Dhrupad influence versus Khyal influence, it should be clear that they
overlap with each other to a large extent. If we look at sitar and sarod in terms of the two
most famous and influential performers of each instrument, we find the same basic
opposition, Khyal-influenced, gaayakii style music on one side (Vilayat Khan and Amjad
Ali) as opposed to the Dhrupad-influenced, generally tantakaarii style music on the
other. This, however, would not do justice to all the styles represented by members of
these gharanas and other important artists not affiliated with them. For Kumar Prasad
Mukherjee, there are three distinct style of sitar, the styles of Ravi Shankar, Vilayat
Khan, and Nikhil Banerjee, with NB representing a combination of the former two
approaches (though, of course, Allaudin Khan of Maihar was his primary Guru). In
sarod, the same thing, in a general sense, could be said of Ali Akbar, Amjad Ali, and
Buddhadev Dasgupta. However, in BDG’s case the similarities he shares with his two
illustrious counterparts is due to, on one side, membership in a larger common tradition
(with Amjad Ali), and on the other, a continuing adherence to traditional instrumental
forms shared with, but likely not directly influenced by, Ali Akbar. Regardless of which
classificatory scheme is the best fit, though, the more important point to make is that of
the two paradigmatic approaches, vocal style or instrumental style, the former seems to
be generally more popular, both in terms of practicing musicians who are adherents to the
style and with the listening public. I say ‘seems’ in this case, because, although most of
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my informants who expressed an opinion on the matter in essence agreed that his was
true, hard evidence is difficult to obtain in this case. To be sure, Vilayat Khan is more
emulated by more current performers than is Ravi Shankar. Much of this is due to the
fact that Vilayat Khan is part of a large family of musicians (one that has numerous
marriage ties with other gharanas), and most in that family have, from Vilayat Khan’s
time forward, adhered rather closely to his innovative style. Thus, besides Vilayat
Khan’s sons Shujaat and Hidayat, there is VK’s brother Imrat Khan, Imrat’s sons Irshad,
Nishat, and Wajahat, VK’s nephew Rais, and Shahid Parvez, the grandson of VK’s uncle
Wahid Khan, all of whom are clearly indebted to VK’s style. This is not to mention
disciples from outside the family, such as Arvind Parikh and Buddhaditya Mukherjee
(son of Inayet Khan’s disciple Bimalendu Mukherjee). Without selling Ravi Shankar
short in terms of popularity or influence, it seems understandable that Vilayat Khan
would appeal to more musicians and listeners both because VK’s music is based on the
vocal model which remains dominant in India and because VK represents a hereditary
family of musicians. In terms of the latter, while there are undoubtedly issues in India
regarding communally-based prejudice, I feel strongly that there remains an essentialistic
valuation of traditional Muslim musicians over non-caste and, especially, high caste
Hindu musicians as the only legitimate (or most legitimate) Hindustani classical
musicians.
Beyond the hegemonic appeal of the gaayakii ang style, an examination of the
histories of the above mentioned gharanas also reveals three closely related reasons why
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instrumental music has flourished to the extent that it has in Bengal, though they all are,
at best, partial explanations for this phenomenon. These are: first, the importance of
zamiindaar-s as patrons of instrumental music; second, the role of Bengali Gurus of sarod
and sitar in training large numbers of students; and, finally, the importance of Bengali or
Bengal-based ‘role model’ performers in terms of inspiring non-hereditary musicians to
take up sitar and sarod as a hobby or as a full-time occupation. Regarding the first of
these, I have already mentioned several of the most important zamiindaar patrons of
classical musicians in both this and previous chapters. These include the Jorashanko
Tagores (Rabindranath’s branch), who patronized both instrumentalists and great
vocalists such as Jadu Bhatta and Bishnu Chakravorty. To restrict it to those who are
primarily remembered for their patronage of instrumental music, however, the most
important names are the aforementioned Roy Chaudhuris based in Gauripur, East Bengal
and Radhika Mohan Moitra of Rajshahi, whose activities were largely a continuation of
the tradition established by earlier generations of his Taaland-based family. To this list
could be added, among others, the “raja” of Uttarpada, who patronized Vishnupur sitar
maestro Gokul Nag for a number of years (Partho Bose: interview, 2005), as well as the
zamiindaar-s of Dinajpur and Mukhtagachha, mentioned by McNeil as the patrons of
some the earliest sarodiyas to shift from Rampur to Bengal in the late 19th century
(2004:114). Of these, the Roy Chaudhuris are seemingly the most well-remembered of
their contemporaries, because of their lavish patronage of classical musicians; 95 the fact
that several of its members actually became renowned performers in their own right, with
95 As Partho Bose explained, Imrat Khan still lives in the house in the upscale Park Circus district of
Calcutta donated to his family by the Gauripur zamiindaar-s (interview, 2005).
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scion Brajendra Kishore Roy Chaudhuri, his son Birendra Kishore, and grandson
Bimalakanta, all sitarists, heading the list (Chatterjee 1996:209-210; Das Sharma
1993:250); and, again, their association with some of the greatest musicians of the era,
including, not only the Imdad Khani maestros Inayaet and Vilayat Khan (who himself
was born in Gauripur), but also the Wazir Khan-trained biinkaar Dabir Khan, sarodiya
Abdullah Khan (as mentioned above), and even, for a time, Allaudin Khan. To reiterate,
though, the above mentioned names only represent the tip of the ice-berg in terms of
Bengali zamiindaar patrons of Hindustani classical music.
If nothing else, these zamiindaar-s made it possible for great musicians from
North India to settle permanently in Bengal, eventually helping to expose the populace to
their music and allowing non-hereditary, Bengali Hindu musicians to train under the
guidance of some of India’s finest musicians, including the great instrumentalists
mentioned above. Beyond this, however, it is worth asking, I feel, if this style of
patronage had a more profound effect on the musical scene in Bengal than simply
attracting great musicians to the region. Of course, it has been frequently argued that the
tastes of the nouveau riche zamiindaar-s of Bengal historically tended generally toward
lighter forms of cultivated music, such as Thumri. How the economic base of a society
affects the art produced in that society during any particular historical period is, to be
sure, a massive question which cannot be easily answered in a short space. As such, I
will attempt to grapple with this question in the next chapter, where I utilize the work of
Pierre Bourdieu in order to begin to understand how economic factors impact tastes in
regional and semi-classical musical forms. At the same time, though, a number of my
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informants and the secondary sources I have consulted for this study have offered some
interesting, but, again, incomplete, observations in this regard. McNeil, in Inventing the
Sarod (2004), says of Bengali zamiindaar-s, “In employing Hindustani musicians,
Bengali zamindars, by association, harnessed some of the prestige that could be derived
from the Mughal and Awadhi traditions and in the process assumed the mantle of the
legitimate successors, at least in terms of patronage,” a notion which been argued by a
number of other authors, including Vinayak Purohit, who has made this same observation
of middle class Maharashtrian (especially Brahman) music lovers, i.e. that their patronage
of classical music represents an attempt to co-opt the symbolic power associated with the
feudal courts of pre-modern India. I will, again, return to this argument in chapter 8. To
proceed, though, McNeil also mentions that, while the wealthy and landed classes did
patronize classical musicians, they also had a puritanical “sensibility” that “invariably
evoked a strong reaction towards a perceived social and moral dubiousness of Hindustani
music in general and the ‘Ustads from the North’ in particular”(2004:148). While the
ambivalent attitude toward Hindustani music and musicians which McNeil discusses was
undoubtedly present in late 19th and early 20th century Bengali elite society, McNeil
unfortunately offers no clues as to why the Bengali situation differed from that of
Maharashtra, where this ambivalence was also most certainly present but, at the same
time, where the middle classes embraced classical music, particularly Khyal vocal music,
much sooner and on a much wider basis. Nor does he offer any answers as to why
Bengalis zamiindaar-s seemingly preferred instrumental music to vocal music in terms of
the musician they patronized.
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For Neela Bhagwat, a large part of the impact of feudalism and the institution of
zamiindaarii in Bengal, was that, as seemingly all Bengalis (all those involved with
classical music, that is) have large houses consisting of “three floors, ten rooms, and three
bathrooms,” if not full-on estates, they have the freedom and the space to indulge in the
seemingly endless hard practice which is so much a culture of instrumental music relative
to vocal music. This in turn, brings up the issue of riyaaz, or practice. A number of
Bengali musicians, mostly instrumentalists, and even a handful of Maharashtrians offered
this opinion as an answer to why Maharashtrians have been less numerous among the
ranks of nationally famous Hindustani instrumentalists. To be sure, not all agreed with
this notion. Shruti Sadolikar expressed essentially the opposite view, that Marathi
musicians were more successful as classical singers than were Bengalis because they
possessed a single-mindedness which Bengalis did not, a quality which she felt was
requisite for a classical singer (interview, 2005). All in all, though, this notion that
Bengalis were more dedicated practicers seems to be a commonly held view. As
Buddhadev Dasgupta told me, the few “desultory” instrumentalists that did come along in
the last 50 odd years in Maharashtra simply did not, as he put it, “practice in the way that
they should” (interview, 2005). It is an interesting point, though, to be sure, but we
should keep in mind that this is a broad generalization and should not be applied to every
Marathi and Bengali musician (who should obviously be judged as individuals in such
terms).
It is interesting nonetheless – all the more so because it seems to contradict the
also commonly held notion that Maharashtrians, thanks to climate and diet, are generally
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healthier and physically stronger on average than are Bengalis (a point I will return to in
chapter 8). Few offered more than this generalization, but Bikram Ghosh, for one, gave
me his theory on why Bengalis seem to be more predisposed towards constant practice
than Maharashtrians or other regional groups:
See, it’s also..it’s all depending on the lifestyle and the mindset – the mindset of a
Bengali, as I said, is to stay at home. You know, very strong, it’s there.
Automatically people would deny it, but they like staying at home, they like their
little cocoon, you know. And within the cocoon, they like to intellectualize and
philosophize. So they sit, literally inside an eggshell, and they try to see the
universe. And, uh, that is also what riyaaz is all about. You’re sitting in one little
room and you’re practicing and you’re opening up your universe to melody or to
rhythm, you know. So it is something which is very akin to their mindset – it
works well with Bengalis. And also, because a lot of people do that, it’s also
done commonly. Like, if, when I was practicing, there were at least ten other
friends of mine doing the same thing, so it was like if you are not doing it, you’re
falling back (interview, 2005).
And, to be sure, BG was not the only Bengali musician who put forth this view. Sitarist
Mita Nag offered a similar opinion, noting the older musicians of her Vishnupur gharana
tended to be “self-absorbed,” preferring to play at home as an act of “worship,” rather
than seeking out fame and fortune in the larger world, although she also noted that this
has changed in recent decades (interview, 2005). At any rate, for BG, this was also the
reason why Bengali instrumentalists tended to produce more good disciples than their
counterparts in other regions – they simply prefer to stay and home teach to constantly
touring outside of Calcutta. As examples, BG mentioned Buddhadev Dasgupta, Manilal
Nag, and the late Indranil Bhattacharya (a Maihar gharana sitarist) as Bengali
instrumentalists who had made this choice, as compared to Zakir Hussain, Shiv Kumar
Sharma, and Hairprasad Chaurasia, who have necessarily had to curtail their teaching
because they tour so much. This, again, was the only time that one of my informants
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gave a reason for why Bengalis were prolific teachers, but one can only assume that the
lavish patronage offered by zamiindaar-s in the early twentieth century also allowed
musicians to stay put and teach, as they had less need to seek out additional income
through public performances in various locales across India. That Bengalis have been
among the most prolific Gurus of any regional group in India, though, is hard to deny,
and the most prolific of all has been Allaudin Khan, the maestro of whom Buddhadev
Dasgupta stated, “There has been no better teacher than him in the entire Hindustani
firmament of music”(interview, 2005). And beyond this, Allaudin Khan was as good an
illustration as any of Bikram Ghosh’s point that many Bengalis prefer staying home and
teaching to touring, even if AK’s home base for most of his life was Maihar, Madhya
Pradesh, and not his native Bengal.
Most of all, though, the biggest reason for the dominance of instrumental in
Bengal, at least from the perspective of the Bengali musicians I interviewed, was the
history there of, not only successful, but truly great instrumentalists. Of course, as I have
mentioned in numerous instances, musicians on both sides saw the presence of great
Ustads from North India in each region as the prime reason for the prevalence of vocal
music in Maharashtra and instrumental music in Bengal. While this is somewhat of a
simplistic answer, it is undoubtedly true. In the Bengali case, though, there seemed,
again based the observations of my informants, to be a special emphasis on great Bengali
or Bengal-based instrumentalists as, not merely teachers and resources, but as role
models, or “cult figures,” as Mita Nag put it (interview, 2005). This may seem to be
merely a semantic difference, but I would like to again point out the tendency in Bengal
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for artists to imitate (or in some cases “ape”) elite musicians, even those who have fairly
knowledgeable and well-respected Gurus who play and teach a different style than their
cult hero. No doubt, this also happens in Maharashtra, but based both my first-hand
observations and those of my interlocutors, it seems to be much less common there.
At any rate, among the Bengali adherents of this view, the most eloquent
explanation was provided by Partho Bose. For PB, the history of instrumentalists in
Bengal can be seen, in one sense, as a progression of more and more identifiable and
sympathetic figures for the average Bengali musician. Thus, the first was Inayet Khan,
who, although his ancestors were from Uttar Pradesh, settled in Gouripur, East Bengal,
and came to be considered by Bengalis as “ours,” as a “son of Bengal,” in PB’s words.
The next was Ravi Shankar, who was an ethnic Bengali, though one who was born and
raised in Benares. The culmination of this progression was, though, was Nikhil Banerjee,
an “inside-out” Bengali. It was not only that he was a native Calcuttan, but the one that
came along the most recently (although he passed more than a decade ago). As PB said,
People in Bengal started looking at Nikhil Banerjee as more “our” Nikhil
Banerjee, more than Ravi Shankar, and more than Vilayat Khan. Now, as I said
that, Ravi Shankar, for them, was more international, and he was born in
Varanasi. So, strictly speaking, the Bengali people [were saying], “Oh, Nikhil
Banerjee is ours, son of our soil.” Vilayat Khan, although he was born in Bengal,
but that was east Bengal, undivided India, undivided Bengal. So, after
Bangladesh was born, it’s a different country. But, even then, I think, without
meaning to have any communal overtones…Vilayat Khan is considered not so
much as “our own Vilayat Khan” for many people. Well, after all, they are Hindi
speaking, Urdu speaking – he speaks very good Bengali, Vilayat Khan himself –
but people look upon him, “Oh they are the Ustads, OK. They came from some
other place, from Etawah, then they lived in Gouripur, Bangladesh, they have a
house in Bengal…” Vilayat Khan spent a lot of time in Bengal, but, after that,
last forty years, he has been dividing his time living in different parts [in India and
abroad]…So, Nikhil Banerjee was the only one who lived continuously in
Bengal…
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It was not only that NB lived the longest in (West) Bengal, specifically Calcutta, or was
born there (unlike RS and VK), though; he also more closely resembled an average
Bengali in his appearance and demeanor,
His appearance and everything, his lifestyle, he was a very unassuming person, he
looked very ordinary, not so glamorous as some of his peers. So, the man on the
street could identify with him even more. And, [for] the Bengali budding talent -
someone who wants to become a sitarist - he was the easily available hero next
door, whom you could look up to, as well as whom you could relate to, and who
proved it to you that, yes, even a typical middle-class Bengali can make it
(interview, 2005).
Along these lines, to reinforce what PB says in the above quote, NB seems to be one of
the most emulated sitarists among younger Bengali musicians (Kushal Das and Purbayan
Chatterjee being two prominent current examples of NB’s influence), in spite of the fact
that, as most agree, that NB rarely, if ever, spent time teaching any disciples.
Considering that this is true as well of Amir Khan (both in terms of his influence and the
fact that he did not teach), it is hard to deny, I feel, this tendency of Bengali musicians to
emulate a role model or hero, regardless of whether they learn directly from that hero or
have ever an opportunity to do so.
Interestingly, Purohit offers a similar explanation for why Bengalis both began to
pursue instrumental music in large numbers in the period from “the middle ‘30s to the
middle ‘50s.” Although Purohit does not argue specifically that Bengalis entered the
field after a handful of pioneers became successful on a national basis, he does assert that
Bengalis took to instrumental music after the Maharashtrians had already firmly
established their dominance in Khyal singing. As he writes,
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In Maharashtra, which had switched over to Hindustani classical music only in
the nineteenth century, the early part of the twentieth had seen an excessive bias
in favor of musicological studies and dry school-room singing, so that vocal
classical music was in the doldrums. Furthermore, Deodhar notes in his Thor
Sangeetkar that as late as the forties, instrumental music was in an
underdeveloped state in Western India, there being not a single sarod player of
note. Bengal, which had also accepted the Hindustani system very late, had gone
over to thumri ang in its widest sense, found itself in a blind alley. It now wanted
to join the purer classical stream, and since vocal music, enfeebled as it was, was
dominated by Bombay-based singers, it was easier for Bengal to break out in the
instrumental direction (1988:904).
Purohit follows this with the curious statement that the popularity of Thumri in Bengal
and Khyal in Maharashtra “conspired to produce a reaction in favor of more abstract use
of sound patterns, which naturally the instruments were best fitted to project”(ibid.),
although he gives no reason why, after vocal music had been dominant throughout the
feudal era and the colonial era up to that point, classical music lovers would suddenly
crave music without words. Regardless, Purohit may well be right that Bengalis took to
the sitar and sarod because Marathi singers had so firmly entrenched themselves by that
time as the successors to the gharaanedaar Ustads in the field of Khyal. The point to be
made, though – one to which I will return – is that it is, in my view, very much
representative of the respective mentalities of Marathi and Bengali musicians that the
former would make their name in the most prestigious and dominant genre of Hindustani
music while the latter would carve their niche in a field which was underdeveloped and
somewhat marginal in comparison to Khyal when they started to enter into it. This, then,
is one clear case where Maharashtra and Bengal have and do complement each other in
musical terms. Again, though, it should be emphasized that the Maharashtrians made
their move, so to speak, first, and the Bengalis reacted. They reacted, however, not by
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trying to compete with the Maharashtrians at their own game, but by carving out a totally
new path, one which many other Bengalis would subsequently follow in subsequent
decades.
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Introduction
Part Two: the “Outside View”
7. Bourdieu & Regional Music Genres
In this chapter I will begin to expand my focus and discuss a wider range of
factors present in Bengal and Maharashtra and the areas peripheral to them that can
arguably be taken as influences that shape the classical music scenes in these two regions.
In the last section (chapters 2-6), I limited my purview to those issues that scholarly-
minded musicians and musicologists in India most often related to me as most important
in understanding why Hindustani music has developed as it has in the last century, more
specifically how Maharashtrians and Bengalis have come to dominate the Hindustani
music tradition numerically and why Maharashtrians tend to gravitate to Khyal and
Bengalis to instrumental music. As discussed in detail above, the most common answers
to my queries along these lines revolved around the historical migration of musicians in
search of patronage which had, in turn, resulted in their individual and/or gharana-based
styles being propagated in the place in which they had settled. As I also noted above,
many of my interlocutors refused to discuss issues related to region to any greater extent
than this. In other words, they generally rejected or denied the idea that a musician’s
regional background could in any way affect the manner in which that particular
musician conceived of or performed Hindustani classical music. For many then, the
answer to why, for example, Maharashtrians not only dominate the field of Khyal vocal
music across India but also rarely pursue sitar or sarod, was simply because many great
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Ustads of Khyal had settled in Maharashtra while very few comparable instrumentalists
ever had. I, of course, do not totally reject the importance of this side of the story – it is
hard to argue, for example, that there are more Alladiya Khan-style khyaaliya-s in
Maharashtra than Bengal because Alladiya Khan settled in Maharashtra and lived, taught,
and performed there for many years. For this reason, I have taken the time to carefully
detail these migrations and how they impacted the scenes in these two regions. However,
as I have also hopefully demonstrated, it is an oversimplification to say, again for
example, that Maharashtrians have never taken up sitar in any number because no good
sitar player has ever settled in that region. This is because, as mentioned above, there
have indeed been a number of top level sitar players who reside and teach in Bombay
and/or Pune from as early as the late 19th century. There must then, it seems, be other
explanations for why Maharashtrian musicians prefer Khyal to instrumental music in
such overwhelming numbers (or why roughly the opposite holds true in Bengal).
In the present chapter, I will begin to depart from Bhatkhande’s “narrowly
grammatical” conception of musicology which limits analysis of the classical tradition to
the examination of the history and theory of vocal music as well as from what I have
termed the “Inside View,” a related view put forth by many of my interlocutors that adds
basic economic imperatives (i.e. the necessity of migration or the pressures of the
commercial market) to the very limited list of forces shaping Hindustani music. This is
because in the present chapter I intend to examine the influences which are brought to
bear on the Hindustani tradition by two of the most important semi-classical genres
which are unique to and characteristic of Bengal and Maharashtra. I do not see this as a
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complete departure from the Bhatkhandian (or Bhatkhande-inspired) approach because,
while Bhatkhande himself would likely have rejected any comparison between, say,
Rabindrasangiit and Khyal, as such a comparison implicitly places the two on the same
level, many of informants, albeit still a minority, were willing to make such comparisons,
even if in most cases I had to introduce the topic in our conversations. To posit a
relationship between semi- or light classical forms and those that are purely classical is
not particularly controversial or novel, as even the most basic accounts of NaaTya Sangiit
in Maharashtra and Rabindrasangiit or Raag Pradhaan songs in Bengal emphasize the
crucial influence Hindustani classical music has exercised over these regional genres.
This view, that regional semi-classical genres are heavily indebted to raagdhaari (raga-
based) classical music, is well within the Bhatkhandian line of thought. It is perhaps
more controversial to suggest an influence in the opposite direction. The most common
response from my interlocutors when I asked if NaaTya Sangiit had influenced Khyal in
Maharashtra, was “not really,” but if so, the ‘offenders’ in this regard were clearly doing
something wrong and likely not taken seriously by learned musicians, scholars, and
connoisseurs. In other words, for many, what a few misguided individuals might do in
the way of adding regional touches to classical music was really inconsequential in the
grand scheme of the tradition. However, many in fact do see this influence, and as in the
other chapters of this dissertation, I try here to maintain a focus on what practicing
Hindustani musicians feel is important and worthy of discussion.
Before proceeding to those regional genres that I, based both on my interviews
and on my personal observations, see as most influential on Hindustani music in greater
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Bengal and Maharashtra, it is important to define the genre labels “light classical,” “semi-
classical,” and “light music,” 96 most crucially in terms of how they differ from orthodox
classical music. First, I should note that on the basis of personal observation, I feel that
“light-classical” and “semi-classical” are essentially synonymous terms, or, at least, are
often used as equivalents in conversation and in print. Writers and musicians in India
tend to use one term or the other, but I can find no example where an authority on Indian
music uses both terms in opposition to one another. I will henceforth use the term “semi-
classical,” as it seems to be preferred by a greater number of writers and by the majority
of my interlocutors. Also, it has the further virtue of being more distinct from the generic
category “light music,” which is almost always considered to be something quite
different from semi-classical musics. 97
Lewis Rowell, among others, has noted the passion for categorization apparent in
traditional Indian scholarship. In his 1992 monograph Music and Musical Thought in
Early India, Rowell explains, however, that categories in traditional Indian thought are
not water-tight and mutually exclusive as they are in the West. He writes,
Inquiry is open-ended in the Indian tradition, and the process of making
categories is infinite – at least in theory. Every statement that can be made blurs a
finer distinction, and ultimate truth or reality lies beyond the reach of human
experience or interference…Indian musical thought has thus been channeled into
elaborate taxonomic structures within which subcategories unfold in profusion,
subcategories that often are not mutually exclusive and which thereby encourage
a certain amount of ambiguity (6).
96
These are English terms inspired by Western musicology, not exact translations of any Hindi, Bengali, or
Marathi terms.
97
“Light music” generally implies that the melody in question is not based on a raga as such. This is as
opposed to “semi-classical” genres where raga is the basis for the melody but is not strictly adhered to.
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It is for this reason, among many others, that Bhatkhande’s quest to force musicians of
the Hindustani tradition across India to adopt a uniform approach to the grammar of each
and every raga so famously failed. For example, all musicians agree that there is, so to
speak, a category called “raga Bageshree,” but getting them all to agree on what exactly
Bageshree is, what notes and phrases properly belong to it, is a much different question.
Likewise, while I encountered different shades of meaning along these lines while
conducting my various interviews in India, I also noticed that most musicians have a
fairly strong idea of what these labels mean and what genres belong in each category,
even if in some cases they could not verbalize (in English or otherwise) exactly what
separated them or what they meant. I also noticed that most musicians were happy to
quickly correct me if they felt I had placed a genre in the wrong category during our
discussions.
To be fair, though, in the case of most genres, there is clear consensus among
musicians and others knowledgeable of the tradition regarding both any particular genre’s
status as “classical,” “semi-classical,” or “light,” and why it fits in the category it does.
The crux of the matter, as I noted in chapter 3, is whether and to what extent a genre is
raga-based. Van der Meer gives a very clear and informative explanation of this idea:
The line between classical music properly speaking and all other forms (semiclassical,
light, folk, film-music etc.) is clearly drawn by the definition that
classical styles should show the raga through all musical sections. The aim is to
delineate the raga fully, whereas the other styles rather use a raga, in a sense make
it subservient to other qualities, mostly words. Thus in tappa the elaboration of
the raga is done mainly through tana, there is no real slow elaboration. In thumri
the main aspect is bolbanana, the display of words, which stands between
layakari and barhata. In fact the raga becomes a tool for the exhibition of the
involved techniques. The fact that the raga as such, particularly the tonal complex
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and internal unity, does not stand central in these styles allows a degree of
mixture…
Other styles, such as ghazal, bhajan, qavali and the many dhunas (tunes of folk
music) are not even close to raga music. The material is often borrowed from
classical music and can also be a source of classical music, but the aim of raga
delineation is absent (1980:79).
Slawek (2000) explains the distinctions between the various genres as a continuum with
“classical” at one extreme and “light” at the other. Thus, “classicism” not only implies
“strict adherence to the raag,” but also “strict adherence to taal,” “complex
developmental techniques,” and that “music dominates text,” while “light music” implies
the opposite, “no intentional adherence to raag,” “simple metrical rhythms or short
interruptible taal cycles,” “little or no developmental techniques,” and that “text
dominates music”(21). “Semi-classical,” then stands as an approximate midpoint
between “classical” and “light” in terms of each of these criteria. By these well-defined
standards, it is hard to argue the proper designation for most regional music genres. The
problem arises, however, when one tries to categorize a genre where some songs are
based upon ragas and some are based on tunes as distant from the raga music tradition as
Irish melodies. It also, by inference, highlights some of the tensions that become
apparent when regional aesthetic practices and standards are placed by side with those of
the pan-North Indian classical tradition.
A. Thumri: the “Classical” Semi-Classical Genre
The latter are issues I will return to shortly, but for now, there a bit more to say
about these broader categories. In Hindustani Music: a Tradition in Transition, Deepak
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Raja introduces, by way of a discussion of the decline of the (semi-classical) Thumri
genre in the past century, the idea that Thumri can be looked at in terms of “two angles”:
“as an occupant of a specific niche in the concert repertoire, and as an occupant of a well-
defined aesthetic space”(2005:254). In terms of the former, Raja writes that the
traditional place for Thumri in a recital of classical music has been in the “tailpiece
position,” i.e. as a light, pleasant, relatively undemanding piece to conclude a program.
Interestingly, as our primary concern here is classical music in the context of Bengal and
Maharashtra, Raja feels that Thumri has lost ground to other “tailpiece” genres in Khyal
recitals because the Marathi vocalists who now dominate Khyal “have a relatively lower
level of empathy with the language and the stylistic values of the thumri [than did their
North Indian predecessors]..”(255). These Maharashtrian singers, Raja notes, are more
apt to perform a NaaTya Sangiit composition or an abhang 98 in lieu of a Thumri to
conclude their performances. When we widen our scope to include instrumental music
concerts, it becomes clear that this “tailpiece position” is the primary means by which
unambiguously regional tunes, whether they are Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Awadhi or
otherwise, can make their way into the classical repertoire, albeit not as “classical” pieces
in their own right. To be sure, both of the genres I will primarily discuss below have
been employed by classical musicians in the last fifty years as “tailpiece”-type pieces,
though one has occupied this niche much more frequently than the other.
98 Abhang is a Marathi language devotional song defined by its characteristic poetic meter.
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Regarding his concept of the “aesthetic space” of the Thumri, Raja does not give
one clear, spelled-out explanation. 99 One gathers, though, that Raja feels the aesthetic
space occupied by Thumri is defined by, first and foremost, its emotional expressiveness
(a part of its space which has been “encroached upon” by recent “Romantic”-style Khyal
singers like Kishori Amonkar or Jasraj, Raja notes), as well as its “sophisticated melodic
expression,” and its meaningful texts which are generally “of mediocre literary value” but
well-suited for musical expression (2005:241). At one point he refers to Thumri more
succinctly as a “text-based romanticist” genre. At any rate, Raja’s basic point, which he
buttresses at one juncture by citing Ashok Ranade’s contention that during any point in
Hindustani music history, one can point to parallel genres, for example Dhrupad and
Khyal (as Khyal was emerging) or later Khyal and Thumri, one which is more formalistic
and one which allows for more creative freedom, is well taken. 100 From the perspective
of both the music connoisseur, which Raja professes to be, and from the perspective of
the performer (which also describes Raja, though to a lesser extent), 101 this is a very
satisfactory explanation. Classical and semi-classical genres, as the names themselves
make clear, stand in a hierarchical relationship with classical music as the (far) superior
genre. At the same time, though, they are complimentary, as they each offer features the
other does not – abstract formalism in the case of Khyal and ‘text-based romanticism’ in
the case of Thumri. It is here, though, in the context of his discussion of these genres,
99 To be fair to Raja, we should note that his work is not an academic study as such, but is rather intended
as a guide to help music connoisseurs to better understand and appreciate the music.
100 see Ranade (1999)
101 Raja, as he notes at several points in his book, is a student of the Imdad Khani sitar tradition.
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that in my opinion, the limitations of Raja’s rasik-cum-amateur performer perspective are
most exposed.
The first limitation to mention in Raja’s approach to defining Thumri, which is,
after all, the archetypical semi-classical genre of pan-North India (which includes
Maharashtra and Bengal), is his overemphasis on musical style as key to the identity of
the genre. True, Thumri is distinct from Khyal in many ways, and it seems rather logical
that both performing artists and knowledgeable listeners would appreciate the contrast
that Thumri offers relative to the more strictly classical genres. The problematic aspect
of this view on what defines Thumri is that for many musicians, connoisseurs, and
scholars in India, including Raja, Thumri is essentially a semi-classical genre, but one
that is very much a part of the classical tradition. The reasons for this include, first, the
“tailpiece” position of Thumri in classical recitals, instrumental and vocal. Thumri is a
semi-classical genre, but one which is frequently performed by classical artists in
concerts devoted to classical music (and one which has even become a “gharana
specialty” in case of the Patiala and Kirana schools of Khyal). Of course, as noted
above, not all artists utilize Thumri-s as their “tailpiece” item. Some, such as the Marathi
Khyal singers mentioned by Raja, perform distinctly regional semi-classical genres such
as NaaTya Sangiit to close their performances. So, why does Raja devote a full chapter
to Thumri alongside Dhrupad and Khyal, whilst hardly mentioning any other semi-
classical genre (save for Tappaa)? 102 While he does not state this explicitly, the answer
can only be that Thumri originated from the same cultural region as Khyal and Dhrupad
102 Raja is actually being somewhat charitable with his inclusion of Tappaa as part of the core Hindustani
repertoire. Most scholars, rather, limit it to Dhrupad, Khyal and Thumri.
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and was similarly imported into the regions of Bengal and Maharashtra and, thus, is older
and more established as a genre than any of its would-be rivals. This means that it
carries a cultural prestige which light and semi-classical pieces from other regions do not,
even if they are used as substitutes for or forms equivalent of Thumri. This makes all the
more sense when we consider that most (but not all) classical musicians today are indeed
not North Indian, and, especially in the case of Maharashtrians, may have no association
with the Thumri other than as part of the classical tradition, in other words, as a genre
performed by classical singers in classical recitals.
So, on the one hand Raja’s ‘canonizing’ of the Thumri erases its own regional
associations and privileges it above other comparable genres. Equally as important,
however, is the fact that it also obscures the social origins of the Thumri. To be sure,
Raja is not alone in this matter. A cursory examination of most works of mainstream
Indian musicology and music criticism will reveal a consistent discrepancy by which
some genres, i.e. those considered to be classical or semi-classical, are defined in terms of
musical style, while others, namely folk, devotional, and film music are defined by their
context, their social function, and/or by their audiences. Again to be fair, at one point,
Raja does cite Peter Manuel’s well-known work on the Thumri (1989), stating that “The
thumari genre represents that refinement and stylization of folk sources from the Brij
[Mathura/Vrndavan] region by courtesans in response to the entertainment needs of a
cultivated aristocracy”, as well as that “…the alluring qualities of the genre also reflect
the manipulative intent fundamental to the relationship between courtesans and their
clients”(230). In other words, Thumri arose from folk sources and developed into a light,
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fairly accessible semi-classical genre with strongly erotic associations which was
patronized primarily (but not exclusively) by the nouveau riche landlord class, a class
which came to power as the British Raj reorganized the system of land revenue
assessment in the 19th century and which did not have the long-standing familiarity with
or understanding of Dhrupad and/or Khyal which their feudal predecessors had had. This
is the commonly accepted view of the origins and popularization of the Thumri, and I do
not wish to dispute it.
The problem arises when this analytical approach is taken in regards to
Hindustani classical music as a whole, and it is posited that there has been a steady
decline in quality, subtlety, artistry, depth, etc., in classical music from the decline of
Dhrupad forward. The best example I can offer of such a perspective comes again from
the work of the inimitable Vinayak Purohit. In his article “Sociology of Thumari”
(1992a), Purohit essays the same basic argument as Manuel (and Raja, by extension),
although in more detail and with more scathing condemnation of the class which
originally embraced the genre. He also, like Raja, offers some more specifically stylistic
limitations of the genre which explain why the Thumri began to fall out of favor in the
20th century. However, unlike Raja who has the perspicacity to see that Dhrupad had
had a similar decline (and reached a lower trough than Thumri ever has), but then, for
various reasons, experienced a resurgence, Purohit only sees a consistent decline in the
musical standards of Hindustani music generally from the 19th century forward. As he
writes, “Thumri singers are…drawing huge crowds in the wake of the triumphant
contemporary march of light and pop musicians the world over. But relatively speaking
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the thumri genre is losing ground to its even more raucous and frenetic light music
colleagues. Perhaps what was inevitable, is now happening”(1992a:112 – emphasis
added). Such a teleological argument coming from a Marxist scholar is by no means
surprising – it is the Marxist stock in trade. 103 And after all, why would anyone who
condemns capitalism part and parcel admit that culture (Indian culture, in this case) had
in any way improved since its advent? What is disappointing, though, is that, while in so
many other cases, Purohit adds the social and class-based insight which is often lost on
other scholars of Indian music, he here allows his ideological perspective to cloud his
view of the actual, on-the-ground realities of Indian music. Thumri is something more
than one step in the continuing process of the debasement of Indian classical music. This
view, I feel, is as much an oversimplification as defining the Thumri solely in terms of
how it complements and contrasts with Khyal.
B. Bourdieu and the Social Nature of Taste
It is clear then that what is needed to understand both the differences between
classical and semi-classical genres and between Thumri and other “regional” semi-
classical genres is an analysis that, unlike Raja’s, searches for a detailed correspondence
between socio-economic class and musical style and structure and that, unlike Purohit’s
take, bases itself on and is shaped by the “facts” of musical style and structure, not vice-
versa. To assist with such an analysis (an analysis I can only begin to sketch in this
context), I turn to the work of the well-known theorist Pierre Bourdieu and his work
103 At another point, Purohit writes, “…khyal marks the beginning of the downfall of feudalism, as thumri
marks its total collapse and the simultaneous implantation of foreign capital”(1992:255).
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Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984). In introducing his study,
a study which is thoroughly sociological in nature and is based on extensive survey work
carried out by the author in his native France, Bourdieu explains that while the social and
economic elite feel it in their best interests to regard their “taste in legitimate culture as a
gift of nature, scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of
upbringing and education..”(1). He then modifies this basic assertion with the more
precise formulation (one he repeats throughout the work) that there is a strong and
demonstrable correspondence between cultural practices and two factors, education and,
secondarily, social origin. To this he adds that “at equivalent levels of educational
capital, the weight of social origin in the practice and preference-explaining system
increases as one moves away from the most legitimate areas of culture”(13). This means
that when his informants/ subjects were surveyed (or “tested”) on their knowledge
acquired through education in a manner similar to the way in which such knowledge is
tested for in the academic context, 104 their performance was more or less guaranteed by
each individual’s level of education. However, in areas such as film, jazz music, even
home furnishings or the preference of certain spectator sports, the informants’ responses
corresponded more closely to their social origin and family background than to their level
of education.
Bourdieu explains these correspondences by theorizing that, as the last statement
implies, aesthetic predispositions are formed early in life and are largely subconscious.
Each class or “class fraction” (to use Bourdieu’s term) then teaches their young certain
104 Bourdieu gives the example of a survey asking informants to identify the composer for a series of pieces
of classical music, as in a college-level music appreciation course.
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preferences, so as the individual moves through life, they are attracted to the social and
cultural practices or forms appropriate to their class and, conversely, avoid or are repelled
by the practices which characterize classes other than their own. The question, then, is:
which tastes or aesthetic preferences characterize each class and why? Simply put, the
taste of the lower classes (including the poor and those amongst the middle classes lowest
in cultural capital) is the “taste for necessity,” as Bourdieu puts it, while the taste of the
upper classes or elite is conversely “pure taste,” in other words “a general disposition
towards the world which is the paradoxical product of conditioning by negative economic
necessities – a life of ease - that tends to induce an active distance from necessity”(5), or
more tellingly, “the taste of freedom”(177). To give an example of those cultural
practices that might correspond to each pole of this spectrum of taste, we can first turn to
food, the tastes in which, for Bourdieu, “one would find the strongest and most indelible
mark of infant learning, the lessons which longest withstand the distancing or collapse of
the native world and most durably maintain nostalgia for it”(79). 105 The lower classes’
“taste for necessity” leads them to choose, rather logically, foods that are most filling and
cheapest, i.e. most economical. The upper classes, those freed from economic necessity,
however can indulge themselves in foods that privilege form and presentation over cost
relative to nutrition and sustenance.
Whilst other areas of culture are less archetypal and perhaps more difficult to pin
down than food preferences and habits, this same basic distinction holds as true as in the
case of food. As Bourdieu writes, the taste for necessity, or the “popular aesthetic,” as he
105 By “native world,” Bourdieu means the “maternal world,” the world of one’s social origins.
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efers to it at another point, is “based on the affirmation of continuity between art and
life, which implies the subordination of form to function…”(32). Thus, in the case of
theatre, the lower classes typically prefer “simply drawn plots” that proceed in the
accustomed manner and end happily and that feature straightforward characters with
which they can easily identify. Bourdieu refers to this as a form of willing naiveté and a
certain “investment” in the illusion of the artwork. In the case of photography, which is
generally more likely to be dismissed altogether by the “popular aesthetic” as it is a less
legitimate realm of culture, a photograph is, for those guided by this aesthetic, only
“justified by the object photographed or by the possible use of the photographic
image…”(41) or, more generally, is justified only “if the thing being represented is
worthy of being represented…”(43). The “pure aesthetic,” however, is quite the
opposite, and as Bourdieu notes, it is difficult to define either “position” without
contrasting one to the other, without taking account of their essential differences. The
“pure aesthetic” has an altogether different focus then does its opposite number –
understanding each realm or type of art as a universe of its own with its own logic, its
own history, and its own language. For those who lead a life of ease, which entails both
access to cultural capital and plenty of leisure time, form and style distinguish an artwork,
not the literal object of the work or its moral or ethical message. The understanding of
this language or system of symbols comes from some combination of early access to the
art due to one’s family background and formal education, but is more “durably”
inculcated by the former, to the extent that people from this background can, so to speak,
trump another individual with the same educational capital, but who had less access
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earlier in life, in terms of their “easy familiarity” and nonchalance that they can
demonstrate in their more innate understanding of high art.
Bourdieu has several things to say about both genres of art generally and about
the particular nature of music specifically - which differs in a certain sense from all the
other recognized arts - that are of import in the present context. As Bourdieu explains,
…[O]f all the objects offered for consumers’ choice, there are none more
classifying than legitimate works of art, which, while distinctive in general,
enable the production of distinctions ad infinitum by playing on divisions and
sub-divisions into genres, periods, styles, authors, etc. Within the universe of
particular tastes which can be recreated by successive divisions, it is thus possible,
still keeping to the major oppositions, to distinguish three zones of taste which
correspond roughly to educational levels and social classes…(16).
Bourdieu labels these three “zones” as “legitimate taste,” “middle-brow taste,” and
“popular taste,” in descending order. The examples he offers to distinguish these three
levels are music based, and thus help in finding the analogous divisions in a culture such
as that of India, which is by no means identical or isometric to that of France. The third
zone is the most clear-cut, as it is represented by “works of so-called ‘light’ music or
classical music devalued by popularization…and especially songs totally devoid of
artistic ambition and pretension…” For the most part, however, it is the other two
categories that concern us here, as we are examining the distinctions between ‘orthodox’
or ‘pure’ classical music genres and semi-classical genres in the pan-North Indian
Hindustani tradition. The divisions between these two levels are a bit harder to
appreciate due to the cultural specificity of the examples Bourdieu provides. They are
not hard to distinguish in terms of class, as “legitimate taste” rather straightforwardly
represents the “fractions of the dominant class that are richest in educational capital” and
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“middle-brow taste” corresponds to the middle classes. It is, rather, which types of
pieces or genres correspond to these zones that is a more difficult notion to define for
those lacking intimacy with French music and popular culture. Bourdieu does state that
“legitimate taste” is the “taste for legitimate works…which the most self-assured
aesthetes can combine with the most legitimate of the arts that are still in the process of
legitimation – cinema, jazz or even song…”, while “‘Middle-Brow’ taste…brings
together the minor works of the major arts…and the major works of the minor arts..”.
This is clear enough, but again, identifying the analogous Indian genres and artists is a
different and more complex question, for reasons I will discuss shortly.
At another point, however, when describing the specific nature of music,
Bourdieu offers a few clues which help to better understand, beyond which types of
genres and styles are favored by which classes, his ideas about why certain types of
music appeal to the ‘class fractions’ that they do, in much the same manner as he explains
the distinctions (cited above) regarding the differing levels of taste in regards to theatre
and photography. As Bourdieu explains, music is very different from any other form of
art. This is due, no doubt, to the inherently abstract quality of music, which is not a
physical artifact or even an image but instead a collections of sounds. Bourdieu writes,
Music is the ‘pure’ art par excellence. It says nothing and has nothing to say.
Never really having an expressive function, it is opposed to drama, which even in
its most refined forms still bears a social message and can only be ‘put over’ on
the basis of an immediate and profound affinity with the values and expectations
of its audience. The theatre divides its public and divides itself. The Parisian
opposition between right-bank and left-bank theatre, bourgeois theatre and avantgarde
theatre, is inextricably aesthetic and political. Nothing comparable occurs
in music…Music represents the most radical and most absolute form of the
negation of the world, and especially the social world, which the bourgeois ethos
tends to demand of all forms of art (19).
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The key phrase in this quote, which the author himself has emphasized, is that music has
nothing to say, in the sense that it conveys no literal meaning or message. Bourdieu also
well understands the slipperiness of music when it comes to understanding which
demographic factors in combination with which conditions of reception (familiar or
through formal education) might correlate with tastes in certain pieces, genres, artists, etc.
Thus, he notes that, among other factors, one would have to account for the “social image
of the works,” the composers, as well as the actual sounds/timbres featured. These all
apply to the Indian case as well, but I would like to highlight one particular issue - the
presence or absence of a meaningful text.
As Raja has explained, the separation between Khyal and Thumri as genres
(despite sharing some common ground in a general sense) is based not only on raga, i.e.
how faithfully and strictly within the ‘rules’ the raga is rendered and how much the
development of the raga is foregrounded in performance, it is also based on the fact that
in Thumri a ‘romantic’ verse is inarguably the main focus of the music. As we shall see,
this is also very much true of the other semi-classical forms I will discuss shortly,
including NaaTya Sangiit, Bengali Tappaa, Rabindrasangiit, and other types of ‘Bengali
Song’. Khyal, to be sure, has a text that does hold a literal meaning. However, this is
mitigated by the fact that they are generally stereotypical in terms of their subject matter
(though this is true as well of Thumris) and are most often in Braj Bhaashaa, an archaic
form of Hindi native to the region near Delhi, or Urdu, languages which for Marathi
speakers are largely intelligible, but far from their everyday, colloquial Marathi as well as
from the garbled, bastardized form of Hindi spoken by ethnic Maharashtrians and other
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non-native Hindi speakers in Bombay, and which is more remote and perhaps even
unintelligible to the average Bengali. 106 More crucially, though, regardless of whether
non-native Hindi speakers can understand the texts, most Khyal singers deliver the words
in such a fashion that even a Braj expert could not decipher the meaning of the text.
Khyal singers notoriously slur consonant sounds, break up words in mid-syllable, and in
many cases sing incorrect and sometimes even nonsensical words. This may be partially
due to the fact that for most of Khyal’s history, its primary practitioners have been
Muslim, and thus not concerned about putting across the literal meaning of texts that
mostly deal with Hindu deities. There can be no doubt, though, that alterations to the
texts of traditional khyaal-s (or Khyal compositions) have come about in some part
through due to the exigencies and imperfections in the traditional system of oral
transmission.
Regardless of the fact that many Hindu singers do currently make a practice of
reciting and explaining the texts of the Khyal bandiish (composition) that they will be
performing before they actually start singing, a practice I witnessed many times in
recitals occurring in Pune or other locales in Maharashtra outside of Bombay, no classical
musician will argue that the text has any great importance in the performance of Khyal.
As Satyasheel Deshpande so nicely put it, the words in Khyal are simply “a plectrum for
the voice,” a way of initiating the notes (interview, 2005). In Thumri, by contrast, the
words are the main focus, and even improvisation in Thumri is based around combining
106 Thumris are in Braj Bhaashaa also, but it is important to keep in mind that Thumri texts are more
Romantic, accessible and simplistic than are Khyal lyrics, along with the important fact that many of the
patrons of Thumri in Bengal in the 19th and 20th centuries were native Hindi speakers, not ethnic Bengalis.
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short, stereotypical, but meaningful phrases taken from the text with different melodies
for emotive effect. Thus, it seems hard to dispute that a genre that features not only
meaningful texts but texts which describe or are concerned with the most basic and
universal of emotions such as love and pathos, will be more attractive to those who do
not have the early, familial access specifically to classical music. That is, I feel that
adding a meaningful text that deals with universal emotions in a stereotypical manner to
an essentially abstract art such as music is analogous to the styles or types of theatre that
feature stereotypical plots with which the average possessor of the “popular taste” can
understand and identify with. I should point out, however, that having a meaningful text
alone is not guarantor of semi-classical, or at any rate, non-classical status. This is as
Dhrupad, a genre which bests even Khyal in terms of classicism, itself features
meaningful and clearly enunciated texts, a connection between Dhrupad and Thumri
which Raja himself, connoisseur that he is, makes between the two. This is because first,
like Khyal, Dhrupad not only foregrounds the development of the raga, but also features a
much more rigid, intellectual, and abstract means of doing so than does Khyal, which is
less structured overall and particularly less rhythm-oriented than Dhrupad, complex
rhythm being, on the whole, more abstract and less accessible than melody, at least for
Indian (especially Bengali) tastes.
Perhaps a bigger stylistic difference, one which not only divides Dhrupad from
Khyal, both from Thumri, or all broadly classical vocal genres from film or folk music, is
the use of the voice, including projection, timbre, pronunciation, pitch, etc. The crux of
the matter is that the use of the voice, particularly in Dhrupad and but also in Khyal
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(though it depends on the singer) is often jarring, strange, and even foreign to the ears of
the average lower class or middle class Indian who has no real familiarity with classical
Indian vocal music. For this reason, it is not unusual to see parodic portrayals of Indian
classical singers in Indian films and TV serials where comic figures wildly wave their
hands or violently shake their jaws (as if singing taan-s). The point to be made, though,
is that the specific vocal styles of ‘pure’ classical music are so far from the style and
manner of singing which the average Indian encounters in films (Bollywood or regional)
or in other mass media or more especially from the way an average Indian him- or herself
would sing or does sing in average daily contexts, for example at a weekly kiirtan–
singing group or at home or (in the case of manual or agricultural laborers) while at work.
Again, we see the distancing effect, the removal from every day life and experience,
which Bourdieu discusses relative to the fine or ‘high’ arts. The distinction holds true of
the barrier between the semi-classical and light or popular genres as well, though the
differences here are less. Partially this is due to the fact that semi-classical genres,
especially those native to Bengal, can be performed in a more or less serious or classical
style or manner as well as in a more popular style, and this applies to both the singer’s
vocal timbre and delivery and to the quality and feel of the backing music, whether it be
the relatively more austere and simple accompaniment of the classical tabla and
harmonium (/saarangii) or the more filmii-style hybrid orchestra featuring Western and
Indian instruments. In light of this, we can perhaps better understand what Bourdieu
means by “the major works of the minor arts.” Specifically in the case of the Thumri –
the ‘non-regional’ semi-classical genre - it again gains in classicism in the Maharashtrian
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and Bengali contexts due to fact that, while the style of singing in Thumri is originally
derived from folk music, that folk music does not belong to either Maharashtra or Bengal.
C. Rabindrasangiit: The Pinnacle of Bengali ‘Regional’ Music
It is at this point, then, that I would like to turn to the regional semi-classical
genres mentioned above in order to examine them in light of the issues raised by my
discussion of Bourdieu’s work in Distinction. I will begin here with the Bengali side of
the equation, as one finds there a much greater proliferation of (arguably) semi-classical
genres and as the relationship between these genres and the broader Hindustani tradition,
specifically with Khyal, is a much more complex one than is the case in Maharashtra.
The reasons for this are several and not at all indisputable. On a purely musical level, we
can see, as I explained in chapter 4, that the proliferation and popularity of the Thumri,
thanks both to the exile of Wajid Ali to Metiaburuj (near Calcutta) and the general
attraction of Calcutta as a commercial center for Thumri-singing courtesans, has, as
Purohit has argued, influenced Bengali music at all levels with its hybrid and “non-
classical” character. This in turn points to the nature of Bengali society as a whole during
the period when most of these semi-classical genres were created and reached their
height, in particular the passion of the urban Bengali middle classes for taking the best
from Western and Eastern culture and combining them into something new. The most
well-known and frequently commented upon of such Bengali genres in English-language
sources are the songs of poet, educationalist, reformer, composer, and Nobel laureate
Rabindranath Tagore of Calcutta. In my relatively brief discussion of Bengali semi-
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classical music, I will never shift my focus far from Tagore or his songs for two reasons:
first, Tagore, as my Bengali interlocutors frequently reminded me, is the unquestioned
and unrivalled lord and emperor of Bengali culture whose influence is so great and
enduring, as more than one classical musician, Bengali and otherwise, suggested to me,
that it perhaps even discourages general artistic growth and development in Bengali
culture; 107 and second, Tagore’s music, like Thumri, is itself hybrid in nature and
encompasses almost all the musical developments in Bengal immediately before and
during Tagore’s lifetime. A discussion of his music, then, lends a great deal of insight
into the nature of distinctly Bengali music and culture in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Tagore is also of particular importance because, as he is the symbol of Bengali
culture outside Bengal as well, he frequently serves as a lightning rod for criticism for
those who see the hybridity in his music simply as impurity, not as uniquely Bengali, or
at any rate, as not desirable or of high artistic merit.
It should be emphasized, first of all, in describing Rabindrasangiit (Tagore
songs), that the most important and appealing feature of Tagore’s songs for Bengalis are
their lyrics. While Tagore was certainly a versatile thinker and artist, his poetry is his
greatest achievement, the one that earned him his status among Bengalis, and that
ultimately made him a “world poet,” to use Dipali Nag’s phrase (interview, 2005). It is
also, no doubt, the prime reason that his songs are generally held to be superior to those
composed by any of his contemporaries, such as Kazi Nazrul Islam or Atulprasad Sen.
Besides the fact that Tagore’s songs are so heavily word- or text-oriented, however, what
107 As Neela Bhagwat told me, “I think Rabindranath created a huge repertoire of songs, and kiirtan-s, and
Swadesh Sangiit [patriotic songs] and the whole of Bengal is too overawed by all that” (interview, 2005).
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interests us more here is the heterogeneity of the sources of the tunes to which he set his
verses. Sukumar Ray, in his monograph Music of Eastern India (1973), arguably the
most comprehensive account of Bengali regional music in English, explains:
Hence we see, in the nineteenth century Tagore was placed before the musical
background of three principal types on which he based his own composition.
These were firstly, songs composed in the form by Rammohun Ray and his
followers; secondly, Tappa type by Nidhu Babu and others; thirdly lyrical songs
(Kavyasangeeet) linked with experiments of Jyotirendranath Tagore, who
introduced patriotic songs –swadesi gan and produced songs for lyrical dramas
and other types of songs of new design (158).
Regarding the first of these types of composition, Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy
began composing “hymns” in the Dhrupad style in the early part of the 19th century for
the meetings of the Brahmo Samaj, a Calcutta-based religious society founded by upper-
caste Bengalis which sought to reform Hinduism and Hindu culture along modern,
monotheistic, and progressive lines, essentially combining elements of Christianity and
Hinduism. As Ray notes, since Rabindranath’s father Debendranath was also heavily
involved in the Samaj and himself composed Brahmo hymns, Rabindranath “laid his
hands” on these Dhrupad-based songs “as a matter of heritage.” However, as Ray also
explains, while Rabindranath further refined this Dhrupad type song in his own music
and even composed his own Braahma sangiit or Brahmo hymns, all that either
Rammohun Roy or Rabindranath really took from Dhrupad was its division into four
parts or stanzas, the sthayi, antara, sancari, and abhog (77). Ray gives several reasons
why Dhrupad could not be “introduced in Bengali in the true sense of the term,” but they
all boil down to the idea that the rather abstract methods of development in Dhrupad,
whether they be melodic, in terms of raga and the systematic use of ornamentation, or
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hythmic, do not, in Ray’s estimation, fit well with Bengali lyrics. As Ray says, “the
lingual peculiarity of words and the inherent tendencies of poetic richness in Bengali
compositions [poems or verses] do not allow music and Tal to predominate, because
submission of words to tunes, i.e. free Raga-music is discouraged”(78). This pithy
comment, coming from an eminent Bengali scholar of Bengali music, is certainly telling
in terms of the overall Bengali aesthetic, and particularly in terms of Bengali musical
tastes. At the same time, though, when Ray notes that Rammohun Roy was attracted to
Dhrupad not due to the traditional Dhrupad texts which were oriented around the various
avataar-s of Hindu gods (the Brahmo Samaj was famously opposed to polytheism and
idolatry), but to Dhrupad’s “expressions of grandeur and solemnity tilting towards
profundity,” we can detect another enduring aspect of Bengali aesthetics, as these
comments very closely parallel the way in which many of my Bengali informants, for
example English professor (at Jadavpur University) and music connoisseur/archivist
Amlan Dasgupta, described the great appeal of Amir Khan’s music for Bengali audiences
and performers, as his music also abounded in this quality of high seriousness.
The second influence Ray mentions on Tagore’s music was the Bengali version of
the Tappaa, a semi-classical piece thought to have originated in Punjab, possibly as a
song sung by camel drivers. The man who is most often considered both to have
popularized the Tappaa in Bengal in a general sense and who converted it into a ‘Bengali
genre’ was Ramnidhi Gupta, more commonly known as ‘Nidhubabu,’ a government clerk
turned composer who was born in the mid 18th century. 108 Nidhubabu hailed from the
108 Goswami states that Nidhbabu lived from 1741-1839 (1990:19).
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Calcutta area, but his musical career began after he took a posting as a clerk in Chhapra,
Bihar in 1776. There, as all accounts agree, he began learning classical vocal music from
an unnamed Ustad. However, this Ustad apparently did not teach Nidhubabu (or taught
him incorrectly), so he instead became attracted to the ‘Hindustani’ Tappaa and began
composing it in a new style. After taking an early retirement, he then returned to Calcutta
where his new Tappaa became a sensation. This much is clear and corroborated by most
sources. There is some dispute, though, concerning exactly what form of the Tappaa
Nidhubabu encountered during his tenure in Bihar. The general consensus regarding the
Tappaa is that it was introduced into the mainstream of Hindustani classical music by a
singer called Shori Miyan (aka Gulam Nabi), a singer based in Lucknow and a rough
contemporary of Nidhubabu. Most then believe that Nidhubabu patterned his new
Tappaa on the specific style popularized by Shori Miyan. Chhaya Chatterjee, however,
rather logically argues that it is very unlikely that Shori Miyan’s Tappaa would not only
have reached but would have already become popular in Bihar a decade or two after its
creation during a period when travel and communication were both “miserably
slow”(1996:316). Instead, Chatterjee argues, it was an older style of Tappaa, one which
“was prevalent even during Shahjahan’s reign,” that served as the source for both Shori
Miyan’s and Nidhubabu’s respective innovations. This may seem to be a minor point,
especially as neither Chatterjee nor any other author can offer any explanation as to how
specifically this older form resembled or differed from either the Hindustani or the
Bengali type. However, I believe that this is indeed a matter of some relevance, as it
points back to what Capwell has noted (and which I cited in chapter 4) regarding the need
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to tie Bengali traditions to North Indian sources for the purpose of legitimation. While
the Bengali Tappaa is a distinctly Bengali genre, unlike the more classical repertoire of
the Vishnupur gharana discussed by Capwell, I believe the same motivation lies behind
the arguable connection between Shori Miyan and Nidhubabu. That is, Nidhubabu’s
Tappaa receives a great deal of legitimacy and prestige by linking it to, essentially
placing it in the same tradition as, the Tappaa of the Lucknowi Ustad Shori Miyan, rather
than identifying it with the older, likely folksier and less classical form of Tappaa, just as
the Vishnupur tradition gains in prestige when traced back to a Senia musician, rather
than to an anonymous Hindu Pandit.
It is intriguing that all these Bengali authors agree that Nidhubabu’s biggest
contribution to the Bengali musical scene was his choice of romantic love as the most
common theme for his Tappaa lyrics. As Karunamaya Goswami writes,
Tappa is a love song. It is a love between a man and a woman. Nidhu Babu
introduced this theme of love in Bengali art songs. As a theme it was new indeed.
So long Bengali songs were devotional in character. So long they had been
composed either in praise of gods and goddesses or in the quest of spiritual
attainment leading to salvation. The vaishnavaite songs depicted love between
Radha and Krishna. The associations of human love could be noticed there. But
that was symbolic expression of divine love. The humanist trend of Bengali artsongs
had really begun with Ramnidhi Gupta…It was in his works that Bengali
songs were made free from spiritual symbolism and they began to depict the love
of man and woman pure and simple. In this sense Ramnidhi Gupta had achieved
a historic importance as the father of Bengali humanist lyrical and musical trend
(1990:21).
Within the context of “Bengali art songs,” this is no doubt a major achievement, one that
had many ramifications in that field. In the present context, however, it is perhaps more
notable that Nidhubabu chose to compose his lyrics in Bengali, though he must have been
well familiar with Hindi as a long-time resident of Bihar. None of the authors I have
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consulted for this study explains or speculates about why Nidhubabu made this choice,
though perhaps that is the point - that for Bengalis the Bengali language is the only
logical or natural choice for composing poetry or lyrics. Chatterjee does quote
Nidhubabu (though she does not cite the original source), as stating that “there are many
languages of different countries but unless it is your own mother tongue, you do not get
the satisfaction”(1996:320). This is, no doubt, true for as much for other regional groups
in India as for Bengalis. What stands out here, as in so many instances in Bengali music
and culture, though, is that Nidhubabu chose to set an originally Punjabi genre that had
been adapted into classical music to Bengali lyrics. As I will further explain in the next
chapter, Bengalis stand alone in India in their willingness and even zeal for changing,
regionalizing, or even ‘Bengalizing,’ aspects of pan-Indian and Hindu culture.
At any rate, the dominance of text over melody which is so apparent in every
genre of Bengali semi-classical music is all the more clear in this instance, as the musical
changes that Nidhubabu made to the Tappaa all revolved around his goal of matching the
tune to the words. Nidhubabu’s lyrics were romantic, but more specifically, they tended
to portray the sadness caused by separation between lovers, a theme which is also
prevalent in classical genres and especially in Thumri, but which had, as noted above,
never been pursued in Bengali in a strictly secular fashion. So, while both the Punjabi
and the Hindustani/classical forms of the Tappaa had been characterized by fast tempos
and quick, angular volleys of taan-s (known in Hindi as zamzamaa) and were generally
light in mood and nature, Nidhubabu greatly decreased the tempo, preferring medium
(madhyalaya) or even slow tempos; more often set his lyrics to more serious and heavier
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agas and talas than were common for Hindustani Tappaa-s; and shunned most of the
types of ornamentation prevalent in North Indian Tappaa-s, save for taan-s, which of
course create a somewhat different effect in medium and slow tempos, and
khaTkaa/giitkirii/murkii (or giitkaaDii), quick turns that resemble short segments of
zamzama and which were prevalent in older Bengali genres (Ray 1973: 88-89; Chatterjee
1996:321). All these changes, then, were made, as Chatterjee says, in the name of
expressing “the longing and poignancy of his lyrics.” These changes are not only more
appropriate for somber love songs; they also, it should be noted, are general steps which
can be taken to allow the singer to intone and pronounce the words in a more natural (as
in closer to idiomatic speech), more effortless fashion, which again is a sacrifice of
musical complexity in the name of making the text intelligible, and is very much
analogous to the ways in which characteristically Bengali Dhrupad differs from North
Indian Dhrupad. It also seems to be the reason why Nidhubabu is remembered as the
pioneer of Tappaa in Bengal, not his slightly younger contemporary Kali Mirza (aka
Kalidas Chatterjee), a classically trained singer also from the Calcutta area who actually
began singing Tappaa earlier than Nidhubabu and who composed both Hindustani and
Bengali style Tappaa-s. As Goswami writes, “Although he was a poet and wrote several
hundred tappa songs in Bengali, yet he paid no considerable attention to following the
Bengali line of tappa music in which interpreting lyric received supreme importance”
(1990:22). Kali Mirza was to make his biggest mark on the Bengali music scene not by
composing Tappaa-s but rather by composing Tappaa-style devotional songs dedicated
to the goddess Kali, known in Bengali as shyaam sangiit, which, not incidentally, is only
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one of the many types of Bengali song, devotional, folk, popular and otherwise, that was
stylistically indebted to Nidhubabu’s Tappaa.
Thus, of the three types of music which Ray gives as the “principal types” upon
which Tagore based his own compositions, the Tappaa is definitely the one that would
have been most pervasive in mid to late 19th century Calcutta. With his love for the
common Bengali, Tagore must have appreciated this aspect of the Bengali Tappaa or
Tappaa-type song, that it was the province of many different classes, castes, and religious
communities. This is sharp contrast to his familiarity with Dhrupad and Braahma
sangiit, which is purely a legacy of his membership in an aristocratic family.
Considering that Tagore composed the most classically influenced of his songs at the
very outset of his career and then proceeded to introduce more and more Bengali and
individual/personal elements into his music over the course of his composing career
(roughly his entire adult life), it seems that the Bengali Tappaa was much more at the
heart of what he was trying to accomplish with his music than was Dhrupad.
Regarding the third of Ray’s “principal types,” the least has been written about
the influence of Jyotirindranath Tagore on Rabindranath. Sukumar Ray perhaps sums it
up best when he notes that, while Jyotirindranath wrote many songs of his own, including
songs for theatrical presentations and devotional songs that must have influenced
Rabindranath’s early attempts or even served as direct models, his bigger role in
Rabindranath’s formative years as a composer was rather that he assisted and encouraged
Rabindranath with his own compositions. Ray explains, “Jyotirindranath worked on
tuning, accompaniment of various types of instruments to vocal performance, collection
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of varied forms of tunes from different sources, and on the newly devised notation
innovated by Dwijendranath Tagore [elder brother of Rabindranath and
Jyotirindranath]”(1973:157). As one of the most prominent features of Tagore songs is
the variety of tunes to which they are set, it should be emphasized that it was
Jyotirindranath that helped Rabindranath with this side of the music, assisting him in
finding the best fit between tune and lyric. Jyotirindranth, as is true of many other of the
Tagores, was certainly brilliant in his own right, having done outstanding work in fields
as varied as drama, painting, writing, and politics alongside his musical efforts.
However, also like other Tagores, he seems to be best remembered as a character in
Rabindranath’s life story, in his specific case as an intellectual mentor and sounding-
board to Rabindranath, his junior by 12 years. Thus, while it is noteworthy that he
founded the nationalist Sanjiivanii sabhaa (‘Rejuvenation Society’) in 1875, which
attempted to promote patriotism, and “for which [JT] used the press, trained the youth in
body building and rifle shooting, and staged patriotic plays...”(Chatterjee 1996:197), it
becomes much more noteworthy when we take into consideration the fact that, as
Goswami notes, many feel that Rabindranath started his career as composer in earnest
when he began writing patriotic songs for the Sabhaa (1990:390). However, even if his
relationship with his illustrious younger brother were his only historical legacy, it would
still be quite an achievement, considering the enduring popularity of Rabindranath’s
songs with Bengalis. After all, while the Dhrupad-style Brahmo song and the Bengali
Tappaa were well established musical traditions in Bengal well before Rabindranath’s
time and were “in the air,” so to speak, it was Jyotirindranath who encouraged him and
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even showed him the way toward creating a whole new kind of music. As Ray says,
“…it was Jyotirindranath who first suggested by his activities the possibilities of new
creation of free music compositions and production work”(1973:7).
At this point, having considered the sources and influences which shaped and
provided the raw material for Tagore’s new type of songs, we should turn to defining as
precisely as possible what his songs are. Tagore, as Ray notes, wrote over 2,500 songs in
his “mature” years as a composer (i.e. from his late 20s forward), so one of the keys tasks
in beginning to understand this prolific outpouring of music is to group and classify the
songs according to various criteria such as chronological period, function/context,
melodic type, etc. The chronological approach seems to be most favored by the authors I
have consulted, and it is indeed one of the more logical approaches, as most of the other
possible classifying criteria dovetail with chronology to a large extent, though none do so
perfectly. Tagore himself, as Goswami explains, grouped his songs by topic, the main
divisions being “motherland”(or patriotic, 60 songs), “worship” (or devotional, 650),
“love”(400), and “nature”(300), with two smaller (and less descriptive) categories
entitled “occasional” and “variety”(essentially songs for festivals)(1990:40). Goswami,
though, favors the chronological approach, and points out that Tagore started out in his
earliest phase composing patriotic songs (though he continued to write a handful of
patriotic songs throughout the rest of his life), moved to Braahma sangiit, and then
moved on the third and fourth phases (by Goswami’s periodization) to “songs on man
and nature.” It also should be pointed out here that while I do not in any way deny the
prime importance of subject matter and of the text generally in Tagore’s music, we are
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more interested here in both the performance practice of Tagore songs and, more
importantly, in their melodic and rhythmic content, the latter factor which, as all authors
seem to agree, corresponds fairly closely to the period of time in which Tagore composed
each of his songs.
Ray, in his section on the classification of Tagore songs, does not propose his own
system that he puts across as most valid or logical, but rather offers a number of
examples from other Bengali authorities. Thus, as Ray notes, Dhurjatiprasad Mukherjee
gives four categories, “(1) songs influenced by gharana classical songs, (2) items
composed with additions of his own alamkars (ornate elements) which produced a new
color on the basis of Ragas, (3) influence of folk music and (4) other songs containing
immense creative elements in the new setting”; from Swami Prajnananand, “(1) songs of
Dhrupad style in which words were stressed, but classical music was primarily focused,
(2) songs where Western influence is manifest…, (3) songs composed on the basis of the
influence of popular traditional Bengali songs and (4) lyrical songs of varied type”; and
from Suvo Guha Thakurta, “(1) 1881 to 1890, (2) 1901 to 1920, and (3) 1921 to 1941
representing: (1) the influence of classical music, (2) the original compositions based on
Raga constructed in his own style and (3) the predominating feeling elements with
perfect combination of words and raga ingredients respectively”(1973:176-177). Of
these, only Prajnananand’s scheme is not entirely chronological, although it still indicates
the basic trajectory of Tagore’s compositions over time.
Chhaya Chatterjee notes in her discussion on Rabindrasangiit that, “The span of
Rabindra-sangita is so vast that it is like the ocean – a confluence of different streams of
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currents or styles, such as dhrupada, khyal, tappa, Thumri, baul, kirtana, folk melodies,
Western dance tunes, Church music, Irish melodies and even regional songs of Punjab,
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kannad [Karnataka], and Tamilnadu”(1996:404). This is a helpful
view in the present context, as Chatterjee places her focus more specifically on the
musical rather than the poetic side of the equation. As such, when Chatterjee offers her
own system of classification or periodization it is in these terms. Thus, her categories
are: first, the early period when Tagore worked with traditional classical ragas; second,
the period when Tagore began experimenting with “different ragas” and Western
melodies; third, the period when he began working with non-classical melodies, i.e.
melodies from Baul tunes and Bengali Kirtan; and fourth, the period in which he
“composed and established his own style, free from any inhibitions.” Chatterjee then
proceeds to give examples of songs based on all the above listed sources, songs based on
Dhrupad, songs based on Khyal and Thumri (which are very few in number), songs based
on folk tunes, songs based on Western melodies, etc. As I have mentioned ad nauseum,
the text is by far the most important, most dominant element in Tagore’s music, so as he
searched for melodic material for his songs, the idea was to find tunes or even smaller
melodic phrases or units which the poet felt best expressed the emotional content of the
words. In other words, and as stated above, Tagore wanted as close a fit between the tune
and the words as possible, or as Ray says, “a musical portrait of a worded composition”
(1973:167), and it was this desire that drove him both to continually seek out new tunes
or new types of tunes and to further experiment with melodies and melodic phrases
drawn from both within and later from outside the Hindustani raga tradition. The result
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of all this was that, in his later years, Tagore arrived at a method by which his
compositions were “undertaken with no preconceived idea of a Raga or a familiar tune;
rather the structure was composed of smaller units of notes suitably combined”(Ray
1973:179). Ray, it should be noted, is not always completely clear with his English, but
what he seems to detail is a process by which Tagore started out composing texts for or
matching texts he had written to tunes composed by Jyotirindranath, to basing his songs
on common ragas, then to mixed ragas and Western tunes and then modified forms of
Western tunes, then to modified folk and devotional tunes, until arriving at a point where
his songs were completely original, at least in the sense that his influences and sources
were well-integrated enough that their original form was no longer recognizable.
As our focus here is on classical music, specifically the relationship between the
mainstream classical tradition and the semi-classical traditions of Maharashtra and
Bengal and the ways in which they have influenced each other, it is informative to
examine certain aspects of Rabindrasangiit in contrast with the analogous features of
classical vocal music. As is well-known, Tagore hated all manner of formality, and while
he had access to some of the most distinguished figures in classical music in Bengal
(including renowned vocalists like Jadu Bhatta and Bishnu Chakraborty) both as a
student and a regular listener thanks to his privileged background, he never had any
interest in learning to perform classical music. Most of all, he never had any interest in
the rigid discipline entailed by the Guru-disciple method of musical training or the
seemingly endless routine of grueling and often repetitive practice required to develop the
musical skills or, most crucially, the voice to perform classical music. Besides the
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formality of the pedagogical system, the music itself, as Ray says, “failed to please
Tagore in his early days” (1973:164), as the abstract process of raga development took
precedence over the delivery of the lyric. Neither Ray nor any other scholar offers an
explanation as to why Tagore felt this preference for word-oriented music, but, as we
have seen, this was a bias that was present in Bengali culture long before the appearance
of Tagore on the scene. As I have explained, if Nidhubabu changed anything about the
Hindustani Tappaa, it was that he made the lyric the primary focus of the genre – all the
strictly musical changes came as a result of this aesthetic choice. There is, to be sure,
some direct influence (and indirect influence) of Nidhubabu on Tagore, but there is
clearly a more diffuse and broader regional influence which came to bear on both their
musical compositions. Regardless, to the extent that Tagore was not directly influenced
by Nidhubabu, this common emphasis on the text motivated Tagore to shape his music in
much the same way Nidhubabu had shaped his.
So, in more concrete terms, this meant first and foremost, no abstract
development of the raga, no aalaap, no vistaar, no baDhat, certainly no layakaari, and
very little taan. Not incidentally, according to the definition of classical music I cited
above from Wim van der Meer, this aspect alone disqualifies Tagore’s music from
classical status (in the Indian context). Also, as in the case of Nidhubabu’s Tappaa,
Tagore decided to forego any very extensive use of classical-style vocal ornamentation.
The most significant type of ornamentation avoided in general by Tagore, considering the
crucial early Dhrupad influence in his music, was gamak, a heavy shake between two
adjacent notes which is often created by a physical shaking of the jaws or even the whole
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head of the performer. As Ray notes, Tagore did not forsake ornamentation altogether;
he did use some that met the criteria of neither exceeding the capabilities of the average
(i.e. non-classically trained) singer nor distorting the enunciation of the all-important text.
“These are slow and easy jhatka, small tan, short meend, mellow gamak at some
particular points, occasional bant in slow and precise manner and simple up-and-down
flights between two distant notes”(1973:169). To briefly define these terms (those that
have not already been mentioned), jhaTkaa is another term for khaTkaa or giitkirii, quick
turns around one pitch; miinD is an unbroken glide between two notes; and baanT is type
of formulaic rhythmic variation using the words of the text. Of these, the most common
is arguably the short miinD, as even a cursory listen to an orthodox performance of
Rabindrasangiit will prove. It is also the most characteristic type of ornamentation used
in all types of Bengali music, and can even arguably be taken as an aural representation
of the riverine Bengali countryside, a point I will address in the next chapter.
Perhaps as noteworthy as the precise types of ornamentation, however, are the
modifiers Ray uses to describe them: slow, easy, short, mellow, precise, simple. If one
were to add “somber” and “sweet,” this would make up a fairly complete list of the most
common English adjectives used by scholars to describe Tagore’s music. As with any art
form, much of this is a reflection on the creator himself, his personality, his voice. As
Amit Mukherjee explained to me, not only did Tagore not care for the hard practice
necessary to become proficient at singing Khyal, he also did not have a “particularly
good” or “manly” voice (interview, 2005). So, while it was very important for Tagore to
create songs that could be understood and appreciated and sung by the average Bengali,
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he also created a genre that he could himself perform. Likewise, while Tagore was a very
self-aware (but not self-conscious) artist who made deliberate choices, he also, as I have
said, was very much a product of his background and the culture he knew. Thus, while
he favored the profundity and seriousness of Dhrupad and the somber, heartbroken
quality of the Bengali Tappaa, these were pervasive influences in Bengali music at the
time and it would have been hard for Tagore to avoid them. Nonetheless, it is all there.
Tagore was a summation of Bengali Bhadralok culture to that point, all its contradictions
and ideals and hopes and passions, and although this can be said of any artist, whatever
their class and wherever they come from, this is all the more true of Tagore because,
thanks to the genius of all of his varied work and the reverence amongst all Bengalis that
this has earned him, his interpretation and vision of Bengali culture is now unchallenged
as the definitive take on Bengal and Bengali-ness.
The aesthetic encapsulated by Ray’s list of adjectives above applies equally to the
other aspects of the performance practice of Tagore’s music, besides sparse
ornamentation and lack of raga development in favor of clear, comprehensible lyrics. As
Chhaya Chatterjee notes, the dominant ras or mood in Tagore’s music is “karuna rasa,
i.e. pathos”(1996:420), along with viir or heroism, shaant or serene mood, and gambhiir,
seriousness. To a large extent this again reflects the roots of Tagore music in Bengali
Tappaa (karuNaa ras) and Dhrupad (gambhiir ras), as well as Tagore’s own
temperament and personality (the viir element seems to come most frequently in Tagore’s
patriotic songs). We can again see here the resemblance between the aesthetic appeal of
Tagore’s music and the appeal of the Amir Khan/Kirana style. The Kirana gharana,
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particularly its de facto founder, Abdul Karim, has been both criticized and occasionally
lauded for the dominance of the karuNaa element in his music to the exclusion of nearly
every other ras. To take this a bit further, if we want to understand the popularity of
Bade Ghulam Ali along with Amir Khan, it makes sense that Bengalis enjoy the
combination of exuberance and joyfulness balanced by seriousness and pathos (with
Ghulam Ali standing for the former) which is as true of these two great classical singers
taken together as it is of Tagore’s body of compositions, even if gravity and pathos, like
the Kirana style, seem to be more prevalent on the whole than its opposite number.
The overall combination of seriousness, direct emotion, and simplicity which
characterizes the mood of Rabindrasangiit is also noticeable in the instrumentation and
rhythmic aspects of Tagore’s music. In terms of the former, Tagore songs, depending of
course upon their type/function/intended context are very frequently performed solo, with
the singer most often accompanying him- or herself on the harmonium or pumped organ.
If there is tabla accompaniment, it is generally soft and unobtrusive. Ethnomusicologist
Capwell speaks of the profound influence of the Baul sect of Bengal on Tagore’s music,
an influence that went beyond the use of song types or tunes, as mentioned above. As
Capwell writes, “Tagore was continually aware of a rift, a gap between himself and some
undefined deity, and the Baul, for him, represented the spiritually quickened state of
eternal longing akin to the Sufi’s longing for the impossible union with a transcendent
God, or Radha’s pining for Krishna”(1986:30-31). In the usual performance format for
Tagore’s songs, we can detect both the Baul influence and the common feeling of longing
that he and the members of the Baul sect share for union with God. As with the Baul,
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who performs alone and spontaneously when the mood arises, one can imagine the
performer of Tagore songs similarly singing for themselves and for God, unaware of the
outside world, albeit in the context (and confines) of a structured recital or performance.
The rhythmic aspect of Tagore’s music was generally de-emphasized, again so it
would not interfere with the delivery of the text. Tagore did use classical talas in his
music, especially in the early days when he was basing his compositions on the Dhrupad
form, but he totally avoided one of the most important and prominent aspects of the talas
used in the classical genres, the accent on sam, the first beat of the tala cycle. As Ray
says, in Tagore’s music, “smoothness and simplicity are maintained by avoiding
complications of the final accent”(1973:181). Later, as the Baul influence and the
influence of other folk tunes started to play an important role in Tagore’s music, he began
to utilize the 6-beat daadraa tala and 8-beat keharvaa (among others), the more simplistic
and dance-oriented talas most often encountered in folk and light musics across North
India. If Tagore created anything new or noteworthy in the realm of rhythm, it was that
he attempted both to change existing talas and to create new talas that fit better with the
meter of his poetry. At the most extreme, this resulted in an essentially non-rhythmic,
speech-like style of delivery that was not amenable to any percussive accompaniment.
More often, though, Tagore would add beats to existing talas and/or change the accents
and groupings in existing talas in order to arrive at an appropriate meter. Ray seems
skeptical about these experiments, stating that “Tagoreans consider these as new
combinations of beats and bars producing a new effect in Tala”(1973:181). Unlike Ray,
Chatterjee seems more willing to take these experiments as legitimate new talas, listing,
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among others, Sashti (6 beats), Rupakdaa (8 beats), Nabataal (9 beats), and Ekadaasi (11
beats) (1996:421). However, she also notes that most of these can be performed in
different chhand-s, additive groupings marked by accents, which seem to rob these new
talas of any distinct identity. In classical music, there are a number of talas that have the
same number of beats, for example 16-beat TilwaaDaa and Tiintaal, but that are
distinguished by their pattern of groupings and accents. Thus, suggesting that nine beat
Nabataal is a tala which can performed as 3+2+2+2; 4+5; 5+4; 6+3; or 3+6, is very much
analogous to equating a scale, an abstract collection of pitches, with a raga.
Tagore’s use of raga as the melodic basis for much of his music, more particularly
his experiments with mixing ragas and creating novel phrases and note combinations
within both mixed and standard ragas, is one the most important aspects of his music, as
it is this that Bengalis (including classical musicians, Tagore song specialists, and
scholars) most often point to in attempting to establish his classical credentials.
Buddhadev Dasgupta, senior sarodist of Calcutta and disciple of Radhika Mohan Moitra,
has been among the forefront of Bengali instrumentalists in utilizing Tagore’s music and
his innovations in raga in the classical context. As he explained to me,
BD: …Rabindranath had a very deep insight into raga music. He created another
kind of music with greater instant appeal to people, but don’t make a mistake, he
had his sense of ragas absolutely deep-rooted. Not merely that, he found out
unique nooks and corners, unique phrases in a raga, some of which were not even
discovered by people who had been singing that raga for ages…
A raga is just like a great big garden. You are wandering around in that garden
every day. Suddenly you find a small nook where there’s a flower tree, there’s a
branch hanging over, sun rays coming – beautiful place where you have never
been before. So that, you know, uh, is more or less a comparison. Those
beautiful spots of that raga, if they can be lifted and placed into the vocabulary of
instruments, particularly sarod, to create what is a full-blooded sarod gat and not
an imitation of Rabindrasangiit…
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JG: That’s what you tried to do?
BD: That’s what I wanted to do and I have done so for quite some time.
(interview, 2005).
This excerpt is worth citing for Buddhadevda’s elegant metaphor alone, which is an
extension of the commonly stated belief amongst Hindustani musicians (to which BD
alludes) that new ragas or even new phrases within a raga are not invented or created, but
instead “discovered,” as they are inherently there in the raga. The more important point,
though, is that BD does not take a Tagore song more or less intact and simply play it in
the Thumri style, as a “tail-piece” type number, although others, such as sarodist
Tajendra Majumdar, have taken this approach. 109 Rather, as his analogy suggested, he
only takes some of the core melodic material and creates a sarod gat based around it.
This means changing the rhythm, both at a broader level, to fit with a classical tala
(though some Tagore songs do not need to be adjusted in this sense), but more crucially,
it also means making it conform to the plectrum stroke pattern and the accompanying
rhythmic shape which is characteristic of sarod and sitar gat-s. BD has released several
recordings of his Tagore-inspired music, and interestingly, with each piece, he presents
the source song first, sung by Tagore specialist singers, and then immediately follows it
with his own “interpretation,” so to speak. Tagore, to be sure, did compose some pieces,
mostly in the Dhrupad form, which could be performed in a classical style without
significant alterations, but as Ray and others note, singers capable of an orthodox
Dhrupad rendition rarely sing these pieces, at least not in recent decades.
109
According to Dhruba Ghosh, Vilayat Khan also used to play one particular Tagore song early in his
performing career (interview, 2005).
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Having said all this, I should reiterate that Tagore’s music is a text- or word-based
music, and by the standards of classicism in pan-North India, this alone guarantees a
status below orthodox classical music. Beyond this, though, what determines the class
character of Tagore’s music in Bourdieu’s terms is the specific manner that Tagore
utilizes raga in his music. As noted earlier, Tagore changed the way he used ragas over
time, moving from composing or adopting tunes that use the ordinary, familiar form of
common ragas, to mixing ragas together in novel combinations, then, finally, to freely
combining smaller phrases or note combinations which may have been drawn from a
classical raga, but which were generally unrecognizable in their new context. The point
to made, though, is that Tagore never saw ragas as abstract, melodic entities which might
potentially evoke a number of different emotions or shades of emotion depending on the
performer and the context of performance, but rather as “symbols of thoughts and ideas
in different contexts” (Ray 1973:167). What a particular raga symbolizes in a Tagore
composition can vary according to the raga in question or the context; Ray gives a
different few examples of how ragas can be used in this general fashion. A raga for
Tagore, then, might symbolize the time of day at which it is generally performed (for ex.,
the late afternoon raga Multani could represent the “sun-burnt-day’s ending breath”); it
could symbolize the primary seasons (such as Malhar, the most common monsoon season
raga); or it could be expounded “in the form of a living picture” (as when the midnight
raga Kannada is portrayed as “the lost pursuer of the lover…in the dark midnight”)
(1973:166-167). No other factor more completely and thoroughly cements the status of
Tagore music according to Bourdieu’s theory as appropriate to the “popular” or, at best,
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“middle-brow” taste than this one. Rather than using a raga as an abstract musical entity
that can carry a number of meanings and which can subjected to endless subtle variations
and interpretations in the hands of a classical master musician (subtleties which can be
best identified and understood by an individual who has had life-long, sustained contact
with raga-based music), Tagore “imposes his own ideas upon Ragas and attaches human
interest to them”(Ray 1973:167, emphasis added).
Rabindrasangiit is then a rather clearly semi-classical genre by the standards of
the Hindustani tradition, and, while Bourdieu does not himself use this term, it is fair, I
feel, to state that this is the appropriate designation according to his findings as well, in
terms of the nature of its appeal. The arguably most important piece of the puzzle, albeit
one I have not discussed at length, are the numerous accounts (that frequently include
statements from Tagore himself) stating that the composer’s primary intention was to
create a genre of music that could be understood and appreciated by all classes of
Bengalis, in spite of his own elite background. An examination of the scholarly sources
which discuss and analyze Tagore’s music reveals, however, that there is no clear cut
consensus regarding the nature of his music or where his songs fit in the hierarchy of
Indian musical forms. Some agree that Tagore songs are indeed “middle-brow” in
nature, some feel they are (almost) on par with Hindustani classical music, and some feel
that they are no better than Bollywood film songs. While much of this boils down to
non-Bengalis taking a critical stance on Tagore’s music and Bengalis defending him or
perhaps over-exaggerating his importance, even this is an oversimplification. Non-
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Bengali authorities do tend to devalue Tagore, but this is due both to the fact that most
non-Bengalis cannot understand the Bengali language (and thus Tagore’s lyrics) and
because Bengalis often do tend to overstate the poet’s greatness, creating resentment in
those who, so to speak, can’t see it. The Bengali side of the equation is even more
complex. Few Bengalis will deny Tagore’s overall greatness, in terms of his poetry or
his overall artistic output, but there are those that understand that his songs do fall short
of Indian classical standards.
The first bit of evidence I offer in this regard comes from the respective works of
Sukumar Ray and Chhaya Chatterjee, which I have cited above. Both authors frequently
use the term kaavyasangiit as a broad term for the popular songs of Bengal prevalent in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries in which were lyrics were the main focus or feature.
Of the two, Ray uses the term more loosely; the closest he comes to offering a definition
is when he states that kaavyasangiit is “the tuned lyric”(1973:205). Chatterjee gives a
more precise definition, stating that,
The word kavya means poem, poetry or lyric. If taken literally, most of the vocal
styles would come under it. But Kavya-sangita is a modern term, coined during
late 19 th century meaning those songs which are romantic in theme, free of
traditional devotion and rich in literary value. In this style, the lyric plays a more
important role than the melody and does not adhere to any strict sastriya
discipline. Sometimes selected musical phrases are set to worded composition in
romantic music. The chanda of the padas [verses] determine the tala (1996:435).
Chatterjee then states that the compositions of many “renowned poets, lyricists and
litterateurs” belong in this category, including Tagore. Despite placing him in this
category, however, Chatterjee also leaves the matter unresolved, as even though she
labels Tagore a composer of kaavyasangiit in her chapter on the same, she actually
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devotes a whole chapter to Tagore’s music (which comes before the kaavyasangiit
chapter in Chatterjee’s monograph) under the heading “Rabindra Sangita,” seemingly
implying that Tagore’s music constitutes a style, to use Chatterjee’s term, or genre of its
own. This is all the more clear when we consider Chatterjee’s statement that Tagore’s
“constant exposure to [Hindustani classical music] and his own inborn talent made him a
success in establishing a new style of music, i.e. Rabindra-sangita …” (1996:403). The
most straightforward way of understanding this ambiguity – one possibility, at least -
would be that Tagore’s music had certain things in common with other ‘kaavyasangiit’
composers like Rajnikanta or Nazrul, while at the same time bettering his contemporaries
in terms of lyrical content and classical influence.
Although Chatterjee tacitly privileges Tagore’s songs over those of his most
famous rivals and contemporaries, i.e. Atulprasad, Dwijendralal, Nazrul, and Rajnikanta,
she does, to be fair, emphasize all their classical credentials, which in most cases
translates as using classical ragas and/or talas and using “classical” genres (including
Khyal, Tappaa, Thumri, and daadraa – the quotation marks denote that I am speaking of
the broader definition of classical) as basic models for their compositions, rather than
simply elevating Tagore to classical or near classical status and relegating the rest to
merely “regional,” “light,” or “popular” status. 110 Chatterjee also explains the various
ways in which each of these composers’ songs differed from classical music, both in
terms of their content and performance practice. What she does not do, though, is to
couch these differences as shortcomings or as negative in any sense. On the contrary,
110 By the standard sociological definition of “popular,” however, the songs of all of these composers,
including Tagore’s, were popular at least for some time, at least in terms of their audiences.
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Chatterjee gives the impression both that these Bengali compositions are a true part of the
Hindustani tradition and that, if anything, the famous five kaavyasangiit composers
changed classical idioms for the better, for example, when she states that Rabindrsangiit
was “based on classical music, yet independent of the strict bondage of the sastriya
norms”(1996:403). This emphasis on the value of freedom of artistic expression is no
doubt one that is a part of Chatterjee’s heritage as a Bengali. Regardless, though, one
never gets the impression from Chatterjee’s work that the aesthetic norms of Hindustani
classical music and the aesthetic norms Bengali regional music, semi-classical, light, or
otherwise, are in any way incompatible or that they are in competition.
The issue comes into much sharper focus in Sukumar Ray’s work, as he is an
altogether more self-aware analyst than Chatterjee. That is, while for the most part Ray
sticks with the objectivist mode so typical of Indian musicology, describing more often
than judging, he also clearly understands and acknowledges that there are different ways
of both understanding and evaluating Bengali music, especially the music of the iconic
Tagore, which is held as sacrosanct by so many Bengalis. Ray positions himself
approximately in the middle between the most enthusiastic proponents of Tagore (whom
he refers to as “Tagorians”) on the one hand and non-Bengali critics of Tagore on the
other. As far as the kaavyasangiit designation, Ray is also unclear at times regarding its
meaning (beyond the English translation “lyric song,” which he uses interchangeably),
but he does make a distinction between Tagore songs and kaavyasangiit/Adhunik. 111 At
another point, though, Ray states that Tagore’s songs “acted as the ideal model for
111 Adhunik literally means “modern,” and is yet another designation for Bengali art songs that is sometimes
used as a synonym for kaavyasangiit, as Ray does here.
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Kavyasangeet,” and notes how the four stanza system adapted by Tagore from Dhrupad
became the standard for Bengali song composers. One can only attempt to deduce the
differences between Tagore songs and kaavyasangiit, however. From Ray’s discussion
of each genre and each composer, we learn that Tagore composed songs for a wider
variety of contexts than other composers, wrote texts covering a wider variety of subjects,
composed more songs altogether, incorporated more elements from classical (rather than
semi-classical) music into his songs than the others, and influenced nearly all his
contemporaries and successors with his style. Regardless, the clearest bit of evidence
that Ray considers Tagore songs as a separate genre, or “school,” to use his term, one
“distinct from the known types, such as Dhrupad, Khyal, Tappa, Thumri or the other
popular sections like folk and modern songs…”(11), is because he says so. Ray does
give a list of “principles” regarding Tagore songs. Most are a summation of the musical
features, aspects of performance practice, etc., as described above, but two are
particularly relevant in the present context:
And,
(ii) as Bengali music originally derives its musical form from folk songs, Kirtan
and other traditional music, popular music, etc., performance of Tagore’s musical
compositions is primarily traced to this legacy;
(v) the forms of tunes applied in Tagore music are unchangeable and amply
supported by a system of performance, hence the executants require a definite
type of training; (1973:184).
The first of these ((ii), in Ray’s list), might seem at first to be a concession of sorts - that,
after all, Tagore was more influenced by non-classical genres than classical ones, but I do
not agree with this reading. The key word in this blurb is not “folk songs” or “popular
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music”; it is instead “Bengali music.” Ray’s intention, as I take it, is to (subtly) establish
the notion that Bengali music as a whole is different than non-Bengali music, most
importantly Hindustani classical music, and hence should be judged by different criteria
than non-Bengali music. That he does not consider Tagore music to be grossly inferior to
classical music is confirmed by “principle (v),” which I feel is a fairly overt attempt to
equate Rabindrasangiit with orthodox classical music, as in the Indian context popular
and even light and semi-classical genres are commonly said to require little more than a
good voice and a familiarity with the genre in question while classical music alone
requires rigorous practice and voice-training. What I take Ray to be arguing, then, is that
while Tagore music is different from proper Dhrupad or Khyal, it is no less complex (or
intellectual or refined) than Hindustani classical music. It is simply complex in a
different way, i.e. in terms of the lyric itself and the relationship between the lyric and the
tune, rather than in terms of abstract raga development.
One of the unnamed critics of Tagore that Ray addresses in Music of Eastern
India may well have been Prof. G.H. Ranade, who provides a mild but fairly
representative criticism of Tagore songs in his work Hindustani Music: Its Physics and
Aesthetics. 112 Ranade briefly discusses Rabindrasangiit in the context of a chapter-length
summary of the history of classical music in India, noting that by the time classical music
(i.e. Khyal) had “worked up its way to the inside of the Bengali household,” or in other
words, had become popular with the middle classes, Tagore’s music had emerged as a
significant rival for listeners and students. Ranade says of Rabindrasangiit:
112 This is the substantially reworked second edition of a book originally published in 1939.
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…[T]he novel tunes of Tagore’s songs and the fresh orientation he gave to music
had made their own impacts on the classical Ragas and for a time ruled supreme
in Bengal. Tagore’s adaptations of European tunes and his crossing of one Raga
with another in an unconventional manner led to confusion in the name of artistic
execution. A non-Bengalee, who cannot follow the meaning of the songs, thinks
their tunes distinctly jar on his ears, on account of their out-of-the-way or exotic
musical contour. In fact outside Bengal, the so-called Bengali type of music
passes for a byword to mean hybrid music (1971:21).
This is a very level-headed, logical, and reasonable critique of Tagore’s music, but a
damning statement, nonetheless. It hits upon the most obvious problem that arises when
a non-Bengali speaker attempts to evaluate Tagore’s songs, the problem of
comprehending and appreciating the element that all Bengalis agree is the key to
appreciating them - the text. The text determines every aspect of the music in Tagore’s
music, the melody, the style (i.e. Dhrupad, Tappaa, Baul tune, Bengali kiirtan, etc.), the
tempo, the rhythmic structure and feel, and of course the overall mood. When one
approaches them without understanding the meaning of the words, it is as if the linchpin
is removed and the songs appear more as concatenations of disparate parts rather than as
cohesive wholes, a comment which applies equally to Tagore’s collective body of songs.
This issue of not understanding Tagore’s words is one, it should be noted, that Ray also
frequently addresses, though he seems most concerned with charges of monotony and
repetitiveness. Ray acknowledges that Tagore’s music can very well seem repetitive at
times given the “recurrence of fixed nature of bars, foots, giving similar musical phrases
and similarity in mellow musical expressions..” (1973:182). Although he admits to the
truth of this, Ray then attributes the problem more to performers who do not (or cannot)
make use of the full repertoire of Tagore songs, a theme which came up several times
during the interviews I conducted in 2005. Today’s artists, Bengali and otherwise,
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continue to feel that Rabindrasangiit is often given a bad name by the poor taste and poor
musicianship of some of Tagore’s staunchest supporters.
It is Vinyak Purohit, though, that provides the most trenchant criticism of Tagore
and his Bengali apologists, though, as usual, we have to, to paraphrase Janaki Bakhle,
peer through Purohit’s Marxist ideological screen to see what he is really stating. To be
sure, it is his Marxist orientation which informs his analyses and allows him to make
insights along social and economic lines that other Indian music scholars cannot due to
their limited own purview, which again boils down to a focus on objective, strictly
musical issues. His insights, again though, are too often mixed with his personal
prejudices which are not always even attributable to his Marxist philosophy or
orientation. From my perspective, the most difficult aspect of Purohit’s approach to
understand is the very clear fact the he appreciates Hindustani classical music from an
aesthetic perspective and feels that it is something which is valuable to society, which
needs to be nurtured by government support, etc., while at the same time detailing the
thoroughly feudal nature of the tradition, both in terms of its social aspects and in terms
of the ideology that continues to inform its modern practitioners, and while heaping
unqualified scorn on every artist, musicologist, and connoisseur that he discusses in the
course of his work, save of course for those who lived so far in the past that there is not
enough biographical information regarding their lives to allow Purohit to substantiate his
insults and petty remarks.
To proceed with the matter at hand, though, Purohit’s clear respect and admiration
for the Hindustani tradition, a tradition “which is quintessential and which…has been
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evolved by much labour on the part of many geniuses over many centuries..”(1988:886),
is particularly crucial in the case of his tirade against Tagore’s music (not to be confused
with his tirade against Tagore’s paintings or his broader tirade against the Tagore clan as
a whole). The first criticism Purohit levels at Tagore, one that has echoes in his attacks
on Tagore elsewhere, is that Tagore is essentially a “comprador” (comprador being
unquestionably Purohit’s most favored and frequently employed epithet), and so when
Tagore states in his writings that he hoped to create a music that would be enjoyed and
appreciated by all classes, as opposed to classical music which is the preserve of the elite,
the reality of the matter according to Purohit is, rather, that Tagore and others like him
were simply unable to understand classical music and thus chose to patronize (and
Tagore’s case, create) a form or forms of music that correspond to their “vulgar” tastes.
This is all the more clear when we consider other instances where Purohit chides Tagore
for believing that he had any comprehension whatsoever of the lives of the peasant and
laboring classes for whose benefit he claimed to have composed his songs.
The portion of Purohit’s tirade which concerns us more here, however, comes
when Purohit quotes Tagore as explaining that Bengalis never collectively embraced
Hindustani music because, to quote Tagore, “‘the soul of Bengal hungered for song [i.e.
not abstract raga music] as a means of self-expression’”(1988:884 – emphasis in the
original). Purohit’s response to this, briefly, is first, that “there is nothing special about
Bengali folk music…” (compared to the folk music from any other region of India), and
to suggest otherwise betrays an “obnoxious, provincialist outlook”; and second, that since
Bengali music is as raga-based as the music in the rest of India, any attempts to lay out
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principles that are unique to Bengali music, as in Sukumar Ray’s work (whom Purohit
singles out by name), “are hopelessly confused and completely dogmatic.” Key to
Purohit’s attack is the essentialist proposition that “the whole of Indian music is based on
the raga system…”(885), which, as any number of Indian music scholars can tell you, is
simply not true. Some folk and devotional songs are raga-based, but some are not.
Purohit tries to side-step this issue by arguing that since ragas represent distilled versions
of folk songs, for instance raga Mand is a “distillation” of the whole group of Rajasthani
folk songs, ragas are the inheritance of all Indians. This proposition only makes sense
from the Marxist perspective because it is clearly Purohit’s attempt to cleanse raga music
of its elite, feudal associations. If ragas are distillations of folk tunes, it only stands to
reason that someone, i.e. some person, had to actually distill them, and the persons
responsible for that were, save for very few exceptions, either a.), religious functionaries
of some sort, b.), feudal servants, or c.) modern day bourgeois musicians, three groups
Purohit openly disapproves of in one way or another at certain points in his work. This
is, of course, to ignore other inconvenient (for Purohit, at least) truths, for example that
the Southern or Carnatic school of Indian music uses many ragas that were created quite
recently and do not resemble those of any other type of music in India (as well as many
that have no analogue in the North), or that there are many ragas whose origins are totally
unknown. Again, though, we should never expect Purohit to let facts get in the way of a
grand ideological statement.
So, once we have penetrated through the haze of Purohit’s prejudices, including
his irrational hate for Tagore and his confused and essentialist notions about the raga
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system, we find that his motivations and especially his aesthetic perspective are not at all
unlike those of G.H. Ranade, a scholar that Purohit no doubt loathes (though he does cite
Ranade’s work at one point in Arts of Transitional India). G.H. Ranade’s critique is
definitely more reasoned and polite than Purohit’s, but ultimately what both are
responding to is a type or style of music that is unfamiliar to them and that is based on
aesthetic principles that do not correspond to their own. G.H. Ranade, in his objectivist
fashion, points out the obvious and overriding issue of not being able to understand
Tagore’s words as well as the undeniably hybrid nature of the music, but ultimately, as
with the evaluation of any music, it is the more innate, subconscious nature of taste which
I feel motivates both Ranade’s and Purohit’s observations. It is more obvious with
Purohit because, shorn of any pretension of objectivity, his remarks betray the innate
disgust that members of a particular “class fraction” feel when confronted with forms of
art characteristic of members of different class fractions, as Bourdieu has explained.
There is more to it than this, however, as neither Ranade nor Purohit to my knowledge
critique any other form of semi-classical or light music besides Rabindrasangiit in such
fashion. So, what I am driving at here is that what truly offends Purohit (if not Ranade)
about Tagore and his music is that he and his followers have had and continue to have the
temerity to suggest that their essentially “middle-brow” music is equivalent or even
comparable to the Hindustani classical tradition. It is not only that Tagore and followers
have violated the socio-cultural hierarchy described by Bourdieu, though. They also, I
argue, have violated a distinctly Indian hierarchy, that which places maarg above desii,
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“great” above “little” (to use Milton Singer’s terminology), and pan-Indian (or, in the
modern period, national) above regional, hence Purohit’s accusation of “provincialism.”
D. Marathi Theatre Music and the Push Toward Classicism
To illustrate this last point I would like to turn my attention to the semi-classical
traditions of Maharashtra. The Maharashtrian side of the equation is, to be sure, much
simpler and more straightforward than what we have encountered in Bengal, but in spite
of this, or perhaps because of it, it provides a useful and informative contrast as in so
many other instances. One aspect of the relative simplicity of the Maharashtrian scene is
that there far fewer varieties of semi-classical music there and, among these, only one is
at all relevant in the context of Hindustani classical music. This is the aforementioned
NaaTya Sangiit, the music of the Marathi musical theatre. The other “regional” genre
most often mentioned in connection with Mahrashtra is laavaNii, a genre that is generally
described as popular or, at best, light, and whose lyrics are generally erotic or even vulgar
in nature. LaavaNii, as Ashok Ranade communicated to me, was at one time performed
in a semi-classical style, approximately in the same manner as Thumri, and was
performed by classical artists, albeit mostly by courtesans (personal communication,
2005). BaiThakchi laavaNii (Marathi – “laavaNii of the recital or sitting”; also
referenced in Manuel 1993:187) is, however, not sung by classical artists in the modern
era, and it seems reasonable to surmise that its heavily sRingaar–oriented lyrics and
overall mood and its association with “women singers” are among the primary reasons
why it has disappeared from the classical stage in greater Maharashtra.
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Like Tagore songs, naaTypad (compositions for Marathi music theatre) are
essentially semi-classical, as their specific purpose, at least in the earlier days of the
tradition, was to serve as a heightened form of speech, and as such, convey information,
move the plot forward, etc. As I will explain shortly, as both NaaTya Sangiit and Sangiit
NaaTak (musical theatre) progressed and developed, the songs became a more abstract
means of elaborating the singer’s character’s mood or state of mind, but even then, the
musical renditions were still tied to the plot of the particular drama. However much
Bengali proponents of Tagore’s music tout Tagore’s classical credentials, Marathi
NaaTya Sangiit is inarguably more classical, while still falling within the bounds of the
semi-classical category. It is frequently said of NaaTya Sangiit that naaTyapad are
simply Hindustani classical compositions with Marathi lyrics. This is largely true,
although it ignores the large amount of theatre music that was modeled on or taken
directly from other semi-classical genres (usually Thumri, daadraa, qawaalii, kajrii, etc.)
or popular genres, such as the songs of the Parsi-Gujarati theatre that was extremely
prevalent and popular in 19th century Bombay, although with a different class and
regional/linguistic group than the one that formed the audience for Marathi Sangiit
NaaTak. However, the point remains that in the hey day of Sangiit NaaTak in the early
20th century, both the singer/actors and the “music directors” (i.e. those who composed
and/or selected the tunes and, if qualified, trained the singers) were generally reputable
classical vocalists, the tunes were most often classical compositions with Marathi lyrics
added, and the techniques used in performance of naaTyapad were mostly classical in
nature, while limited mostly to certain varieties of taan, and were largely pre-composed.
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When we also consider that NaaTya Sangiit became more and not less classical over
time, to the extent that naaTyapad survive today almost exclusively as “tail-piece” items
in classical programs, we can see that NaaTya Sangiit is ultimately a much different
genre than Ranbindrasangiit or any other Bengali semi-classical genre. As I will argue in
concluding this chapter, I feel that these differences reveal profound underlying
differences in the respective music cultures and the broader cultures of Bengal and
Maharashtra.
Another parallel between Rabindrasangiit and Marathi musical theatre is that both
are products of the mid 19th century and the many changes which took place in Indian
society during that period, including urbanization, the rise of an English-educated middle
class, and the growth of nationalistic sentiment across India - all of course closely related
developments. As Ashok Ranade explains in his authoritative 1986 monograph Stage
Music of Maharashtra, both “folk-“ and “ritualistic presentations” that have a passing
resemblance to Western theatre and, more specifically, dramatic presentations
accompanied by music, have a long history in the Maharashtra region, dating back at
least 800 years. It was in the 19th century, though, that Marathi theatre moved into what
Ranade terms the “stage-phase,” i.e. when various changes take place resulting in a form
of theatre where, first, the presentations take place in a well defined “acting area” that is
clearly segregated from the audience or “onlookers,” which in turn discourages their
active participation (a characteristic of earlier dramatic presentations in Maharashtra and
other parts of India); the stories and themes tend to revolve around more realistic,
“human” plots, resulting in a need for pre-written scripts with set dialogues and for more
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ealistic and developed costuming and scenery; and the primary source of patronage has
shifted from “the royal, aristocratic patrons to a widely distributed, culture-conscious,
economically speaking less-endowed class”(1986:9). This is a theoretical process of
development which Ranade proposes to be true of theatrical forms across India, both
prose-oriented and music-oriented. However, to account for the specific lines along
which theatre in Maharashtra developed, he adds that “the Occidental Seasoning in
musico-dramatic relationship remains on the wane, if the regional culture has a strong
base of art-music (which is known as ‘classical’ music in India)”(14). It is for this reason
that in Maharashtra that Sangiit NaaTak and prose drama developed independently of one
another, with the latter taking a much more obviously Western-derived shape over time.
There is some dispute when the “modern era” of Marathi music-drama started.
Vamanrao Deshpande felt that it began with the debut of the play Shakuntala in 1880,
produced and performed by the famous Kirloskar drama company headed by Annasaheb
Kirloskar (Balwant Pandurang) (1972:58). While noting that other authorities see the
tradition as having begun as early as the late 17th century with the tradition of patronage
of theatrical presentations by the Maratha kings of Tanjore in South India, Ranade, for
the reasons cited above (along with the fact that these presentations drew heavily on
southern, i.e. non-Marathi, music and folk traditions), however, feels that the ‘modern
era’ of Marathi properly begins with the first “ticketed” performance of a Marathi
theatrical, staged at Grant Road Theatre in Bombay by the company led by Vishnudas
Bhave in 1853 (1986:4). Other important innovations, such as the introduction of the
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vertically-operated front curtain, painted scenery, gas lighting, etc. were subsequently
introduced in the following two decades.
Bhave, for his part, started out in the service of the king of Sangli state in the
southern part of Maharashtra where his father had also served as a court official. Bhave
received his initial encouragement as well as a promise for future financial support from
the king when he was still in his twenties. However, as the monarch passed in 1851 and
patronage was no longer available in Sangli, Bhave was granted permission to take his
troupe on tours around Maharashtra in lieu of continued patronage from the court. In
terms of the theatrical side of the equation, Ranade credits Bhave with the introduction of
a more linear, less episodic “enacted story,” rather than “a mere projection of a narrative”
that was typical of the older folk-dramas. Bhave continued to base his stories around
gods and other mythical characters, but even then, he increased the realism of his
presentations by creating more realistic masks, costumes, and makeup, along with the use
of actual weapons by actors “who are reported to have spared no pains to acquire the
requisite efficiency in martial arts...”(ibid.:11). Ranade feels that Bhave’s plays also
contained important undertones of nationalist sentiment. As Ranade writes, “The battle-
scenes, with the inevitable victory of the Gods over the demons hinted a Gods-Marathas,
Demons-foreign-rulers identification”(ibid.:13). In terms of the musical side of Bhave’s
plays, the “Bhave-model,” as Ranade calls it, differed from what would later become the
customary practice in Marathi music-drama, as Bhave’s plays represented a transitional
phase in the development of the Sangiit NaaTak. Thus, in Bhave’s plays, all the singing
was done by the sutradhaar, or narrator, the instrumental accompaniment was minimal,
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with only the barrel-shaped mRidaangam drum, and finger-cymbals, and both Hindi and
Marathi “verses” were used. In terms of the music, Bhave (who composed all the music
for his troupe) mainly relied on traditional Marathi verse forms, as much of the singing
was recitative-like, and intended to convey information, and songs composed in basic,
common ragas (ibid.:47).
The history of classical or classically-derived music on the Marathi stage begins
with the activities of the Kirloskar company, hence Deshpande’s assertion that Marathi
music-drama begins with Annasaheb Kirloskar. For his plays, Kirloskar largely
depended on Bhave-type music, adding to this other Marathi tunes such as women’s
songs, “lavani-type tunes,” and Karantaki tunes, and “partly also classical ragadhari
tunes”(1972:59). Also like Bhave, songs in Kirloskar’s plays were not music for their
own sake, but rather for carrying the plot forward. As such, in the early days (in the
1880s), as many as 150 to 200 (short) tunes were featured in one play. Kirloskar also
employed some of the great singer-actors of the day, including Bhaurao Kolhatkar, the
first truly legendary stage singer and the first great heroine of the Marathi music-drama
(as all roles were played by males in those days) who would serve as the model for a
number of famous successors. Kolhatkar was particularly adept, as Ranade notes, at
singing “lavani-oriented songs and other such song forms”(1986:49). More importantly
for the present discussion, though, Kirloskar also employed Balkoba Natekar, a singer
who, while less popular with audiences than Kolhatkar, was classically trained, having
learned Dhrupad from Ustad Wazir Khan (also the guru of legendary sarodists Allaudin
Khan and Hafiz Ali Khan) as well as biin and sitar. Natekar was the forerunner to the
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later dramas that drew more and more of their music from classical sources, as he made a
practice of selecting his own tunes even for established dramas in order to provide
himself with vehicles for more involved musical elaboration.
The first drama company to use classical music as the primary source for the
songs featured in its plays was the Waikar Sangeet Mandali which was headed by
Pandoba Yevateshwarikar (P.G. Gurav), like Natekar, a classically trained vocalist, and
which initiated its activities in 1890. Yevateshwarikar, as both Ranade and Deshpande
agree, intended to “purify” the music of the Marathi stage by classicizing it. As such he
composed songs in “heavy ragas such as Jayajayawanti, Aarbi, Adana, Suha, Paraj,
Basant-Bahar, Bibhas, etc. and included various forms of music such as dhrupads,
taranas, and sargams, and employed even the rhythmic complexities of Dugan (double
tempo) and Chougan (quadruple tempo)”(Deshpande 1972:60). Yevateshwarikar seems
to have been ahead of time, however, as his company was out of business by the turn of
the 20th century, while companies who leaned more heavily on the “uniformly cheap
tunes” (to use Deshpande’s term) of the qawaalii and ghazal type popularized by the
Parsi-Gujurati musicals in Bombay, such as the company run by Madhav Patankar or
slightly later, Shripad Krishna Kolhatkar, continued to thrive well into the new
millennium. It could be very reasonably asserted that the “real beginning” Marathi
Sangiit NaaTak in musical terms, however, came not with the opening of the Kirloskar
Mandali’s first music-drama, Shakuntala, but rather with the 1911 opening of the K.P.
Khadilkar penned drama Maanapamaan. This naaTak is notable for two prime reasons.
First, the actors teamed in the main roles were Nanasaheb Joglekar, who as Ranade notes
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defined the role of the hero (Dhairyadhar) in Maanaapman, one of the enduring classics
of the Marathi stage, and by Balgandharva (Narayan Rajhans), who went on to become
indisputably the greatest heroine and greatest overall performer in the history of Marathi
music-drama. Second, as Khadilkar was no expert in music, the singer-actor-harmonium
player Govindrao Tembe was chosen to select tunes for the drama.
Although the process of classicizing the music of Marathi music-drama did not
start or end with Tembe or Balgandharva, the pair taken together account for some the
most important changes which pushed Marathi music theatre in this direction. Regarding
Tembe, also well-known as a music critic and frequent accompanist of the great Alladiya
Khan, Deshpande writes,
All these thirty-odd years since the inception of the modern stage [dating back to
1880], music had been principally used as a vehicle for carrying forward the flow
of the narrative. It had, therefore, perforce to be simple, though it might be
dignified. But Govindrao employed his innovation to heighten the impact of
music by sharpening the emotive content of the song such as love, valour, sorrow,
longing, etc. For this purpose, his resourceful mind had recourse (barring a
sprinkling of classical tunes for the hero) to his large repertoire of Purab-style of
music, of which great thumri and kajri singers , such as Joharabai [Zorabai] of
Agra, Mojuddin Khan, Goharjan, Malkajan, etc. were then the principal
exponents. The songs in the plays were now mostly “singable” rather than
“recitative” as in the early days; and naturally required more time for their
elaboration to make their emotional impact. Consequently, the number of songs,
which was enormous, ranging between 150 and 200, was drastically cut down to
about 50, of which the really singable and worth elaborating were only about 15
to 20. Instead of being simple as in former days, the music was now stylized,
more evolved, and fashioned to bring home to the audience the emotion of the
song and the situation (1972:62-63).
As Ranade frequently notes, any of the major steps forward in the development of
Marathi music-drama are difficult to attribute to one figure, as most changes are the result
of a number of different people working simultaneously and often in totally separately
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contexts. Thus, Tembe was simply the first music director to have the good fortune to
contribute classical (actually semi-classical in Tembe’s case) tunes to a major hit drama,
although he does deserve credit for having had the foresight to choose tunes based on the
more palatable semi-classical Northern genres. The ground had to be prepared before
audiences would accept naaTyapad-s based on the orthodox classical vocal forms.
Of the two, Balgandharva is without a doubt the more fondly and well
remembered figure than was Tembe, which is quite understandable given his onstage
role. Tembe, by contrast, more frequently made his mark behind the scenes, though he
too played on stage roles, for example when he played the hero opposite Balgandharva in
the drama Vidhyaahaaran (1913), for which he again selected the tunes (with
Balgandharva’s assistance). Balgandharva’s biggest contribution was as a popular and
charismatic performer that defined all the roles he played and the role of the heroine
generally for all his contemporaries and successors. I will discuss his musical style
shortly, but it is important to mention that, as Ranade notes, beyond his wild popularity,
Balgandharva was notable among the greats of stage music in that he not only spent his
entire 50 odd year career playing female roles, unlike other male heroines that started
playing child roles and ended their career playing male roles (perhaps performing as a
heroine in between), he also never had any ambitions to sing outside of the dramatic
context, in contrast again to most of his contemporaries who combined performing on the
stage with performing in classical recitals (1986:65-66). One important change to the
physical set-up of the Marathi theatre attributable to Balgandharva was that (in 1910), he
decided to shift the accompanying musicians (generally a pedal-harmonium player and
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percussionists) from the wings to a pit directly in front of the stage, which in turn
increased the volume of the music and forced the singer-actor to step forward to the very
front of the stage to be able to project his voice to the back of the hall. This was one very
important factor in bringing about a scenario where the singer and the songs increasingly
became the center of attention, a change that, in the estimation of many, compromised the
integrity of the dramatic aspect of the plays. Balgandharva’s popularity, which often
translated to repeated encores of certain tunes within the course of the dramas he starred
in, not unlike the situation in European opera when certain star singers were obliged by
their audiences to repeat particular arias over and over, was another large factor in this
general movement.
It is a tribute to the success of Balgandharva that he was made a partner in the
Kirloskar company in 1911, only to start up his own company two years later, the
Gandharva Natak Mandali. During the period of existence of the Gandharva company, it
staged several dramas which are of particular importance. The first was Samshaykallol
written by G.B. Deval, the “dramatist-trainer-in-residence” for the Gandharva mandali
who would later become a legend in his own right, notable for its story which is set in a
(then) contemporary milieu and which featured a “cultured woman belonging to the
professional singer’s class”(Ranade 1986:68). More important for the present
discussion, though, was the drama Swayamwara, for which the great khyaaliya
Bhaskarbua Bakle was engaged to select the music. As Ranade writes, “Pt Bhaskarbua
Bakhle, the legendary khyal-singer, selected tunes for the play and in this manner khyal-
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music in all its majesty became a dominant shaping influence in the unfolding of Marathi
stage-music”(ibid.:69). While Bhaksarbua was not the first music director to use
khyaal-s as a pattern or base for naaTyapad-s, Deshpande notes an important difference
between Bhaskarbua’s tunes and those utilized by Pandoba Yevateshwarikar, namely,
that Bhaskarbua used common, what might be described as “middle of the road” ragas,
ragas that were certainly classical (unlike the “Thumri ragas” used by Tembe) or, in other
words, suitable for Khyal and Dhrupad, but that were also relatively common and
relatively simple in terms of their structure, like Bhimpalasi, Bhoopali, Yemen, Kafi,
Bihag, and Tilak-Kamod (1972:64). Not only were these ragas more palatable to theatre
audiences than the “heavy raga”-based music of Pandit Yevateshwarikar, they also, as
Ranade points out, were perfectly suited to Balgandharva and the “subtler shades of
controlled eroticism and melodiousness” which he opted for in contrast to his
contemporaries.
This, then, would almost complete the process by which naaTyapad-s became
vehicles of intrinsic musical interest which, to a large extent, could stand alone, rather
than as bits of dialogue or narration set to music. To again quote Deshpande, “[the] new
idea of employing the song to deepen the emotional mood of its word-content, rather then
to carry forward the flow of the narrative,” effectively pioneered by Tembe, was “now
further accentuated by Bhaskarbuwa Bakhle…”(ibid.:63). There is more to it than this,
of course, as I have already described – many other figures besides Tembe and
Bhaskarbua were involved in this process of classicizing the Marathi stage. Even
Vishnudas Bhave tellingly referred to his music as “Ragiyat (i.e. of the Rag-mould),”
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even though it was not at all classical in nature (Ranade 1986:15). This is not to say that
the use of Khyal as the base of theatre music was an inevitability or that, from
Bhaskarbua forward, every music director in Maharashtra used basically his same
approach. On the contrary, there always were (before Swayamwar) and continued to be
competing versions of Marathi music-drama. I also do not mean to suggest that Marathi
naaTyapad ever, at any point in the history of the genre, grew into a full-fledged classical
genre. Theatre music always remained semi-classical because it never included true,
classical-style abstract raga development. At best, stage singers like Balgandharva were
masters at certain taan patterns, which, despite their intricacy, were not improvised and
were based on certain stock patterns. The main focus of NaaTya Sangiit is not unlike
Thumri, as Deshpande suggests. The idea is to develop a particular mood which the text
describes. I do think it is noteworthy, however, that all the figures involved made such a
push to develop an essentially limited form along classical lines.
At any rate, to conclude this brief history of Marathi music-drama, the pattern
established by Bhaskarbua would go on to effectively serve as the model for NaaTya
Sangiit from Swyamwar forward. One large factor in the pervasiveness of this approach
was the fact that two of the most important and influential music-directors outside of
Bhaskarbua were Tembe himself and Master Krishnarao (Krishna Phulumbrikar), both
disciples of Bhaskarbua. It does not seem, based on the available sources, however, that
the medium (music-drama), or at least the musical side of it, changed significantly after
this high point. Although Balgandharva continued performing until 1944, Ranade feels
that his last musical triumph came with the 1931 drama Kanhopatra, which is notable for
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the use of abhang or Marathi devotional songs as the main form of music. As Ranade
states, Balgandharva “extended their scope and enhanced their dignity on account of a
discriminate enrichment of their elaborative possibilities”(1986:72). It is due to
Balgandharva’s efforts, then, that abhang were to reach “concert status,” or in other
words became part of the repertoire of classical musicians. Deshpande echoes this
statement when he asserts that, due to the popularity of stage songs, “the Raga music of
the classical style brought about a steady but revolutionary change even in the non-
classical or popular forms of music”(1972:41). Ranade does mention the efforts of
Gwalior singer Pandit Ramkrishnabua Vaze, both in tutoring some of the great singer-
actors outside of Balgandharva, including Dinanath Mangeshkar (the father of record-
setting Bollywood playback singer Lata Mangeshkar) and Keshavrao Bhonsle, and in
putting somewhat of his own stamp on the classical-style theatre music with his use of
rare (acchop) ragas, fast tempos ( as opposed to the madhyalaya preferred by
Balgandharva and his music selectors), and even short aalaap-s to begin each piece
(1986:80). For the most part, however, the death knell for the Marathi music-drama
came with the advent of film in the 1930s, which, as Ranade explains, presented a
popular alternative to stage dramas with which Sangiit NaaTak could never truly
compete. This defeat was perhaps best symbolized by Balgandharva’s defection to work
with the Marathi language film company Prabhat Films in 1934. After World War II, the
music-drama would briefly revive and throw up some new stars, but it never again
reached its pre-war heights. Today, I think it is fair to say that if music-dramas are
performed at all, it is strictly on an amateur basis and for either historical or sentimental
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purposes, although the music itself, as mentioned above, has found a place on the
classical stage as a “tail-piece” genre. Prose-drama, for its part, however, continues to
thrive with the “theatre crazy” audiences of Maharashtra.
Before proceeding to the conclusion of this chapter, there are two more points to
be made about NaaTya Sangiit. The first regards the singing style of some the great
performers of the Marathi music-drama. I am particularly interested here, as in the case
of Tagore’s music, in the adjectives that are used to describe the style and, more
especially, the vocal timbre of these singers. I should note that as I will depend here for
the most part again on Ashok Ranade’s work for this information, his words carry an
authority that goes beyond his erudition as a scholar. That is, since Ranade is very much
a Maharashtrian and a classically-trained singer, one can argue that his descriptions are
not only to be seen as his attempt to objectively describe what he heard from (or read
about) these artists. They also, to a large extent, can be taken as example of how a
specifically Maharashtrian person would describe his own culture and traditions – a point
which is just as true of Sukumar Ray or Chhaya Chatterjee on the Bengali side. At any
rate, the point I would like to make here is a rather simple one regarding the approaches
of those singers who worked in their prime as heroes and those, typified of course by
Balgandharva, who are primarily remembered as heroines. First, though, I should state
very clearly that what most distinguishes the vocal approach of Marathi stage singers
versus either non-Maharashtrian classical vocalists and singers of semi-classical music of
other regions is the relatively high tessitura employed by theatre singers. As K.P.
Mukherjee explained to me, most classical, gharaanedaar vocalists (prior to the advent
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of large numbers of Marathi singers in the field of Khyal) would never use a tonic pitch
higher than concert C or C# in Western terms. However, stage singers were compelled
by the nature of the halls they performed in to use whatever means possible to make
themselves audible to every audience member, no matter how far from the stage. So, this
necessitated the higher pitch (as high as F or G above concert C), along with a rather
pointed vocal delivery, since unlike in Khyal, intelligibility was also an important
consideration. These are factors that were an issue for heroes and heroines alike.
For the heroes, we see a consistent use of terms that, not surprisingly, emphasize
their masculine qualities. Thus, regarding Dattopant Halyalkar, Ranade begins,
“Endowed with a ‘he-man’ physique and matching vocal resources, Halyalkar could play
each [hero] role that Bhaurao [Kolhatkar] had played with unfailing impact and
authenticity.” Ranade also adds, “Such was the power of his voice that to get an adequate
drone it was necessary for him to employ two or more large-sized pedal
harmoniums!”(1986:61). Along these same lines, Ranade’s description of Keshavrao
Bhonsle merits being quoted at length:
…Bhonsle’s fame rests on his achievement by creating a forceful, iterative
singing-style which laid emphasis on skillful execution of tans…and an overall
tone of aggression in music…
Once he had established his own dramatic troupe, the Lalitakaladarsh in 1908, he
re-affirmed his distinctive singing-style in Rakshasi Mahatvakansha (1913, Veer
Vamanrao Joshi), a play of clashing swords, matching intrigues and dialogues.
Music-wise the play totally depended on tunes bodily lifted from the other
popular melodies from Manapaman and other categories of Hindustani art-music.
It was Bhonsle’s masculine style that made the impact. His pronunciation of
words was forceful, the voice-production relied heavily on an open A-vowel and
the tans were executed with marked stress (the extra punch being added through
jaw-movements). Thus, the cumulative musical experience was of a bold, earfilling
singing that assaulted one with a view to conquer into an aesthetic
submission (ibid.:65).
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Of “Master” Dinanath (Mangeshkar), Ranade notes he was both influenced by Bhonsle
and that, even at an early stage of his career, Dinanath’s “presentations were marked by
an unmistakable flash and aggression in singing…”(ibid,:76).
The voice of Balgandharva, the archetypical heroine of the Marathi music-drama,
is conversely described as “soft” and “sweet” and his overall approach as “textually
smooth, structurally intricate and rhythmically unstressed though complex”(ibid.:69). In
the same context, in regard to BG’s evolving style Ranade says, “In Swayamwar, he
picked up the essentials of rag-music but also succeeding in replacing the high
seriousness associated with art-music, with a balanced sweetness.” Also important is
Ranade’s assertion that in lieu of any “great variety” in term of pitch, timbre, “it was the
melodic continuity, an uninterrupted flow, that was the supreme ruling principal of his
even music”(ibid.:70).
There are two smaller but nonetheless important points that need be made about
this these descriptions. First, it is tempting to attribute these two differing categories or
approaches to the practical needs of the theatre, that is, to the need for differentiation
between male and female roles that were both exclusively played by male actors until late
in the history of the music-drama. Also, one could add the fact that while Marathi theatre
as a whole, both prose- and music-theatre, generally moved toward a more and more
realistic approach to important factors such as plot, scenery, costuming, etc., as time
passed, the typical music-drama still tended to focus on gods and demons and the clash
between mostly stereotypical characters representing ideal types and rigid dichotomies.
This much is, of course, true, but this separation between the two extremes of soft and
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sweet singing versus “robust,” “masculine,” and “aggressive” singing, corresponds very
closely to the two types of Maharashtrian Khyal singers I proposed in chapter 4. To
briefly reiterate, I argue there that Marathi (or Maharashtra-based) Khyal singers could be
divided into, on one hand, those that favor a sweet, highly emotional, and somewhat more
simple style and emphasize karuNaa ras, such as Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, Abdul
Karim Khan, or Kumar Gandharva, and on the other, singers who combine the
Agra/Gwalior and Jaipur gharana styles, which results in an overall approach that favors
an aggressive, forceful, open-throated style and which features complex rhythmic play,
intricate taankaari, and an emphasis on viir ras (mood of heroism/valour). Whether or
not stage music influenced Khyal in this manner or vice-versa, it is clear that this duality
is a deeply embedded aspect of Marathi musical culture.
Also, although I will address this point more in the next chapter, one could easily
argue that the aesthetic values embodied in Balgandharva’s music (or one of the above
classical singers) are more or less identical to those which dominate Bengali regional
(and classical) music, i.e. “softness,” “sweetness,” “pathos.” This is true to a large
extent. However, I would like to emphasize that despite this overlap, there is still
something different in this approach in the Maharashtrian context. Ranade’s statement
that BG’s voice, in spite of a certain lack of “robustness” and diction that was “not
forceful,” “possessed an adequate reach and the speech too had sort of a clipped clarity to
it”(ibid.:66), takes us much of the way to answer. What I take from this, as well as from
listening to recordings of Balgandharva in contrast to performers of Bengali music, is
that, while BG’s voice was sweet by any standard, there remains a forcefulness and,
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especially, a quality of pointedness, nasality, and clarity that is not there in the typical
Tagore singer’s (or the singer of any other type of Bengali regional music’s) voice. It is
this type of fine distinction that helps greatly in understanding the fundamental
differences between Bengali and Maharashtrian aesthetic values, even if, in regards to
BG specifically, it can be partly attributed to the lack of microphones for much of his
career or the influence of classical vocal timbres on his own vocal approach.
The remaining point about NaaTya Sangiit to be made here concerns its
relationship with the Hindustani classical tradition in Maharashtra, which boils down
primarily to the tradition of Khyal singing. Obviously, as described above, Marathi
theatre music has been strongly influenced by classical vocal music. The question is how
and to what extent theatre music has influenced or affected classical music. This
question can be approached in two ways: first, in specifically musical terms, in other
words, whether or not the style and performance practice of NaaTya Sangiit has impacted
the way that Maharashtrian classical singers sing Khyal; and, second, whether the
popularity of NaaTya Sangiit, a form derivative of Khyal, Thumri, daadraa, etc., has
attracted listeners to classical music, drawn listeners away, or had no real impact. The
first question is much harder to answer. Many of my informants felt that NaaTya Sangiit
has indeed had an impact on the style of Marathi classical singers, though some argued
that it had not. For those that felt that it had, most had a hard time pinpointing exactly
what that influence was, beyond the use of higher than usual tonic pitch. Bombay-based
Khyal singer and commercial music composer Devki Pandit felt strongly that “there is a
definite tonal shift” when you hear someone singing NaaTya Sangiit compared to
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someone singing Khyal or Thumri in the idiomatic North Indian style. She had some
difficulty describing this “tonal shift” beyond saying that she felt that “Maharashtrians go
a little nasal”(interview, 2005), although she was able to demonstrate these differences
rather helpfully with her own voice. Veena Sahasrabuddhe felt that the influence came in
the style of tana used by many Maharashtrian singers, a style she described as
“circular”(interview, 2005). 113
More typical of my informants’ responses along these lines, however, was when
Babanrao Haldankar told me that the theatre music approach “creeps in” to the singing of
many Marathi khyaaliya-s, without specifying anything beyond that. The real problem is
that, not surprisingly, not a single vocalist I met in Bombay or Pune ever told me that
they had purposely brought anything from NaaTya Sangiit into their style of performing
Khyal. And, in addition, among those who felt that some Marathi Khyal singers had been
influenced by NaaTya Sangiit, none of them were willing to point out any such
performers by name. So, while some provided me with some clues to help in the process
of figuring out what had come into Khyal from the theatre music tradition, it was left to
me as an outside observer to search for correspondences from the performances and
recordings to which I have had access. This is a question I will postpone until the next
chapter, where I will examine the whole range of regional factors which come to bear on
the style of classical musicians in both Maharashtra and Bengal. Along these lines, I
should note that I intend to take the same approach in the case of Bengali khyaaliya-s and
Rabindrasangiit as with Marathi vocalists and theatre music. However, in the Bengali
113 In more concrete terms, this would be a taan that repeats 3, 4, or 5 pitches is a loop, for example (in
scale degrees), 123212321… or 1767121767121…
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case it seems more likely that any correspondences in the style and performance practice
between these two genres represent a shared common influence rather than any direct
influence of the semi-classical on the classical, as is arguably true of the situation in
Maharashtra. This is due to the fact that singers of Khyal generally do not sing
Rabindrasangiit and vice-versa, as opposed to Maharashtra where most singer-actors
were also classical performers. Tagore music is a tradition in its own right, but there are
very few NaaTya Sangiit specialists, especially now in the 21 st century.
The answer to the other question, whether music-drama had impacted the
popularity of Khyal in Maharashtra, is quite simply yes, and the impact was a positive
one. Virtually every musician I interviewed for this project, Maharashtrian, Bengali, or
otherwise, at least mentioned NaaTya Sangiit as a very important reason why Khyal had
become so much more prevalent in Maharashtra than in Bengal. The written sources I
have consulted also agree unanimously on this point. G.H. Ranade again offers a fairly
representative view on this issue when he writes,
The tunes of some of the beautiful Hindustani Chij-s [khyal compositions] in
simple but charming Raga-s were adopted for Marathi songs which the audience
could easily understand and so the desire to learn the original Hindustani Chij-s
began to take hold of the minds of the musically gifted section of the audience.
Thus one often came across persons who though lacking any training in classical
music had mastered the technique of raga-music through the medium of these
Marathi songs (1967:41).
On many occasions during my stays in Bombay and Pune, this relationship between
classical music and theatre music was put across to me in various conversations, and
generally in just about these terms. Most often I was told that someone could get
acquainted with a naaTyapad based on a particular Khyal composition in the context of a
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drama and then hear the composition in its original form and that this, then, created a
fondness and comfort-level with a difficult and intricate type of music that would not
have been possible otherwise. Although I doubt this exact scenario played out very often,
even in the heyday of music-drama, the basic point is absolutely true. NaaTya Sangiit is
in one sense a watered–down version of classical music, but in terms of its musical
substance, the relationship between Khyal and NaaTya Sangiit is clear even for those
who cannot verbalize or describe the similarities. The Marathi lyrics and the tie in with a
drama are the hook, the proverbial sugar to help make the medicine palatable, so to
speak, but the original base for each naaTyapad is still intact and identifiable. Also, it
could not have hurt that, since many of Mahrashtra’s greatest Khyal singers from the turn
of the century until the 1950s or early 60s also acted on stage, the audiences in those days
would already have been familiarized with a particular artist’s persona and stage-
presence before ever attending a classical recital. Ranade’s assertion that some people
“had mastered the technique of Raga-music” by listening to NaaTya Sangiit is a bit of a
stretch, but the truth is that one does not need a thorough understanding of ragas to
appreciate classical music. In this way, music drama, in its day at least, likely produced
as many ‘Kansens’ as Paluskar’s music schools ever did.
Conclusion: Newcomers and Inheritors
At this juncture, I would like to return to Bourdieu in order to tie together the
various strands I have brought forward in this chapter up to this point. Thus far, I have
made use of Bourdieu’s formulations primarily as a means of getting at not only those
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types of music are preferred by particular “class fractions” from a more abstract, cross-
cultural basis but also why. Bourdieu is fairly clear and straightforward in this regard,
explaining that taste ultimately corresponds to social class in the sense that more
privileged classes not only have more leisure time to learn about and consume art
generally, including music, they also, for this very reason, are more likely able to
appreciate and understand forms of art that are detached from every day realities, in other
words, art that is abstract, self-referential, and not driven by moral and/or ethical
imperatives, such as the need to portray something that is conventionally thought of as
beautiful. While this is merely a subsidiary point in Bourdieu’s larger analysis, it has
been useful in the present context, concerned as we are about the hierarchy of musical
genres in India, which, unlike France, is thoroughly multi-cultural in nature (and always
has been) and where there is much less consensus regarding what forms of culture should
be properly viewed as high or low. Bourdieu’s larger project in Distinction, however, is,
as he states, to uncover the social nature of taste in order to demonstrate that it is in the
best interests of those who are at the top of the socio-cultural hierarchy to conceal this
fact, as they would prefer that both their position in the hierarchy, along with the
positioning of other classes below them is correct, natural, and inevitable. Concealing the
social nature of taste is a means for the elite to both gain and maintain power, in the
broadest sense of the word.
In terms of the present study, my intention is not simply to state, for example, that
Tagore songs are thoroughly “middle-brow” in nature, and so if Bengalis want to place
his music on the level of classical music, they are sadly mistaken. Bourdieu himself
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would no doubt reject such an overly-simplistic and reductionist take on his work. The
point, rather, is to try to understand why, to continue with the same example, Tagore’s
proponents make these claims. In other words, my intention is not to judge these genres
of music in terms of high and low, but instead to begin to understand why music-lovers,
be they musicians, musicologists, critics, or otherwise, in India make the judgments that
they do and, by extension, why the audiences in Bengal and Maharashtra support the
genres and artists that they do. The easiest way to get at this is simply to ask people why
they feel the way that they do about any type or genre of music, but another virtue of
Bourdieu’s work is that he demonstrates that most of these value judgments are
subconscious in nature, hence his observation that those who have greatest familiarity
with a particular art-form in terms of early and sustained contact from the earliest stages
of their life are also the least likely to verbalize about it. For this reason, then, it is up to
the analyst to gather all the evidence they have at their disposal in order to develop a
reading of the situation.
While Bourdieu’s analyses are not always entirely lucid or straightforward, his
methodology, for the most part, is. What he has done in Distinction is, first, to determine
the nature of the class structure in France; next, to find out (through extensive surveying)
the forms of culture they consume or patronize; and, then, finally, to determine the
correspondences between these two realms. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for
me to replicate Bourdieu’s approach exactly, as I neither have access to detailed
statistical information regarding the Indian class structure as a whole, nor do I have the
sociological training which would allow me to interpret such a vast body of data.
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Fortunately, I am dealing here with a greatly delimited body of information in
comparison with Bourdieu, concerned as I am with the classical and semi-classical genres
of pan-North India and the audiences which patronize them, not the entirety of Indian
culture. Also, while I do not have a great deal of statistical information regarding the
“class fractions” present in Maharashtra and West Bengal states, I am confident of one
very important fact, that the audiences of classical and semi-classical music in both states
are similar enough to be taken as identical – not in terms of numbers but in terms of their
composition. I asked each one of my informants in 2005 about their experiences with
and opinions of audiences in Bombay, Pune, and Calcutta, and they almost unanimously
agreed regarding the basic distribution of listeners. In each city, there are a small number
of connoisseurs who primarily patronize classical music and much larger group of more
casual listeners who divide their attentions between classical and semi-classical genres
and who can be broadly described as middle class. Of course, this leaves aside other
variables, such as which state has a larger middle class and how many middle class
people in each state patronize other forms of music, either exclusively or in combination
with classical and semi-classical music, but these again are not crucial here.
When we compare the respective cases of Maharashtra and Bengal, then, we find
an apparent contradiction, at least in terms of Bourdieu’s theories. That is, by percentage,
middle class Maharashtrian listeners seem to patronize classical music more frequently
than their Bengali counterparts. I say this not based on statistical evidence, again, but
rather on the observations of both my informants and from evidence provided by scholars
such as Sukumar Ray. Perhaps the biggest or most important difference between
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Rabindrasangiit and Marathi NaaTya Sangiit, beyond their strictly musical differences
(such as, for example, how faithfully they each make use of classical ragas), is the fact
that Tagore music is a tradition in its own right, while NaaTya Sangiit began as one
aspect of theatrical presentations and as that form of theatre declined, later became
relegated (or elevated, in the view of some) to the status of “tail-piece” genre heard most
frequently in classical recitals within the state of Maharashtra and rarely outside. That
Tagore music is a tradition distinct and totally separate from the Hindustani classical
tradition is not a controversial one – Ray says as much with his comments about
“Tagorians” and the “system of performance” of Tagore’s music that requires “a definite
type of training”(1973:184). The bigger question here, though, is whether or not the
Tagore song tradition is compatible with classical music, and the answer again appears to
be no. Based on both personal observation and on the anecdotal evidence provided by
my informants, it is clear that Khyal singers rarely if ever sing Tagore songs, and vice-
versa. Yes, Buddhadev Dasgupta plays sarod gat-s based on certain Tagore songs, but
the fact is that he is an instrumentalist, not a singer, and as such, does not have to concern
himself in the very different ways of using the voice required by Khyal and
Rabindrasangiit. That, of course, is not to mention the fact that even among
instrumentalists, only a handful have actually ever performed Tagore songs in any form
on the classical stage. Thus as Nayan Ghosh said, “those who are into Rabindrasangiit in
Bengal, deeply into Rabindrasangiit, have somehow alienated themselves from the
classical music scene,” while, conversely, “those who are strictly into classical music in
Bengal have generally shown very little interest in Rabindrasangiit”(interview, 2005).
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One might object that considering the profound differences between NaaTya
Sangiit and Rabindrasangiit, they are not really comparable. Indeed, the closest parallel
between Marathi NaaTya Sangiit and any Bengali semi-classical genre is between it and
Bengali Raag Pradhaan (songs where “raga is dominant”). Raag Pradhaan songs
resemble Marathi theatre songs in the sense that both resemble chhoTaa khyal-s (in terms
of factors such as tempo, the use of certain talas, etc.), both feature a fairly orthodox
rendering of the ragas on which they are based, and both are pre-composed, including the
taan patterns that are characteristic to each and that serve as the main form of classical-
style ornamentation in both cases. Nayan Ghosh even went so far as to liken the late
Gyanendra Goswami, the prime exponent of Raag Pradhaan in the early 20th century to
Balgandharva (interview, 2005). The difference, however, is that Raag Pradhaan was
always a “stand alone” musical genre, and, likely to due this, it never approached NaaTya
Sangiit in terms of popularity, pervasiveness, or relevance in terms of classical music
(Raag Pradhaan is also not commonly used as a “tail-piece” genre now, if it ever was).
Dhruba Ghosh, in fact, voiced precisely this opinion during our interview, that if Raag
Pradhaan compositions had been associated with theatre as in the Marathi case, they
would have performed the same function of attracting listeners to Khyal as NaaTya
Sangiit has (interview, 2005). Conversely, if there were a semi-classical tradition in
Maharashtra that resembled Rabindrasangiit in the sense that Tagore music is, again, an
independent tradition, with its own distinct system of performance practice and its own
tradition of singers who exclusively perform Tagore songs, then that would of course be
the logical comparison.
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This is rather the point, though. In Maharashtra, the most important semi-
classical genre started out as theatre music, but despite the limitations of its function and
context, was ultimately shaped into an increasingly classical form over time by its
practitioners, who in a majority of cases were themselves classical singers, while in
Bengal the similarly most important genre is one that, while it is based in part on classical
music, comprises a separate tradition which has very little overlap with the classical
traditions. I asked many of my interlocutors if they felt that Rabindrasangiit had actually
drawn prospective students and future performers away from classical music, rather than
existing merely as an unrelated type of music that is more or less irrelevant in the context
of classical music (like devotional songs or film songs), and I should note that I based
this inquiry on a quote I read from Kumar Gandharva in a Marathi biography of Bhimsen
Joshi, where, regarding the state of Khyal in Bengal, KG stated that he felt many
potential Khyal singers in Bengal had been diverted by Rabindrasangiit, which can be
learned more easily and quickly and which brings greater financial rewards. 114 I received
a number of different responses to this question. The most humorous came from sarodist
and Ali Akbar Khan disciple Anindya Banerjee, who agreed that this might have been the
case in the past, but that now, thanks to both the declining technical standards of classical
musicians and the large number of listeners who cannot differentiate high quality
performances from amateurish performances, it is almost as easy to launch a career in
classical music as in Rabindrasangiit. Dipali Nag, for her part, felt that there were a
number of reasons that Bengalis did not pursue Khyal singing as frequently as
114 see Potdar (2002:84-86)
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Maharashtrians, but she did agree that the fact that “Bengalis are still completely
submerged” in Tagore’s songs was likely one important factor in this regard (interview,
2005). More often, though, my interlocutors were equivocal, stating that the popularity
of Tagore’s songs possibly has drawn listeners and students away from students, but, at
the same time, that they could not say for sure. None, however, ever seriously challenged
the notion that the Tagore song tradition was totally separate and independent from
classical vocal music.
Perhaps the most striking example of the role that Tagore’s music plays in the life
of the Bengali middle class came from sitarist Partho Bose. As he explained, middle
class Bengalis tend to see the arts as secondary to education, and as such, Tagore songs
are perfect as they are not as demanding time-wise (in terms of practice required) as
classical music is, which means that a young student can demonstrate their knowledge
much more quickly and easily while learning Tagore music rather than classical music
(interview, 2005). This statement is all the more telling, though, when we compare it to
the Maharashtrian example where, despite the hardships of classical music training,
Khyal singing so often plays the role of providing culture and well-roundedness to young,
middle class students, especially females. 115 Bourdieu himself notes that there is “no
more ‘classificatory’ practice than…playing a ‘noble’ instrument” (1984:18), i.e. a
classical instrument, such as the piano or violin. What I am arguing, then, is that this
‘culture providing’ function, which in many (if not most) cultures in India and elsewhere
is filled by an essentially classical tradition, especially music (though dance and other art
115
Proof of this is the large number of high-level female Khyal singers in Maharashtra, many of whom are
married and have children.
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forms can also fill this role), has been usurped in Bengal by an essentially non-classical
(at best semi-classical) genre. This, again, is a telling contrast to Maharashtra, where,
according to Veena Sahasrabuddhe, girls take up learning Khyal even more commonly
than males because girls (and, more importantly, their parents) typically know that they
will not be counted on as bread winners, and thus, can afford to learn and practice a
difficult and esoteric art form, one which takes many years to master and in which
financial success is far from guaranteed (interview, 2005).
This of course still leaves the apparent contradiction that same or equivalent
“class fractions” in Bengal and Maharashtra prefer not only different types of semi-
classical genres and classical genres (Rabindrasangiit and instrumental music in Bengal,
NaaTya Sangiit and Khyal in Maharahstra) but also but also in different numbers, as
more Bengalis than Marathis seem to prefer semi-classical music in lieu of or in place of
classical music, although my best guess is that in both states, middle-class audiences
prefer some combination of semi-classical and classical genres. This contradiction is
only apparent, however, as Bourdieu clearly explains that he is “aware of the dangers of a
facile search for partial equivalences” between different cultures and that “the system of
distinctive features which express or reveal economic and social differences…varies
considerably from one period, and one society, to another”(1984:xii). Thus, to
understand these differences, which might not appear to be great in the broader Indian
perspective, we have to factor in the many important differences that prevail between
modern India and Bourdieu’s France. Briefly stated, these are differences that are
historical and cultural, as much as economic. Of these, the historical aspect is most
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important, although history for the most part is neglected by Bourdieu. The lack of
history in Bourdieu’s own analyses is by no means a glaring oversight, though; his
intention was to draw a picture of how economic class correlates with taste in modern
France. This is a big enough task without having to describe the centuries of political,
cultural, and economic developments that led up to the system which Bourdieu details.
He does examine how individuals that move from one class to another have to adjust
their cultural practices accordingly, but otherwise his analysis is in purely synchronic
terms. However, without adding history to the equation in the present context, there is
little in Bourdieu’s theory that would account for the differences in question between
Maharashtrian and Bengali audiences and performers – it is only in the last century,
perhaps even only in the last few decades, that the middle classes in these two
states/regions have come to resemble each other (and the middle classes in other regions
of India) as closely as they do.
In discussing the uniqueness of music relative to other cultural forms and
practices, Bourdieu makes a distinction in passing that I feel is of great importance here,
though he neither explores in detail nor does he allude to it again in any other context.
The distinction in question is “inheritors” versus “newcomers”(1983:19). 116 Again, he
does not expand on this pair of terms, but based on his assertion that “‘musical culture’ is
something other than a quantity of knowledge and experiences combined with the
116 As Bourdieu writes, “For an adequate interpretation of what would be implied in a table correlating
occupation, age or sex with a preference for the Well-Tempered Clavier or Concerto for the Left Hand, one
has to break both with the blind use of indicators and with spurious, essentialist analyses which are merely
the universalizing of a particular experience, in order to make completely specific the multiple,
contradictory meanings which these works take on at a given moment for the totality of social agents and in
particular for the categories of individuals whom they distinguish or who differ with respect to them (in this
particular case the ‘inheritors’ and the ‘newcomers’)(1983:19)
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capacity to talk about them”(ibid.:19), Bourdieu seems to be suggesting that music is one
of the most, if not the most, difficult type of art or cultural practice about which to
verbalize and, thus, the area in which it is the most difficult for newcomers, i.e. social
climbers, to catch up, so to speak. This is perhaps as true of the raga-based music of
North India as any type of classical music around the world. Raagdhaari music is both
extremely complex and subtle, in the sense that true appreciation consists not only of
understanding the differences between one artist’s interpretations over time or between
those of one artist and those of another, it also means appreciating the differences
between genres, the stylistic approaches of different gharanas, and most importantly, the
often minute differences that separate one raga from another. Mastery of such a complex
system, even from the standpoint of the listener, requires in most cases not only lifelong
membership in the culture to which it belongs, but also life-long familiarity with the
music itself.
This in turn brings up another important difference between India on the one hand
and France and other Western capitalist societies on the other. In India, economic class
correlates much, much less closely with cultural practice than in France. The most
obvious example of this, one that is particularly relevant in this context, is the fact that
many of the wealthiest groups in modern India are not known as patrons of classical
music. Shruti Sadolikar indicated as much when, in the context of a discussion about
classical music patronage, she explained that today, the wealthiest merchants in Bombay,
many of whom are Gujurati and Marwari, prefer “the lightest forms of music” such as
film music over classical music, vocal or instrumental (interview, 2005). She also
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indicated that as late as 25 years ago, this same broad group of people supported both
theatre, including the Parsi-Gujurati theatre and the Marathi music-drama, and classical
music. There has been a shift, then, in the values and aesthetic preferences of this group
over time. To explain this shift is outside the scope of the present study, but it will
suffice here to note that, in India, those with the greatest economic power do not always
find it necessary to express or demonstrate this power through patronage of classical
music. Having said this, however, I do not mean to suggest that there is no clear
relationship between economic class and taste in India; this would be denying the validity
of Bourdieu’s work. There is some correlation, no doubt, but along with economic class,
we have to take into account other factors unique to India – factors which have taken on
less importance in modern Indian society generally, but which have played their own role
in shaping the present cultural scene, the most notable of which is caste - to arrive at a
satisfactory analysis.
The first factor I would like to mention is the historical impact of colonialism. As
many scholars have pointed out, the British, save for a few notable exceptions, took a dim
view of Indian music and for the most part disregarded it. However, while the impact of
British culture on classical Indian music was indirect, it was still profound. As Ashok
Ranade has written,
The chronological gaps between the felt and actual British influence exist in
varying proportions in different regions of India. This is one of the main factors
causally related to the fascinating spectacle of India remaining a single nation but
simultaneously registering an impact of a cultural federation. There is no doubt
that the unmistakable cultural confrontation triggered off by the British presence
evoked some responses and reactions that were more or less common throughout
the country. Yet, the cultural dynamics as it surfaced through literature, art,
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attitudes toward change and such comparable items differed from one region to
the other (1986:2).
It is hard to argue that this impact was no more profoundly felt in Bengal than in any
other region, mostly because it was felt there first, certainly much earlier than in
Maharashtra. The British effected many sweeping changes and reforms from their
earliest years in India, and to a large extent, Bengal served as a laboratory for the British,
who learned from both their successes and failures there and applied these lessons to the
regions which would come under their control later in the 19th century.
One of the most important early acts of the British Raj in Bengal, one that had a
particularly direct and important impact on classical music patronage was the “Permanent
Settlement of 1793.” To briefly explain, this measure was enacted after a particularly
severe famine in 1770 which forced the British officials to reappraise the land tenure
system, a system which was essentially the same as that employed by the Mughals. The
idea behind the 1793 measure, as Metcalf and Metcalf explain, was to convert the
traditional (i.e. Mughal appointed/sanctioned) zamiindaar class into something like the
Indian version of the English “gentleman farmer” who, by nature, felt it in his best
interests to continually improve the land and increase its produce, which would in turn
stabilize government revenues and increase them over time. This however turned out to
be a miscalculation:
Unfortunately the Cornwallis settlement wholly misconceived the position of the
zamindar…In India, prior to the coming of the British, the bundle of rights
associated with property were not concentrated in a land ‘owner’, but rather
dispersed among all those, among them the peasant cultivator, the zamindar, and
the government, who had an interest in the land. For his part, the zamindar
collected ‘rent’ from the peasantry, and, after deducting a share for his own
maintenance, passed on the remainder as ‘revenue’ to the state. He could sell or
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transfer only his own revenue collecting rights, not the land itself, for that did not
belong to him. Under the new land system, by contrast, the peasantry found
themselves reduced to the status of tenants without rights, while the zamindar as
proprietor found his entire estate liable to sale in case of default in paying the
taxes assessed on it. As the high and inflexible British demand could not at first
easily be met, estates rapidly came on to the market…The purchasers were those
familiar with the institutions of the new regime and who had prospered under it,
especially the Brahman and Kayastha employees of the [East India] Company and
of the old zamindars (Metcalf and Metcalf 2002:77-78).
While the “old zamiindaar” class in Bengal were not known specifically for their
patronage of Hindustani classical music, it is clear that the nouveau riche class that
gradually replaced them, who were, as the above passage indicates, largely high-caste
Hindus, were not at all pre-disposed to patronize the core classical genres, most notably
Khyal. Considering then that most of the ‘aristocracy’ of Bengal by the mid 19th century
when patronage was drying up in North India belonged to this class of new zamiindaar-s,
who as intermediaries of the British had used their insider knowledge to gain control of
large amounts of revenue-bearing land in the Bengali countryside, Bengal, in a sense, lost
its opportunity as there was little in the way of a cultured elite which had the interest or
knowledge level to patronize Khyal, unlike in Maharashtra where there were a number of
princely states ruled by Maratha and Brahman kings who could offer such patronage.
The result for Bengal, as I discussed in chapter 4, was that Thumri and other light and
semi-classical forms took their place as the dominant forms of cultivated music in Bengal
until well into the 20th century.
Beyond this direct change in the nature of patronage available to classical and
semi-classical music and the other arts, the British also effected a more profound change
in the mindset of the upper-caste Bengali. As Arabinda Poddar, among others, has
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explained, Bengali society immediately before the arrival of the British was stagnant in a
number of senses. Poddar writes, “The [society] which the European traders found in
India was closed, introvert, and hence also masochistic”(1970:2-4). This introverted
quality expressed itself variously in the well-known former Hindu custom which forbid
overseas travel (at the risk of losing caste), and thus overseas trade; a pronounced
aversion toward foreigners; “institutionalized hatred” and oppression of women, children,
and those of low caste; and, more generally, the submission of the individual and their
intellectual growth to the “collective interest of the family, the social unit, and, through
families, for the preservation of the social entity”(ibid.). The changes that were the result
of the British presence and their policies were far-reaching. Perhaps the most important
initial change was the rapid urbanization and concomitant growth of Calcutta, which was
a result of the accumulation of land in the hands of the new zamiindaar class who, rather
than living on the land in order to oversee and improve it, preferred to live in comfortable
style in Calcutta as absentee landlords, and which resulted in a preference for plantation-
style cultivation, particularly of indigo, which had its own pernicious effects on rural life.
It was in Calcutta, then, that Bengalis were able to mix with the large number of
foreigners pouring in to Bengal in the late 18th century, which included “marauders,”
“sadistic interlopers,” and “mercenaries” as well as “the Company’s civil servants, Royal
officers, judges of Supreme and High courts, lawyers, priests, physicians, engineers,
journalists, and numerous others” who “disseminated western light and learning and
values, - such as, elevation of the human status, philanthropy and humanistic ethic, ideas
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of social revolution…,” etc. (ibid.:20-21). It was this contact which allowed Bengal to,
as Poddar writes, “to take [an] intellectual lead over other provinces in India.”
Much of this influence, according to Poddar, came by osmosis, as it were – by
simple everyday contact with the Europeans in a variety of contexts, particularly in the
realm of commerce. One result of this contact and influence was the beginnings of the
widespread imitation of English habits, dress, lifestyle, etc., along with a desire to learn
English which “was also voiced almost simultaneously.” This imitation of the English,
which often amounted to ‘aping,’ resulted in the oft-discussed 19th century stereotype
known as the ‘Babu,’ the English-educated Bengali gentleman who tried in every way to
become English (most notably by avoiding any and all forms of manual labor (Dasgupta
1993:5)) and who later became an object of shame and derision for nationalist Bengali
leaders. To be sure, this English influence was not totally negative – Poddar frequently
refers to the influence of European ideas as “beams of English light” shining onto the
prevailing darkness of hidebound tradition. Learning the English language started, as
Poddar notes, as a pragmatic need, but soon knowledge, not only of the English language,
but also of all the “accumulated western ideas and modes of perception” that came along
with it became the standard for the cultured, educated Bengali. This resulted in “a
weaning away from the circumscribed exclusiveness of traditional education” along with
“freedom and material gain”(1970:30). In other words, what English education made
possible for the inquisitive Bengali was, in a very real sense, mental emancipation.
Eventually, of course, this education would also provide Bengalis and their fellow
Indians with the tools to liberate themselves from English rule. The downside of this
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emancipation, though, was alienation from all those who did not or could not follow this
path. This meant, first, alienation from all Bengalis outside of the imperial metropolis, as
this intellectual revolution was strictly limited to the confines of Calcutta. It also
frequently meant alienation from one’s family, at least for the hearty souls who took the
first step in casting off tradition and embracing Western thought and ideals. This
alienation brought, at least for some, “intense agony” and “a deplorable want of
conviction and fear of loss of identity” which “had benumbing affect on them”(ibid.:40).
This feeling of being trapped between two worlds yet belonging to neither is what, for
Poddar, defines not only Bengali, but all Indian intellectuals, even in the modern period.
This, then, is the legacy which informs the work of R Tagore, especially his
music. Yes, Tagore was keen on the idea of combining the best of what the West and
East each had to offer mankind. As Tapati Dasgupta writes,
Men like Ram Mohun Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Vidyasagar or Vivekananda
had shaped the Indian way of thinking in a different way from the early 19 th
century. Rabindranath inherited certain rich values from them and moulded his
own thoughts. The three related ideas – that India and the east were synonymous,
that Eastern civilization was distinguished by spiritual profoundness, and that the
East and the West complemented each other perfectly – did not originate with
Rabindranath. In one sense they were the natural expression in an idealized form
of the symbiosis between upper caste Hindus and their rulers in 19 th century
Bengal, and accordingly were articulated, either singly or jointly, by intellectuals
on both sides of the partnership (1993:7).
This is a bit more sanguine take on the development of Bengali intellectualism in the 19th
century than that offered by Poddar, but it is true that this ideal of a synthesis that would
combine the pragmatism, energy, and material progressiveness of Europe with the
“spiritual profoundness” of India was indeed Tagore’s stated goal. Taking into
consideration what we know of Tagore’s music, we can see that these ideals guided his
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musical endeavors as well. In a very literal sense, Tagore’s songs were one manifestation
of this synthesis, as they combined both Indian and Western melodies. On a deeper level,
though, as I have suggested elsewhere they embodied Tagore’s love of the common
Bengali and his culture as well as his love of democracy, as they were created and
intended to be sung and enjoyed by all Bengalis.
I would argue, however, that they are also the embodiment of a certain form of
iconoclasm that was part of R Tagore’s inheritance from the Bengali intellectual of
earlier generations. As Poddar says, “the spirit of rationalism with which they were
indoctrinated urged them to renounce all ancestral beliefs and observances and caste
restrictions”(1970:41). Tagore was perhaps not iconoclastic as such, certainly not on the
scale of these earlier intellectuals, but it seems that he did carry with him an inherited
sense of skepticism, a feeling that all customs, practices, and beliefs need be interrogated,
and if necessary, discarded. Thus, another way of understanding his music was as a sort
of critique of Hindustani music, and this seems all the more logical, as Tagore rather
clearly kept what he felt was good, i.e. aspects of Dhrupad form and the use of ragas,
while discarding those elements, such as overt abstractness and (in Tagore’s view)
meaninglessness virtuosity. For Tagore, Hindustani raga music was one among many
streams of Indian music.
To return to the Maharashtrian side of the equation, we again find a very different
situation than that encountered in Bengal. As noted in chapter 3, the Maharashtra region
was an attractive locale for Muslim gharaanedaar musicians looking for patronage
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opportunities due to the sizeable number of small princely states concentrated particularly
around the modern-day border of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Among the princely states
that I have already mentioned either in the context of the growth of Khyal gaayakii in the
region or in the context of the development of the Marathi musical theatre (contexts
which often overlapped, it should be noted) are: Kolhapur, Miraj, Ichalkaranji, Sangli,
Satara, Aundh, along with Baroda, located just across the modern Maharashtra-Gujurat
border, and Nagpur, which is in the extreme north-eastern part of Maharashtra state
(known historically as Vidharba or Berar). The point to be made in the current context,
however, is not simply that Marathi musicians could learn directly from these
gharaanedaar Ustads, though that is undoubtedly a crucial point in the early history of
Khyal in Maharashtra. As I also noted chapter 4, one caste group took the lead in
learning from these Ustads, both in Maharashtra and in the North itself. This was, of
course, the Marathi Brahmans, and what I would like to emphasize here is that not only
did the Brahmans take the lead in propagating classical vocal music, they also served as
the political leaders of Maharashtra from the later years of the Maratha empire all the
way until Indian independence in 1947. There are several different Brahmans subcastes
or lineages native to the Maharashtra region, the most important of which in political
terms, as detailed by Susan Bayly in Caste, Society, and Politics in India from the
Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (1999), were the BhaTT-s of Danda Rajpuri, a
lineage who “had made the office of the Maratha king’s chief minister their own
hereditary preserve,” until assuming de facto control of the central Maratha empire based
in Pune under the title of “Peshwa”(67). This political power in turn opened up
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opportunities for other Brahman groups including other KonkaNastha Brahmans
(Brahmans of the Konkan coast, also referred to as Chitpaavan-s) like the Peshwas
themselves who were essentially non-priestly Brahmans who worked in vocations such as
money lending and accountancy, as well as for the Deshastha (Brahmans of the “desh”,
or Deccan plateau) or priestly Brahmans. Later, in the late 19th century the “mental and
moral outlook” shared by these Brahman lineages “which was dynamic and advanced in
ethnological terms” predisposed them “to hunger for their lost political dominance,” and
which made them a group to be carefully watched and controlled from a British
perspective (ibid.:236). And, indeed, most of the key Maharashtrian leaders of the
nationalist era, the most notable being Bal Gangadhar Tilak, his son Lokmanya, and his
rival Gopal Krishna Gokhale, were Brahmans.
The point I am driving at here relates back to Bourdieu’s comment regarding
“newcomers” and “inheritors” who are distinguished by their preferences in music,
whether the music is “legitimate,” “middle-brow,” or otherwise. I realize that Bourdieu’s
intention is to describe the ways in which individuals relate to music in the present tense,
in synchronic terms. I feel, though, that this idea can be expanded to take into account
historical developments as well. In other words, at one point in history both Bengalis and
Maharashtrians were “newcomers.” The difference, however, is that in 19th century
Bengal there were very few individuals or groups of any kind in a position of social or
political leadership who valorized the Hindustani classical music tradition. Instead, what
was passed down by the intellectual, social, and cultural leaders of 19th and early 20th
century Bengal, most notably Tagore, was a legacy of skepticism toward traditional
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authority, cultural experimentation, and hybridity, along with a distinct taste for semi-
classical rather than classical music forms. In Maharashtra, by contrast, we see that not
only was the tradition of performance of classical vocal music passed directly from the
gharaanedaar Ustads to Marathi musicians, we can also see that a tradition of patronage
of classical music forms was passed from the leaders of pre-colonial society to the native
leaders of colonial society to the modern middle classes, a transition that was made all the
smoother by the fact that all these groups were largely composed by the same Brahman
lineages. One need only recall that Paluskar, a Deshashtha Brahman, while from a poor
background, was a favorite of the Raja of Miraj, which was undoubtedly due to the
manners he acquired thanks to his friendship with the son of the Raja of Kurundwad,
along with the caste background he shared with the king Balasaheb Patwardhan, himself
a KokaNastha Brahman. This was true as well of Vishnudas Bhave, the pioneer of
Marathi music-drama, who secured the patronage of the Raja of Sangli early in his career,
thanks to his father’s position as a court official there. In Bengal, there was no such
direct link between the traditional aristocracy and the emerging middle classes, and the
state of Khyal there (see chapter 4), is certainly a reflection of this history.
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8. Regional Musical Aesthetics
In this chapter, I intend to present an approach to understanding the stylistic
tendencies of Maharashtrian and Bengali classical musicians that is the farthest removed
of any I have explored to this point. More specifically, it is the farthest from what I call
the “Inside View” of Hindustani music, a view that, as I have explained earlier,
represents something like the common sense view of the history and present state of the
tradition held by practicing musicians of a scholarly bent, musicologists, critics, and
sometimes connoisseurs, and represents a mixture of essentially Bhatkhandian notions
concerning, for example, the centrality of vocal music and a particular emphasis on
grammatical and theoretical aspects of the music, combined with more pragmatic
observations on the nature of economic imperatives and how these influence the ways in
which particular musicians or musicians as a group shape or create their music. I have
termed this the “Inside View” because not only does it literally stand as the view,
generally speaking, of those who are the insiders in this context, but also because it
betrays a tendency to look at Hindustani music as a closed system, so to speak, in which
all meaningful changes come from the inside, from within the tradition and from within
the established body of repertoire and constituent musical elements. According to this
view, which of course is an approximation of the views of a number of different
musicians who are by no means unanimous when it comes to explaining this or that
aspect of the music or its history, changes from the outside, for example influences drawn
from popular or regional light or semi-classical genres, are typically thought as
aberrations, that, whether they are attributed to a particular musician’s desire to become
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more commercially successful or to that individual’s lack of proper musical training (to
name the two most popular explanations), are of little significance in the grand scheme of
things. Considering that the main focus of this study is the influence of regional culture
on North Indian classical music, including, but not limited to, the influence of regional
musical genres, this “Inside View” has, to a certain extent, hindered my efforts,
especially in the sense that a number of musicians I interviewed simply refused to address
Hindustani classical music in this context. However, an examination of the evidence I
have collected in the terms of the “Inside View” does bring to the fore certain important
musical regional tendencies, tendencies that I discussed in detail in chapters 2 through 6.
I will summarize these below as they provide one important category of evidence for the
argument I will outline in the following.
What the “Inside View” fails to provide, however, besides a belief that deviations
from orthodox classicism (such as it is in the 21st century) have any real significance, is
an explanation for why even the grossest and most obvious differences between
Hindustani music in Bengal, Maharashtra, and North India (for example, that
Maharashtrians almost never play sarod or sitar, while Bengalis have embraced
instrumental music on a large scale), beyond the historical exigencies that brought one or
the other musician to a particular city or region in search of patronage. However, some
musicians were in fact willing to offer more specific explanations for these undeniable
differences, and it should be noted that the majority who were willing to offer an
explanation for these regional differences were Bengalis, while the majority of those who
denied that there were any differences were Maharashtrian. At any rate, the single most
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common response given for why Bengalis have never embraced Khyal vocal music on a
large scale, instead preferring instrumental music, was language issues. There are two
aspects to this issue, pronunciation and more general linguistic skill. An example of the
former comes from veteran singer Dipali Nag who explained that “Hindustani [colloquial
Hindi/Urdu] starts with a, aa, i, we [Bengali speakers] start with o, aa, i,” referring to the
first of many differences between the pronunciation of Bengali in comparison to other
Sanskrit-based languages (differences I will discuss more thoroughly below). A fairly
representative example of the latter view on language issues comes from tabliyaa Bikram
Ghosh. BG agreed that pronunciation was an issue (“Bengalis are not good with
diction…”), but also, though, that “[Bengalis] are not good at picking up other languages,
generally speaking” (interview, 2005). Although I did not pursue this issue
systematically (in terms of a more comprehensive survey of which languages Bengalis
can speak on average), my first-hand experiences seemed to bear this notion out, as I
learned fairly quickly in Calcutta that most middle-class Bengalis will more readily
converse in English than in Hindi. To say that Bengalis are bad at picking up other
languages (outside of English and Bengali) is not quite accurate, though. It is more likely
that they, on the whole, are less interested in learning other languages, particularly Hindi
and Indian languages besides Bengali. I take that this is what BG was trying to express,
as Bengalis certainly have historically achieved at high level in every other scholarly and
intellectual pursuit outside of mastering Hindi/Urdu (and many have mastered this
language, as well).
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The pronunciation issue is much bigger problem, though, as it is much harder to
correct, or, for certain individuals, to even detect. Thus, as BG noted, there are perhaps
even more singers in general (though there are many fewer classical singers overall) in
Bengal than in Maharashtra, but because of pronunciation problems, even the best of
these Bengali vocalists have been limited to regional fame. Conversely, as BG, Dipali
Nag, and many others agreed, while Marathi pronunciation is certainly not identical to
Hindi, it is much closer than Bengali, and thus less of an obstacle for aspiring Marathi
Khyal singers. As Dhruba Ghosh said, “Even if a Marathi destroys Hindi, he can not
destroy it beyond recognition, but a Bengali can destroy it beyond recognition”
(interview, 2005).
The other single largest factor besides language cited by a number of my
interlocutors for the relative dominance of classical instrumental music versus Khyal in
Bengal and for the opposite situation in Maharashtra was the respective climate of these
two provinces. This factor perhaps was most crucial in helping to determine why North
Indian classical singers chose to make their home where they did. As I explained in
chapter 4, the historical pattern in Bengal, particularly Calcutta, has been that classical
singers go there for the music conference/festival season which runs for approximately
two-three months during the coolest part of the year, namely December through January,
but rarely ever settle there permanently, preferring instead relatively milder climates of
western India and Maharashtra in particular. This is, of course, crucial. However, even
for those who are native to Calcutta or some other part of Bengal, the climate can be a
problem in terms of training and maintaining the voice. As sitarist Partho Bose stated,
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The climate in Maharashtra is such that the human voice can retain its luster for a
longer time. You will find most Maharashtrian vocalists have been able to retain
their voice until they are very, very old, 70s, 80s…But, the damp, humid climate
of Bengal is also a factor in which you lose the quality of your voice even if you
take all precautions. So, natural voice…that’s a thing which is an asset in
Maharashtra, but here it’s not (interview, 2005).
It should be emphasized, although I have alluded to this elsewhere, that classical vocal
training is far more intense than the training required for singing light or popular music,
primarily as classical singers often practice hours a day, working to perfect a voice which
is somewhat rough or nasal, but which is also flexible, accurate, and powerful, as
opposed to light music and popular music singers who general aspire to develop a
“sweetness” in their voice that can be lost by practicing or performing too much or too
frequently. The damp and hot climate also, though, as Dipali Nag noted, means that
Maharashtrians (who grow up in a much drier and cooler climate) are, on the whole,
physically stronger than Bengalis. As DP humorously noted, Bengalis are “not like a
lion, much rather like a little cat…not a little cat, but a cat.” She illustrated this with the
rather insightful comment, that, although many Bengalis died during the struggle for
independence, their motivation was emotion, specifically love for their “motherland,” not
because Bengalis are naturally imbued with a “fighting spirit.”
To climate could be added dietary habits or practices, and many of my
interlocutors did indeed mention diet in this same context, i.e. in terms of its effect on the
voice and on one’s overall physical strength and health, though none elaborated on the
point more than this. Even combining these factors with the facts regarding the great
Ustads of Khyal settling largely in Maharashtra and the great Ustads of instrumental
music settling in Bengal (and of course, the above factors of language and especially
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climate help to explain why these Ustads settled where they did), these explanations have
always felt somewhat partial to me. All the above issues are part of the equation, no
doubt, but looking at these historical developments only in these terms seems to me to be
leaving something important out, and I felt this way even while I was still conducting my
research. What seemed to me to be missing was something that would tie all these
factors together and show them to be mutually reinforcing. This is a supposition (that
such a link was present) that I made before even beginning my research, and I was sure
that I would find it sooner or later. I eventually did, although, as so often happens, I did
not recognize it as such when it was first presented to me. The individual who put forth
this idea in an interview context was tabliya and sitarist Nayan Ghosh of Bombay. In
short, what NG proposed to me was that the respective landscapes of Maharashtra and
Bengal could not only be seen as influences on classical music as practiced in each region
in a fairly direct, deterministic sense, but also that, in a more abstract sense, the
respective landscapes of these regions as well as their respective languages could serve as
metaphors for the style of music and other arts prevalent in each.
Before proceeding, then, I should quote precisely what NG told me.
For example, you see in Rabindrasangiit a lot of miinD, use of miinD,
rounded…the edges are not sharp, the edges are rounded, in the music. Perhaps
that comes from even the language because Bengali as spoken by anyone, even a
non-musical family, is full of miinD-s…
It’s known, Bengali, in any case, is known to be one of the sweetest languages,
you know, it’s very pleasant to the ear, even when two Bengalis speak, or, you
know, little things like friends calling out to each other or, you know, a mother
calling a child back home after he’s his finished his playing in the evening or a
child calling out to mother for a glass of water, you know. You’ll always observe,
there’s a lot of use of miinD. Perhaps that reflects in everything that’s
Bengali…especially, primarily in music but even in other arts. In hand
movements, when they are dancing, Bengali dancers have a far more graceful
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hand movement, uh, closer to, I would say, ballet dancers, you know. The edges
are much more refined, I would say. You see that in Bengali painting, the artists,
you see that in the feelings and emotions in the Bengali literature and poetry.
I’m trying not to be biased – I’m a Bengali, but I am, because I also have… I am
sometimes very critical of certain Bengali things (laughs). And that I found so
conspicuous in Ali Akbar Khan’s sarod. The turns…were so Bengali, you know.
Since my childhood I have observed this. And then obviously Nikhil Banerjee
was a disciple of him and his father too, so in Nikhil Banerjee’s sitar also you find
a lot of rounded edges.
On the other hand in Maharashtrian music, you find, because of the NaaTya
Sangiit element…and you know in NaaTya Sangiit…there has…there is no doubt
the strong influences from classical music, because, as I said sometime back, the
singer-actors were essentially good classical musicians having taken solid training
from great masters. So that was there. But then, again, to cater to the vast
audiences, there was also sometimes the other folk musical, regional musical,
elements, like the laavaNii and so on. So they have a little rough edges, the edges
are sharper – that kind of music, that kind of language, that kind of body
movements, you know, body language, the edges are sharper. And therefore, that
reflects in the music - you know those, the quick tanas and those edges that you
find, the quick khaTkaa-s or murkii-s that take place in NaaTya Sangiit – that,
knowingly or unknowingly, classical musicians borrow it and use it Khyal music.
Knowingly or unknowingly, it creeps into the classical expression also…
You’ll see that has to do with even the geography or the landscape of the region.
Bengal has rivers and paddy fields and, you know, there’s all you can see
everywhere is just…into the horizon is just green paddy fields, and you will see a
whole lot of rivers – I mean, I am talking of the entire Bengal including
Bangladesh. That, perhaps a reflection of nature also. And here [in Maharashtra]
you have these stone, rocky mountains here…and dry land (interview, 2005).
NG also extended this beyond Bengal and Maharashtra, noting that in Nepali music you
find many rapid ascending and descending melodic movements, reflective of the
Himalayan mountain peaks and, while listening to Rajasthani folk music, “you can see
the sand dunes.”
To be sure, Nayan Ghosh was not my only informant to propose a relationship
between musical style in Bengal and Maharashtra and the regional language in each state
or between music and the land itself. I have already given some examples of the former;
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in terms of the latter, there was Vijay Kichlu, the aforementioned U.P.-raised, Kashmiri
businessman, musician, and music scholar and educator who has spent most of his adult
life in Calcutta, who felt that natives of North Indian, because of their essentially “slow-
moving”, “lazy”, and “calm” nature and temperament tend to create more slow-moving
music. This is as opposed to Maharashtrians and Bengalis who more often have, in his
view, a “flair for speed”(interview, 2005). What is unique about Nayan Ghosh’s view,
however, is that it encompasses almost all the relevant factors mentioned by the different
musicians I interviewed, including musical style, general artistic style, language, climate,
and landscape, and proposes a relationship between all these various factors, with the
landscape of each region serving a sort of master metaphor. I should note that NG was
not my only informant to assert that musical style could be viewed in essentially
metaphorical terms. Music critic and connoisseur Keshav Paranjape of Bombay also
made a similar assertion during an informal conversation we had had regarding my work.
What KP suggested was that perhaps one specific type of musical ornamentation could be
taken as a larger symbol of the respective regionally-based stylistic approaches of
Marathi and Bengali classical musicians. As with NG, KP felt that the most common and
thus most significant and representative aspect of Bengali musical style is miinD, the
smooth glide between two distinct pitches so common in all Indian music, while the type
of ornamentation most representative most representative of Marathi style was khaTkaa,
the quick turn. In Paranjape’s conception, these types of ornamentation stand in
metonymic relationship to the musical style of each regional group, as this is a case
where one aspect of musical style represents a whole stylistic approach. As James
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Fernandez points out in his well-known work on metaphor, metonym and metaphor are
closely related phenomena, as “Metonym is commonly understood as resting on
contiguity in the same frame of experience as the subject and metaphor as resting on
similarity, perceived or felt (structural or textual), of experiences in different
domains”(1986:43). The value of a metaphoric rather than a metonymic view of
differences in musical style, I feel, is this: to characterize musical style according to the
dominant use of one type of ornamentation is to certainly make a statement about how a
group of people make their music. To couch the matter in metaphoric terms is to make a
statement which comes closer to explaining why a group of people make music in the
particular manner or fashion that they do. As Fernandez states, “one might say that
metaphor is a mediating device connecting the unconnected and bridging the gaps in
causality”(ibid.:46). This, then, is the strength of Nayan Ghosh’s use of the landscape as a
metaphor, namely, that it explains not only why Maharashtrians and Bengalis make
classical music in the manner that they do, but also why they do everything they do in a
distinct and a recognizably Marathi or Bengali manner.
I should be clear at this juncture that my intention is not to propose a direct
relationship between landscape and musical style in the strict sense that certain
landscapes produce certain types of music regardless of the cultural context we are
dealing with. Of course, if landscape can be taken as a metaphor that helps to explain
regional style in both music and in other realms of culture, then it seems likely that there
must be a somewhat more direct relationship between the two. However, what is more
interesting here from my perspective is that members of the culture(s) in question
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themselves see landscape as a metaphor that explains the differences in the musical
stylistic approaches favored by Maharashtrians and Bengalis respectively. 117
Fernandez’s work also alerts us to the fact that in “metaphoric predication,” i.e. the use of
a predicate to describe or explain an ambiguous subject, movement of the subject takes
place within what Fernandez calls the “quality space” of a culture, which in turn can be
defined “by n dimensions or continua, which must be discovered by anthropological
inquiry”(ibid.:40). At another point, Fernandez defines this movement somewhat more
clearly when he states, “If we follow Aristotle, metaphoric movement may be conceived
of as adornment or disparagement of a subject...”(ibid.:38). In other words, the point of
metaphoric predication is not simply to define or give identity to an inchoate or
ambiguously defined subject, but to do so in a manner that defines that subject in a
qualitative manner. As this happens within the context of a given culture, then, as the
above citation makes clear, the culture in question defines the continua upon which
subjects are positioned.
In light of this aspect of Fernandez’s theory, it is important to reiterate that the
musicians who are doing the predicating in this case are almost all Bengali, and, thus, the
“quality space” in this context is also, to a large extent, the “quality space” of specifically
Bengali culture. Fernandez mentions a number of different “schemes” which provide
“axes” which can be utilized in understanding quality space in varying cultural contexts,
including that of Jones (1961) “who proposes that various cultural products…can be
117 Even though only Nayan Ghosh, among my interlocutors, put across such an unambiguously
metaphorical view, Fernandez reminds us that “Metaphoric innovation, like any innovation, rests with the
few” (1986:58).
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understood as expressing positions taken in respect to these axes: static-dynamic, order-
disorder, discreteness-continuity, spontaneity-process, soft-sharp, inner-outer, this world-
other world”(ibid.:40). While a number of these might logically be applied to the Bengali
example, one, I feel, is crucial: the “soft-sharp” axis, which also, arguably, may be
expanded to mean “smooth-rough,” “round-angular,” or even “liquid-solid.” As I
observed so frequently during my stay in Calcutta, Bengalis see themselves as essentially
soft or rounded and frequently remark as such. When a Bengali like Nayan Ghosh states
that Bengali dance and music and literature and even emotions have rounded edges while
the corresponding items in Marathi culture have “a bit rough edges,” he is implicitly
valorizing the Bengali style, even if his honest intent was to give a relatively unbiased
comparison of the two contrasting regional stylistic approaches. This becomes much
clearer when we compare NG’s formulation to that of Amit Mukherjee, the individual
who came the closest to NG in terms of explicitly posing the differences between Marathi
and Bengali musical style in terms of this landscape metaphor. As AM stated when
speaking specifically of the respective approaches of Maharashtrians and Bengalis to
rhythm, Maharashtrians, because of their close adherence to the beat and the structure of
the tala in their rhythmic approach, seem as if “they are walking on stilts” while the
Bengali approach, which is more rhythmically flexible (and in which rhythm is generally
de-emphasized), is closer to “floating on water”(interview, 2005). The Bengali bias in
this statement is, I hope, fairly apparent.
At the same time, though, this use of the Maharashtrian and Bengali landscapes as
metaphors for the musical styles in each region does, from my perspective, seem
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appropriate. It is true that many Maharashtrians would likely object to their musical style
(and their cultural style in the broader sense) being described as “rough,” “angular,” or
“sharp.” These are not adjectives which are generally taken as positive in the eyes of any
musician or educated listener regardless of regional background, or, at any rate, would
most likely be looked upon as less positive than their opposites. The point, though, is
that in the eyes of most, the Bengali landscape would be considered to be more
aesthetically appealing than the Maharashtrian landscape, at least in a visual sense.
Maharashtra has its natural advantages over Bengal, including its milder temperatures
and arid climate, but visually, it is hard for anyone but the most patriotic Maharashtrian
to argue that the flat, dry land and rocky plateaus of their region are more attractive than
lush, green vegetation and flowing water. The strength of the landscape metaphor, then,
is that it, again, corresponds to clearly observable and objective differences, even if the
influence that it exerts is a more subjective phenomenon. And, to this can be added that
the inclusion of North India in the discussion only seems to strengthen the case for the
validity of this metaphor. In very general terms (since we are dealing with a large and
internally variegated region when we speak of North India as a whole), North India
stands as a middle point between Maharashtra and Bengal both musically and in terms of
landscape. In regards to the former, North India possesses much greater balance than
either of the other two, both in terms of stylistic approaches and in terms of the presence
of all the different genres of both instrumental and vocal music. Regarding the latter,
North India generally is also a midpoint, not only geographically, but also in that it is
greener, wetter, and flatter than Maharashtra but drier, less flat (in certain areas), and less
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green than Bengal. Thus, this metaphor, even though it was generated in terms of the
Bengali cultural “axis” also seems to work in terms of broader, pan-North Indian “axis,”
as well. If more neutral observers prefer the look of the Bengali landscape to its
Maharashtrian counterpart, this seems more than fair, as neutral observers, I would argue,
would most likely also tend to prefer the Bengali musical style, particularly the Bengali
vocal style, which in a very real sense has become dominant across India thanks to the
crucial Bengali contribution to and influence on the style of singing most often
encountered in Bollywood film songs.
There is more to be said about the workings of metaphor in theoretical terms, but
for now, I would like to explore the details of both Bengali and Marathi musical style and
of the respective landscapes of the two regions in order to further test the validity and
appropriateness of this metaphor. To do so, I will compare not only musical style to
landscape but also language to both. In doing so, I am largely following the comparisons
suggested by Nayan Ghosh in the above lengthy passage from our interview. I depart
slightly from his account, though, in that I will not include the factor of body movement
manifested through dance style, among other things. I am leaving this out primarily
because, first, I know very little of Indian dance, particularly the regional varieties, and
second, general bodily dispositions are extremely difficult to observe and generalize
about, especially since I myself am not native to India and did not make a point of
systematically observing this particular feature of regional culture during my research.
Three levels, though, are, I believe, enough to bring out the most important
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correspondences. I will start with Bengal, as it is in every regard easier to pin down, as it
were, than is Maharashtra.
Regarding the general geography of Bengal, Capwell (1986) writes,
The heart of the area is the riverine delta formed by the mouths of the Ganges
river which form the northernmost shores of the Bay of Bengal on the east coast
of peninsular India. The main mouth of the Ganges, the Padma, exits into the bay
through Bangladesh, passing near the capital Dacca. A smaller mouth, the
Hooghly, exits to the southwest in the West Bengal province of India just after
passing the provincial capital Calcutta. The area stretches some four hundred
miles inland to the north and is bounded by the Himalayan foothills at Darjeeling
with Nepal to the west, Sikkim and Bhutan to the north. Then descending in the
east to the bay, the area is confined by Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram,
all part of India, and finally by Burma, which continues to form the northeastern
shores of the bay begun by the Chittagong area of Bangladesh. Descending in the
west from Darjeeling toward the bay, the area is bounded first by Nepal, then by
the Indian province Bihar, and finally, to the extreme southwest, by the province
Orissa…
The name for this entire area, Bengal, is derived from Sanskrit vaaNga, which, it
is postulated, may be related to a Tibetan word meaning “watery,” a suitable
adjective for the Ganges delta and its numerous fluvial arteries…
The political divisions of the land do not quite correspond to the areas referred to
when people use directional names in Bengali. Paschim baaNgo (West Bengal),
for instance commonly refers to the area which bellies out in endless plateaux
from Calcutta, toward Bihar, but does not include the thin strip of land reaching
up to and including Darjeeling, which is politically part of West Bengal. The
reason for this exclusion is that an association is always made by Bengalis
between the traditional name for the west bank of the Ganges, raaRh, and the
newer name, paschim baNgo. Purbo baaNgo (East Bengal) is generally equated
with the ancient “watery” vaaNga, east of the Ganges and centering around
Dacca. The large, gently hilly area above it, from Rajshahi to Dinajpur, Rangpur,
and Cooch Behar, is not included in the designation purbo baaNgo, and when
thought of as a unit by itself is sometimes called uttar baaNgo (North Bengal), or
the more traditional baarendro (2-5).
What this brief synopsis tells us, among other things, is that the terrain and climate of
Bengal as a whole is perhaps a bit more varied than the comments of Nayan Ghosh and
other musicians might suggest. This view of Bengal as essentially “riverine,” however, is
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not based on ignorance of geography. First, as Capwell explains, the Ganges delta
(which spans both modern day Bangladesh and West Bengal) has always been considered
the heart of the historical region of Bengal, to the extent that the traditional name for
Bengal is thought to be etymologically based on the adjective “watery.” The other factor,
one which is particularly crucial in the present context, is that so many of the most
important Bengali musicians of the 20th century were born and raised in what is now
Bangladesh. A short list of historically significant East Bengali musicians would include
brothers Nikhil Ghosh and Pannalal Ghosh, Allaudin Khan, Vilayat Khan (who was born
in east Bengal, but is not ethnically Bengali), and the patrons/disciples of his gharana, the
Roy-Choudhurys of Gauripur. It is not only that these influential figures came from East
Bengal, though – they also have injected elements of East Bengali music into the
classical repertoire (on the instrumental side). Most notably, this has meant performing
East Bengali folk songs as light pieces during recitals of classical music. Amongst these,
the most important is the bhaTtiaalii, which Sukumar Ray defines as a “particular type of
folk-tune recited by a boatman during his up-journey across down streams of the riverine
districts of Bangladesh”(1988:109). 118 To this could be added that Rabindranath Tagore
spent much time in the early part of his adult life overseeing his family’s estate in East
Bengal (while living in a houseboat, it should be noted), and so much of the natural
imagery that he used in his writings is based on what he saw there. All in all then, I feel
fairly comfortable stating that even if the entire historical region of Bengal is not riverine,
the ‘Bengal of the (modern, urban) imagination’ most assuredly is.
118 Vilayat Khan is most commonly credited for popularizing the bhaTiaalii, but many other
instrumentalists outside of his gharana now perform it as a “tailpiece” item.
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Regarding the Bengali language, it should first be noted that, like all the
languages of pan-North India (i.e. North India as opposed to South India), Bengali, or
baaNglaa as it is called by native speakers, is Sanskrit based. Thus, like Marathi and
Hindi, much (though not all) of its vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit. As Haldar
(1993) puts it, “Bangla has taken words from Sanskrit as and when it has needed to and
still does so…”(114). However, it also differs from Sanskrit (and other Sanskrit-derived
languages) in a number of ways. First, in terms of grammar, Bengali does not make a
distinction between singular and plural in verb forms, and, unlike Sanskrit (which has
three), Bengali has no gender, which in other Sanskrit-based languages is crucial in terms
of, among other things, verb endings, case markings, and the plural forms of nouns. For
Haldar, Bengali has more in common grammatically with English than Sanskrit, Persian,
or Arabic (the latter two being important and influential languages in North India,
especially as sources for vocabulary). This is “because of nothing else but that Bangla
has aspired to become simpler than Sanskrit…” (ibid.), a comment which would seem to
refer to the efforts of Rabindranath Tagore and other writers and intellectuals to both
streamline the language and to bring it closer in its written form to the language as
spoken in everyday contexts by the average Bengali.
The more crucial aspect of the Bengali language, concerned as we are here with
music and sound, however, is the phonology of the language, as it departs as much in this
regard from Sanskrit as any other North Indian language. I would like to mention three
important differences in pronunciation between Bengali and Hindi (and Marathi). The
first is that while in Hindi there is a clear separation between sh (as in ship) and s (as in
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sit), in Bengali, almost all the s sounds are converted to sh, the exception being when “[s
in the original Sanskrit] is joined to a consonant of the t-series (t, th, n), or to r or l do we
pronounce it as s”(Haldar 113). Beyond this, there is the aforementioned conversion of
the short Sanskrit vowel a (as in ‘the’ or ‘but’) to either the sound ‘aw’ (as in ‘hot’) or
closer to the long o of Sanskrit. This is also the pronunciation used for the inherent a
sound which comes at the end of many words that end in a consonant, a vowel which is
usually not sounded at the end of such Hindi words (but is in Marathi, pronounced there
as a). Also, along these same lines, the v/w sound in Sanskrit is pronounced in Bengali
invariably as b. From the latter two examples, we can certainly see the ‘rounded’ aspects
of Bengali and Bengali culture, particularly in terms of the a sound, which is produced in
part by a literal rounding of the mouth and lips. The Bengali script also visually appears
to be a rounded version of the Devanagri script used in Sanskrit, Hindi, and Marathi. The
“riverine” aspect, though, comes in the sense that when one sings or speaks in Bengali,
the language takes on a smooth, flowing quality, which unlike Sanskrit, Hindi, or Marathi
is rarely interrupted by harsh retroflex consonants or consonant clusters. In this regard, it
makes sense that Bengali has been found unsuitable for use in Khyal where words are
habitually broken mid-syllable. Bengali indeed flows like water, and interrupting this
flow seems an unnatural constriction.
Turning to Maharashtra, we see that that state is, in terms of topography, much
more uniform than is Bengal, even excluding present-day Bangladesh. Gail Omvedt
(1976) writes of Maharashtra,
With 1/10 of the land area and 1/11 the population of India, Maharashtra is
geographically clearly marked. O.K. Spate has described it as “a region of
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extraordinary physical homogeneity,” characterized by the black soils of the
Deccan lavas and the preponderance of jawar, a millet crop, as the staple foodgrain,
both of which clearly correlate with the area of Marathi speech (49).
As Omvedt notes, Maharashtra is generally reckoned to have four distinct regions in
political terms: the Deccan plateau or desh, as Marathi speakers refer to it, the
central/western portion of the state where Pune, the cultural and historical (but not
present-day) capital of Maharashtra, is located; the Konkan, the narrow coastal strip west
of the Sahyadri mountains; Marathwada, the east-central portion of the state; and
Vidharba, also known historically as Berar, the easternmost portion of the state which is
often considered a separate and distinct entity from the rest of Maharashtra by those
native to the region. Although Omvedt does not mention it, Khandesh, the extreme
northern portion of Maharashtra, is also sometimes considered a distinct region within the
state. However, as Omvedt also points out, “Of these, only the Konkan or coastal zone
has distinct features and normally heavy rainfall…”(ibid.:50). In more strictly
geographical terms, Dastane (1992) sees Maharashtra as having four distinct regions: The
Konkan, the Deccan plateau, the Sahyadaris (or Western Ghats, which average about 900
meters in height), and the “Northern Satpuda ranges and the flat terrain nearby”(12-13).
For all practical purposes, though, there are three types of terrain in Maharashtra: the
uniformly flat plateau which accounts for the vast majority of territory in the state, along
with the semi-tropical Konkan belt, and the rocky, moderately-sized peaks of the
Sahyadris.
Thus, we find an even more curious situation here than in the case of Bengal. In
the latter case, I noted that although Bengal is stereotyped as flat and riverine, the land
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which constitutes Bengal is actually much more varied than that stereotype implies.
However, in Maharashtra we find that the putatively most representative portion of the
state, namely the Sahyadri mountain range, actually comprises a very small amount of the
overall territory. There are reasons for this, however. Most obviously, if one is trying to
make a metaphorical comparison between landscape and music, a plateau, which is
essentially static in nature, does not make for very compelling imagery. Nayan Ghosh is
certainly not the only person to see rocky hills and small mountains as quintessentially
Maharashtrian, though. To name one other example, the Marathi language television
channel affiliated with the Indian national broadcasting service (Doordarshan) is called
“DD Sahyadri.” Why the importance of this one small part of the state? First, in
historical terms, many of the exploits of Shivaji took place in the Ghats and the nearby
areas, and as such, the hill/mountain-top forts that dot this stretch of land are some of
Maharashtra’s most famous and fondly remembered historical sites. Also, considering
that Bombay and Pune together comprise the financial, political, and cultural backbone of
the state, it should be noted that to travel between the cities (such travel being even more
common since the opening of one of India’s most modern and spacious highways built
solely to facilitate travel between the two) one has to physically cross the Ghats, whether
descending to Bombay or ascending to the desh to reach Pune. Perhaps this association
also has something to do with the fact that KonkaNastha (or Chitpaavan) Brahmans, a
caste to which has belonged a number of both Maharashtra’s greatest political leaders and
its greatest classical musicians, have had to migrate from their ancestral homes on the
coast to the Deccan to make their fortunes, crossing the Ghats in the process, raising the
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possibility they, in particular, have helped to advance this view of the Sahyadris as the
distinguishing feature of the state.
It is easy to see the resemblance between the Marathi language and these rocky
hills and small mountains, so it is all the more understandable that Nayan Ghosh would
make the connection between the two. The most important phonological feature of the
Marathi language in the present context is the relatively frequent incidence of retroflex
consonants, most notably the retroflex t, d, and l sounds. Of these, perhaps the most
notable is the retroflex l, for two reasons. First, this sound is unique to Marathi among
Sanskrit-derived languages. Second, the retroflex l, as most would agree, is one
important piece of evidence of the influence of Dravidian languages and other aspects of
South Indian culture on the culture of Maharashtra, the most direct influence coming, of
course, from Karnataka, Maharashtra’s direct neighbor to the south. I will return to the
dual influence of north and south on Maharashtra shortly, as I see this as possibly the
defining characteristic of Maharashtrian culture generally. To proceed, though, beyond
the frequency of retroflex consonants, another unique feature of Marathi pronunciation
relative to its North Indian linguistic neighbors, i.e. Hindi and Gujarati, is the conversion
of the ch sound of Sanskrit to the consonant cluster ts and j to dz, likely due to the
influence of Persian and other Persian-influenced languages. Grammatically, it is also
notable that Marathi is, on the whole, a more complex language than Bengali (though,
again, Bengali is easily the simplest of the Sanskrit-derived languages), primarily because
Marathi has three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, as is the case in Sanskrit, a
fact which, in turn, has a number of grammatical implications, such as verb endings and
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oblique case forms. All in all, Marathi is indeed a much harsher language than Bengali,
even if, as many of my Marathi informants pointed out, the form of Marathi used in
poetry and song is much smoother and flowing than the every-day, spoken version of the
language. And, again, it is not at all difficult to make a connection between the angular,
even jagged, quality of Marathi and the rocky cliffs and peaks of western Maharashtra.
The next question, then, is does this landscape metaphor correspond as well with
musical style as it does with language? Although I will certainly elaborate, I feel the
answer is again yes. Of course, Nayan Ghosh himself is a high-level professional
musician who is both an ethnic Bengali and a native of Bombay, and, thus, as he told me,
is a “bridge” between these two regional cultures. As such, his observations on musical
style can generally be trusted. I do differ from NG in the sense that, for him, folk music
defines the musical style of any region, and thus the proper comparison with the
languages and landscapes of each region is with the style of folk music in that region. I
do not doubt the validity of this view. However, the bottom line here is that my focus is
on classical music, and, at least in my opinion, the relationship between either
Maharashtrian or Bengali folk music with the style of classical music in each region is
unclear and, at best, indirect. In the Maharashtrian case, it seems, based again on my
interlocutors’ observations, that whatever elements of Marathi folk music that have
entered properly classical music in Maharashtrian have come second-hand through
Marathi theater music, and even then, it is difficult to say precisely what in NaaTya
Sangiit is directly derived from native Marathi sources and what comes from North
Indian classical and semi-classical genres, because, as I explained in chapter 7, Marathi
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theater music drew from both categories for most of its history. In this case, though, at
least we can rest relatively assured that NaaTya Sangiit has both influenced and been
influenced by Khyal. This is as opposed to Bengal where, although similarities abound
between Bengali folk, semi-classical, and, as I argue, classical genres, the directions in
which particular influences have exerted themselves are far from clear, primarily
because, as I again explained in chapter 7, the most popular and prevalent semi-classical
musical genres in Bengal have existed more or less independently of classical music, as
opposed to NaaTya Sangiit, essentially a subgenre of Khyal. As mentioned above,
though, Bengalis, in contrast to Maharashtrians, have made a habit of including Bengali
regional tunes in their classical performances, although only in the “tailpiece” position.
At any rate, my point here is that, regardless of where particular stylistic touches have
originally come from, whether they are truly native to these regions or simply aspects of
North Indian musical style that resonate with Bengali or Marathi musicians (or those
musicians who are sympathetic to the Marathi or Bengali aesthetic), the proper
comparison in the present context is between classical music style on one side and
landscape and language on the other, as opposed to NG who did reference classical music
style (in both the above citation and in the remainder of our interview) but bases his view
of these regional aesthetics on the style of semi-classical and folk genres as much as of
specifically classical music.
At this point, then, while I have already summarized what I see as both the typical
respective styles of tabla playing and Khyal singing in both the Maharashtra and Bengal
regions as well as the primary styles of instrumental music present in Bengal (in chapters
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3-6), I should reiterate some of the main points in order to, again, demonstrate the
validity of this landscape metaphor. If there is one essential difference between the
Bengali aesthetic in classical music and that of Maharashtra it is that Bengalis so often
de-emphasize rhythm, while it is much more important in the style of the average
Maharashtrian Khyal singer. Of course, it could be pointed out that layakaarii or
rhythmic play as such (i.e. not just a general emphasis on rhythm or a general rhythmic
quality), is associated primarily with the Agra gharana, a gharana fairly well-represented
in Maharashtra but historically insignificant in Calcutta or greater Bengal. However,
while this is the common sense view of the situation, we should keep in mind a few facts.
First, as K.P. Mukherjee among others attested, Faiyaz Khan was once a sensation in
Calcutta in terms of popularity with listeners and musicians, somewhat analogous to the
role Bade Ghulam Ali and Amir Khan would later fill, and as K.P Mukherjee has
explained in The Lost World of Hindustani Music (and as cited in chapter 4), Tarapada
Chakraborty, one of the great Bengali khyaaliya-s historically, was himself significantly
influenced by Faiyaz Khan. And yet, this influence is only faintly detectable in the music
of his son Manas, whose style is much more clearly indebted to Amir Khan. More
importantly, though, in the last few decades the ITC-SRA has brought bona fide
exponents of the Agra gaayakii to teach there, giving some of the better aspiring Bengali
Khyal singers exposure to the style in that context. Also, I should again mention that
recordings of all the great Agra singers are readily available to all Bengali musicians and
music lovers. In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that media (such as CDs and
cassettes) are supposed, according to many observers, to create homogeneity in musical
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style, Bengali musicians continue to choose to emulate Amir Khan, even those who were
born well after his death in the early 1970s. The evidence provided by other Bengali
genres such as Rabindrasangiit, the Bengali Tappaa, and Bengali Dhrupad – i.e. that
rhythm is de-emphasized in all these genres – demonstrates rather clearly, I feel, that this
aspect of Bengali style cannot be attributed simply to the popularity of Amir Khan or the
lack of influential Agra singers in Calcutta after the death of Faiyaz Khan.
Conversely, rhythm generally and layakaari specifically is one of the traits of
what I have argued is the most distinctly Maharashtrian style of singing, the combination
of the Gwalior, Agra, and Jaipur gaayakii-s as practiced by musicians like Bhaskarbua
Bakhle, Gajanabua Joshi, Ram Marathe, Ulhas Kashalkar, Yashwantbua Joshi, and many
others. Even Bhimsen Joshi, nominally the greatest current exponent of the Kirana
gharana (which is known for its emphasis on the largely arrhythmic aalaap over all other
portions of a raga performance) has included much of the Agra/Gwalior rhythmic
approach into his music. At any rate, I feel that this emphasis on rhythm in Maharashtra
and de-emphasis in Bengal corresponds fairly closely to the idea as Maharashtra as
essentially rocky, rough, and angular, and Bengal as essentially riverine and smooth. It is
somewhat deceptive in the Bengali case that in the aforementioned semi-classical genres
(such as Tagore songs), rhythm is de-emphasized in order to accommodate the all-
important text, while in Khyal the text is relatively insignificant, which might lead one to
believe that de-emphasizing rhythm in Khyal might be based solely on the influence of
Amir Khan in whose music layakaarii as such is mostly absent (as, in other words, there
is no practical need in Khyal to make the text clear). However, I prefer to see this as
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another enduring aspect of the Bengali aesthetic, considering that it does appear in so
many types of music, running the gamut from folk to classical. The only real
complication here is that there are in fact a number of singers, both currently and
historically, in Maharashtra who do not engage in layakaarii and whose music is, as with
so many Bengali khyaaliya-s, much more melodic than rhythmic. This category, as noted
in chapter 3, adheres rather closely to the model established by Abdul Karim Khan.
There is an explanation for this seeming inconsistency, but I will wait a bit to address this
point.
The other major correspondence to the respective landscapes of the two regions in
question, as pointed out to me by both Nayan Ghosh and Keshav Paranjape, is the
predominance of certain types of ornamentation in the music of each regionally-defined
group of musicians. The similarity between miinD and flowing water is fairly apparent, I
feel. KhaTkaa, the most characteristic type of ornamentation used by Marathi singers in
the estimation of both NG and KP, also matches up with the idea of Maharashtra as
essentially rocky, rough, and angular, although perhaps in a less obvious manner.
KhaTkaa is, to reiterate, essentially a turn in Western terms. Visually, it could be
expressed as something like (in sargam or Indian solfege):
RE
SA SA
NI
This shape, which suggests, in an impressionistic sense, a hill top or peak, could also be
extended to include the essentially circular taan-s, which, according to Veena
Sahasrabuddhe, have been imported from NaaTya Sangiit into Khyal by certain Marathi
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singers. This type of taan is, in a certain sense, a khaTkaa-like turn continuously
repeated, for example, SA RE SA NI DHA NI SA RE SA NI DHA NI, etc. (1, 2, 1, 7, 6,
7, 1, etc., in scale degrees). The only apparent ambiguity here is that, as mentioned in
chapter 7, giitkaaDii/giitkirii or murkii, also essentially types of turns, are also quite
prevalent in Thumri, Thumri-influenced styles, and in the Bengali Tappaa. The
difference though, comes in the way these turns are delivered. To be more specific, in
khaTkaa, each note is clearly and forcefully enunciated, very much like a short segment
of a tana. However, a murkii is much more softly intoned and thus comes off a bit more
slurred or indistinct. Many writers have referred to murkii for this reason as a ‘rococo’
type of ornamentation. The point, though, is that, although, in the broader sense, a turn is
a turn, a turn in typical Bengali hands is again more smooth, flowing, and even liquid,
while in the hands of the typical Marathi singer it seems more solid and angular.
To bring instrumental music style into the equation, it makes a good deal of
sense that Vilayat Khan’s style would resonate more with Bengalis than the Maihar
approach because, in many ways, the Vilayat Khani style of elaboration is a mirror image
of the Bengali approach to Khyal. This consists of a Khyal-style aalaap, without any
trace of Dhrupad ang, very little or no layakaari or bol baanT, sargam (only applicable in
the case of vocal music, as solfege cannot be produced on an instrument), and taan-s
which are largely straight (i.e. scalar) and, thus, do not maintain the characteristic shape
of the raga. This is not, however, to deny the Bengali-ness of the Maihar
instrumentalists. It would be somewhat ironic to do so, as the central lineage of the
Maihar gharana is an East Bengali family, while Vilayat Khan’s family is native to Uttar
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Pradesh. As Nayan Ghosh noted, the use of miinD in the music of both Ali Akbar Khan
and Nikhil Banerjee is itself very clearly Bengali in nature. This, however, is one of the
many cases where gharana can occlude, so to speak, regional influence. The Maihar style
of Allaudin Khan, we should remember, is largely derived from the music of Seniya
Wazir Khan and of many other prestigious musicians of Rampur. All in all, then, it is
essentially a balanced and complete North Indian style with some minor Bengali touches.
However, while the Maihar style was shaped by the milieu of early 20th century Rampur,
the Imdad Khan style is, at least currently, more or less equivalent to the personal style of
Vilayat Khan, who, again, was born in Gauripur, East Bengal. Thus, his style can be seen
as, among other things, a reflection of the Bengali environment in which it was
developed. The popularity of Nikhil Banerjee in no way contradicts this general view,
because, simply put, he was the most Bengali ‘member’ of the Maihar gharana, by virtue
of the influence of both Amir Khan and Vilayat Khan on his personal style. In this sense,
he is the mirror image of Bhimsen Joshi. This is to say, Bhimsen Joshi took the Kirana
style, which is, in a manner of speaking, the most ‘Bengali’ of the major gharana styles,
and made it more ‘Maharashtrian,’ while Nikhil Banerjee took the most Dhrupad-
influenced and, thus, rhythmically complex, instrumental style and made it more
‘Bengali.’ Gharana, then, as some would have it, does not simply erase regional stylistic
influences, even if it can at times conceal them.
This covers the connections between style and landscape made by Nayan Ghosh
himself, though, of course, I have extended and elaborated upon these connections much
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more than NG did in our interview. I would like to mention one more such connection
before proceeding. This concerns what might be termed as the vertical aspect of Indian
musical style. Of course, because when the vertical (as opposed to horizontal) aspects of
Western music are discussed in an analytical context, it is typically in reference to
harmony, Indian music, which is monophonic and linear, is rarely discussed in such
terms. However, I feel that pitch range could also be seen in this manner. Considering,
then, that Marathi singers sing in a typically higher pitch than Bengalis (thanks again to
the influence of NaaTya Sangiit in Maharashtra and the influence of Amir Khan in
Bengal, most notably), and that Marathi singers are more likely to explore all the registers
in their raga performances, this could also be seen as a reflection of the landscape of each
region. Thus, while the terrain of Bengal (leaving aside northern Bengal) is largely flat,
so then is the use of pitch by many Bengali Khyal singers. In Maharashtra, though, the
greater contrasts in terms of pitch registers exploited or developed, mirrors the ups and
downs of the Western Ghats.
To this extent, the metaphor provided by Nayan Ghosh has proved to be largely
appropriate and descriptive of the realities of musical style in each province, at least as
based on the available evidence. There are two problems, however, or limitations to this
view of landscape as metaphor for musical style in the terms proposed by NG. The first,
which is relatively minor, is that in Fernandez’s theory, there is nothing to account for all
three factors mentioned by NG: landscape, music, and language. 119 We could state that
119 Of course, it is also perhaps a stretch to use Fernandez’s theory of metaphoric predication for art forms,
not people, but we should keep in mind that musical style, in the sense I am discussing it here, is simply an
extension of broader cultural style and, ultimately, of the musicians themselves.
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landscape is a metaphor for musical style, language is a metaphor for musical style, or
even that landscape is a metaphor for language. However, this does not account for the
relations that obtain between all three in a systematic fashion. The second and ultimately
more serious problem with this landscape metaphor, though, is that it does not account
for the fact that, while in Bengal there is one dominant model of classical music style,
represented by the Vilayat Khani gaayakii ang in instrumental music and by the pseudo-
Amir Khan/Kirana style practiced by the majority of Bengali Khyal singers, in
Maharashtra there are two broad styles, as I argue above. These are, to reiterate, the
Gwalior-Agra-Jaipur style and the aalaap-oriented Kirana/simplified Gwalior style, that
in many ways would seem to resemble the Bengali approach. In order to remedy these
limitations and shore up the deficiencies (such as they are) in NG’s original metaphor, I
turn to the work of theorist Robert Plant Armstrong, more specifically his 1971
monograph The Affecting Presence: An Essay in Humanistic Anthropology. Also, I
should note that my understanding of Armstrong’s work has been aided in a large part by
Charles Keil’s own attempt in Tiv Song (1979) to use Armstrong’s theories to analyze the
music and culture of the Tiv people of western Africa.
Armstrong’s primary concern in the above work is, as its title indicates, to
explicate his concept of the “affecting presence.” For Armstrong, the “affecting
presence” is a quality of “affecting works,” which include, but are not limited to,
conventionally defined works of art. The key to Armstrong’s theory, then, is that the
“affecting presence” is not a symbol of certain affective states, but instead the
“embodiment of those physical conditions which generate or are causative or constitutive
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of that emotion, feeling, or value with which [the artist] is concerned”(31). There are,
though, two rather more specific aspects of Armstrong’s theory that concern us here. The
first is his concept of the “similetic metaphor.” As, Armstrong explains:
It goes without saying that “terms” which respond to or initiate the same category
of affect may be regarded in this aspect as “synonyms” to one another. Not only
are two “happy” poems synonymous with respect to the feeling of happiness, but
a happy poem, a happy musical composition, and a happy painting are also
synonyms. Synonymity thus obtains not only within but across forms (59).
Thus, the “similetic metaphor” is defined as,
That facet of the metaphoric process which asserts that, for the purpose of
achieving a common affective end, a given way of treating certain physical
characteristics in one form will be equal to a certain other way of the treating the
same physical characteristics in another form…(60).
To this, Armstrong adds the important caveat that he is, with this formulation, not
asserting “absolute and total equivalence among different works in various media which
are productive of common kinds of affect,” explaining that such works are instead
“roughly equivalent”(62 – emphasis is the author’s).
The other aspect of Armstrong’s theory which I see as important in the present
context, and which is necessary to understand the above notion of the “similetic
metaphor,” is his concept of the “cultural metaphoric base.” This is the most basic level
of Armstrong’s theoretical system, “one which undergirds the whole metaphoric
system…and gives to the whole range of affecting presences of a given culture their
cohesive, homogenous cultural identity.” Likewise, as Armstrong notes, this cultural
base, “asserts the totality of style, the cultural identity, the historical reality of a people,
and it perpetuates their feelings…”(65). Although he is not entirely clear on this point, it
seems that there might be one cultural base that corresponds to a given society, or in the
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case of more complex societies, more than one. Thus Armstrong lists “romanticism,”
“realism,” “naturalism,” and “Guineaism” as types of cultural metaphoric bases. Also
important here is Armstrong’s addendum to this concept:
There is every likelihood that as the cultural metaphoric base speaks through the
affecting presence and the metaphoric system, so does it speak through the total
affective life, giving a consistency of style to the ethos, touching not only
sculpture, dance, music, painting, but food, clothing, fighting, house styles,
interpersonal relations – all the soft, viable, fleshy, feeling parts of culture (ibid.).
With this, then, we overcome the first of the aforementioned apparent limitations of
Nayan Ghosh’s landscape/language metaphor. As Armstrong makes clear, there is, at
least in terms of his theoretical model, “every likelihood” that just as there is “similetic
equivalence” that obtains between various “affecting works” produced within the
confines of one cultural base, there is also a quality of equivalence between art forms and
other aspects of the culture in question, specifically language in the present case.
Before proceeding to an analysis of the data at hand, I should note one way in
which I differ from Armstrong’s system. According to Armstrong, there is an
intermediate level which obtains between the specific “affecting works” and the
underlying “cultural metaphoric base.” This is “trope.” In essence, this is Armstrong’s
version of the “cultural axis” concept mention earlier in relations to Fernandez’s work.
As Armstrong notes, “Affecting presences can be created about one of three kinds of axes
– spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal.” Thus, sculpture and painting “rely upon an
axis of space…,” music, poetry, and narrative on time; and drama and dance on space-
time. In line with the rest of his theory, Armstrong prefers to see these different axes as
equivalent in a certain sense. Thus, as he describes, the “trope itself is neither spatial nor
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temporal, but rather both. And so it tends to accept either time or space as its dominant
mode of existence, but subjects them both to common metaphoric discipline”(64). By
this logic, then, there are four “structural-stylistic possibilities: intensive continuity,
intensive discontinuity, extensive continuity, and extensive discontinuity,” the
extensive/intensive pairing relating to “synchronic time” and “discrete space” and the
continuous/ discontinuous pairing” “adjacent spaces and diachronic time”(67). It is
through these four possibilities that Armstrong is then able to describe the style of a
culture, style here being defined as “the visual evidence that the cultural metaphoric base
exists…”(66).
So, while I do see value in Armstrong’s concepts of “cultural metaphoric base”
and the “similetic metaphor,” I will not attempt to define Bengali and Maharashtrian
musical and, by extension, cultural style in these specific terms. There are two reasons
for this. First, as Keil notes, these four “structural-stylistic possibilities,” among other
aspects, betray what Keil sees as a “static visual bias [that] prevails throughout”
(1979:197), an obvious difficulty in characterizing musical style. More importantly,
though, Armstrong is attempting in this work to establish a model that is valid for the
analysis of any particular culture. This is a laudable goal, no doubt, but I am not
concerned here with universal applicability. I am interested instead, as in the case of
Fernandez’s discussion of “cultural axes,” in establishing criteria that serve simply to
differentiate the “cultural bases” underlying the respective regional cultures of Bengal
and Maharashtra. Keil, for his part, adds another axis or “structural-stylistic possibility”
that I feel is particularly relevant to the present case, namely, “masculine and feminine
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modes of expression.” As Keil writes, “If the Tiv affecting universe is an acceptable test
case, ‘male and female’ probably ought to suffuse the whole model from bottom to
top…It is certainly not a variable to be tucked into the theoretical superstructure”
(ibid.:198). Keil’s inclination, then, is to add “masculine-feminine” to the other two
pairs, thus yielding eight possible combinations.
For my purposes, though, the “smooth-rough”/“soft-hard”/“liquid solid”
differentiations (which I feel are roughly synonymous) and the “masculine-feminine”
axis are sufficient. The first axis (or set of oppositions), which I have already described
above, is adequate if our intention is to simply to define Maharashtrian and Bengali
musical style (and, by implication, cultural style) in opposition to one another, which
seemed to have been Nayan Ghosh’s intention. As I have explained at several points in
earlier chapters, though, the styles of classical music practiced in each of the two regions
in question are not simply opposites, nor are they perfectly complementary. And, there is
no reason to think they should be. These two regions of India, after all, are not
geographically contiguous (or close to being contiguous), and, as such, there has not been
a great deal of contact or interchange between the two cultures, at least not before the
nationalist era (in the late 19th century). Limiting it specifically to Hindustani music, the
only case I know of where it can be argued that these two classical music cultures have
changed or developed in reaction to one another was in the early 20th century, when, at
least according to Purohit, Bengalis began taking up instrumental music in large numbers
because they felt that Khyal had already been monopolized by that point in time by
Maharashtrians. Keeping this all in mind, it should come as no surprise that the musical
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style characteristic of each region is in certain ways different and in certain ways similar,
as well.
The key to understanding this situation is the “masculine-feminine” stylistic
opposition. The crux of the matter, as I see it, is that Bengali style can fairly be
characterized as feminine, while Maharashtrian culture can be characterized as both
masculine and feminine. In terms of musical style, specifically, this means that classical
music style in Bengal is essentially soft, melodic (rather than rhythmic), and emotional
rather than technical. Also relevant here is that the dominant ras or emotional moods
favored by Bengali musicians (judging both from regional Bengali genres and from the
style of particularly important and influential musicians like Amir Khan) are karuNaa, or
pathos, and sRingaar, or eroticism. From here, we can branch out to larger aspects of
Bengali culture that seem to indicate this essentially feminine quality, for instance that
the chief deity in Bengal is a goddess, namely Durga. I should note here that I am well
aware of the fact that Bengali culture was stereotyped by the British in the colonial period
as effeminate, chiefly in order to provide some rationale for the British colonial
endeavors in that part of India. 120 However, even taking this history into consideration, I
feel it would be difficult in the present context to characterize Bengali cultural style as
anything other than feminine. In Maharashtra, though, at least in the musical realm, we
can see both masculine and feminine styles. If we were to leave music out of the
equation, it would be tempting to see Maharashtra as masculine in terms of its general
cultural ethos, as Nayan Ghosh essentially had (though he never used the terms
120 see Nandy 1998a
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“masculine” or “feminine”). After all, this is the region whose greatest historic figure,
namely Shivaji I, is a warrior-king (as opposed to Bengal, where the greatest and most
revered historical figure was a poet and musician). However, if we are to take
Armstrong’s statement that style is the “visual [or in this case, aural] evidence that the
cultural metaphoric base exists” seriously, then we must consider the possibility that
there are two “cultural bases” at the root of Maharashtrian culture.
It is at this point, then, that I would like to reintroduce geography as such back
into the equation. As I discussed in my introduction, Cohn (1967) set forth three types of
historical regions in India: the “nuclear” or “perennial region”; the “route area” or
“shatter zone”; and the “cul de sac” or “area of relative isolation”(108). To reiterate, in
these terms, Maharashtra is a “nuclear region,” a historically stable region which has “the
basic ecological-agricultural prerequisites for fairly large scale state formation,” while
Bengal is a “cul de sac,” a type of region which is fairly self-explanatory, but which Cohn
describes as a region that because of “geographic ecological characteristics” is difficult to
access and thus, “[has] tended to be bypassed by processes and events which have
affected the nuclear and route regions”(111). We can certainly see the truth of these
categorizations in the context of classical music, as Maharashtra has historically been in
fairly close contact with North India, as evidenced by the absorption of the Khyal
tradition into Maharashtra starting in the late 20th century, while Bengal’s involvement
or engagement with the tradition has always been at best partial or incomplete. As I
mentioned earlier, North India is the cradle of Hindustani music, so, to a large extent, the
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histories of classical music in Maharashtra and Bengal can be defined by their respective
levels of cultural contact and exchange with North India.
The key to understanding the nature of the cultural and musical style of
Maharashtra, however, is to remember that Maharashtra not only has had a long history
of cultural contact with the North. Thanks to its geographical positioning, Maharashtra
has had an equally long history of cultural contact and exchange with South India, as
well. Maharashtra, then, is not only madhya raashTra, in other words the “middle land”
in geographical terms, it is also, in a sense, a combination of both North and South, with
the Sanskrit-based, but Dravidian-influenced Marathi language standing as one of the
most prominent examples of this dual nature. Omvedt quotes Maharashtrian historian
Iravati Karve as describing Maharashtra as “a culture contact region par excellance,”
noting the similarity of the caste formation in Maharashtra (which features Brahmans,
Shudras, and untouchables and no middle castes as such) to that of most of South India
(1976:49). Conversely, Bengal, thanks to its geographical isolation, has historically had
little contact with either North or South, especially the South. In language terms, Bengali
is Sanskrit-based, but, as noted, it is also the most unique and simplistic of the Sanskrit-
based languages. So, to phrase it in a slightly different way, Maharashtra is both North
and South, while Bengal is neither. This then, I feel, is the explanation for the two broad
styles of classical music as practiced in Maharashtra. One style can be taken as
representative of the Southern influence, and the other, representative of the Northern
influence.
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I should be clear, however, that I am not asserting that one style is more
influenced by North Indian music, while the other is influenced by the Southern or
Carnatic system of classical music. Considering that Maharashtra shares a border with a
South Indian state, Karnataka, a state in which both the Hindustani and Carnatic classical
traditions are present, it should not be surprising that there has been a certain amount of
direct influence of South Indian classical music on Hindustani music in this broader
region (what I have termed as the “Maharashtra region,” in the specifically musical
sense). The most notable examples of this have been the incorporation of certain
sargam-based compositions into, first, the Kirana gharana style and later into other styles
as well, the innovator in this case being Kirana fountainhead Abdul Karim (who, of
course, is not Marathi or Kannad, but a North Indian Muslim). Another example, as
mentioned in chapter 5, is the influence of South Indian classical rhythmic concepts on
the style of many (southern) Maharashtrian and Kannad tabla players, the most notable
current example being Suresh Talawalkar. The point I am trying to make, though, is that
the broad singing styles I have argued for above are representations of two contrasting
(and in certain senses complementary) cultural impulses, or “cultural metaphoric bases.”
The first, which I have noted resembles the Bengali style to a large degree, is
representative, in my view, of Maharashtra as defined by its religious traditions, in
particular the bhaktii tradition as perpetuated by notable such notable ‘saint-poets’ as
Dnaneshwar, Namdev, and Tukaram. 121 These bhakti traditions can also be seen, and
121 In Maharashtra, as in the rest of India, bhakti traditions are essentially devotional, heterodox, and
egalitarian movements that developed in the middle ages largely as a response to the egalitarian appeal of
Islam.
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have been seen by certain scholars, as defining Maharashtra in geographical terms. As
Feldhaus (2006) notes, some, including aforementioned historian Iravati Karve, have
argued that the largest and most important pilgrimage conducted annually in
Maharashtra, the two-week long pilgrimage in which devotees from across the region
converge on the temple of the god Vitthal (or Vithoba) in the south-eastern portion of
modern Maharashtra state, itself defines the region of Maharashtra (191-192). There are
problems and limitations with this view, as Feldhaus notes, but, all the same, many
Maharashtrians do in fact see the Pandharpur pilgrimage in this light. The key to all this,
i.e. the reason why I tie this style of music to South Indian cultural influence, is precisely
because devotionalism is the dominant mode in Carnatic classical music, a tradition
where, despite the prominence of abstract processes of musical development we would
expect from a classical tradition (particularly a South Asian classical tradition), all the
musical compositions employed are essentially hymns, to put it in Western terms. And,
again, it is not at all coincidental that the chief influence on this style has been the music
of Abdul Karim, who spent much of his adult life living in the Maharashtra-Karnataka
border region (in Miraj), and who was both inspired and influenced by Carnatic music.
This also, I should note, is the chief differentiation between this broad style in
Maharashtrian and Bengali contexts. In both cases the karuNaa ras (or mood of pathos)
is dominant. However, I argue that, in the Bengali case, this pathos has a more worldly,
sensual aspect, while in the Marathi case it is representative, not of longing for reunion
with one’s lover in the worldly, secular sense (as in Bengal), but rather for reunion with
God. And, again, to tie it into the masculine/feminine dichotomy, in Indian culture
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generally, the devotee is always portrayed as female, as when Radha pines for her
beloved, the god Krishna. The respective histories of Bengal and Maharashtra,
particularly Bengal’s much more prolonged and profound contact with Western ideas and
modes of thought would seem to account for this subtle difference in the meaning of this
particular musical style and, by extension, cultural style.
Conversely, the other broad style I have argued for in the case of Maharashtra is
informed by the Northern cultural impulse, which in this case, rather straightforwardly
equates to the courtly, even martial, and Persianate side of the Hindustani tradition. This
impulse corresponds, in historical terms, with the exploits of Shivaji, especially his
efforts to carve out a kingdom based on Hindu social and religious principles. There are,
again, some problems of this view in terms of historical fact. Many scholars, the most
notable recent example being Laine (2003), argue that Shivaji founded his kingdom not
solely, or even chiefly, to establish a Hindu state as such, but rather for the same reasons
as many other figures in this period, i.e. to gain wealth and power. However, regardless
of historical evidence or all the possible interpretations of that evidence (and the political
and cultural implications of such interpretations), most Maharashtrians do attribute the
existence of Maharashtra as a distinct region in both cultural and historical terms to
Shivaji’s ‘nation-building’ efforts, and as I have already illustrated in chapter 1, the
potency of Shivaji as a symbol Marathi pride, a symbol which has been frequently
manipulated both by the state government of Maharashtra and by such essentially right-
wing organizations like the Shiv Sena. In musical terms, I feel the connection between
the martial imagery of Shivaji’s exploits and the musical style in question are fairly clear.
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First, the dominant ras in the style of both the Gwalior and Agra traditions (which are
often referred singularly in the Maharashtrian context as the Agra-Gwalior tradition) is
viir or heroism. In reference to the Agra style in particular, which is key in this context
as it lends the element of emphasis on rhythm and rhythmic development to this broader
Marathi musical style (rhythm, again, being the chief differentiating factor between this
style and the Bengali and the ‘devotional’ Marathi styles), Vamanrao Deshpande writes,
Agra did achieve a certain volume and resonance. Its style reminds one of the
rugged architectural construction of a medieval fortress with its gigantic walls,
ramparts and turrets. The Agra style...is robust and aggressive. Its successive
tana-s remind us of speedily advancing armies striking hard at their targets, its
bol-tanas of rapid gun-fire. Nor is the style devoid of a certain measure of
guerilla tactics of tones and well-planned dodges of rhythm. It ‘captivates’ rather
than ‘delights’ and extracts an appreciative ‘tribute’ from the vanquished listener
(1987:19).
It is hard for me to imagine that I could find another passage that brings forward the
masculine and militaristic qualities of the Agra style better than this one. It is certainly
worth noting the striking parallels between Deshpande’s view of the Agra style and the
descriptions offered by Ashok Ranade (as cited in chapter 7) of the singing style of many
of the male protagonists in the heyday of NaaTya Sangiit, for example, the frequent use
of adjectives such as ‘forceful,’ ‘robust,’ and ‘aggressive.’
This, then, is how I explain and account for the one model of musical style in
Bengal and the two prevalent in Maharashtra. Before returning to Keil and Nayan Ghosh
one last time, though, I should note that these are what I see as the primary “cultural
metaphoric bases” of these two regions, at least in terms of the aspects of these regional
cultures which I have included in my analysis. However, as in the case in any relatively
complex society, this does not mean that all Bengalis follow this one musical style and all
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Maharashtrians follow one of the two I have proposed. More specifically in the latter
case, I also do not mean to suggest that Hindustani musicians who are ethnically Kannad
(i.e. from Karnataka) always follow the ‘devotional’ style or that those who are ethnically
Marathi or who are from the portions of Maharashtra not bordering on Karnataka tend to
follow the more masculine, ‘martial’ style. Of course, musicians from all parts of this
musical region, Maharashtrian, Kannad, and otherwise, can choose to follow either style
or a style that is completely different. In other words, I am not trying to propose a one-
to-one correlation between musical style and linguistic and/or ethnicity identity. The
point is, rather, that observation of the ‘on-the-ground’ realities of musical practice in
both Bengal and Maharashtra reveals, as I argue, certain stylistic tendencies. My attempt
here has simply been to find some cultural basis for these tendencies, not to stereotype
musicians from either region or, conversely, to deny Marathi-ness or Bengali-ness to
those musicians whose styles do not (even approximately) fit with the categories I have
set forth.
I would like to briefly conclude by comparing the model Keil arrives at for
understanding the cultural style of the Tiv with the landscape metaphor offered by Indian
musician Nayan Ghosh. What Keil concludes in his work is that Tiv culture and music
are best understood as an interaction between masculine and feminine principles. As
such, he feels that this is best represented in visual form as circles, which represent
femininity, and angles, which intersect or cut across these circles and represent
masculinity. This “expressive grid,” as he calls it, looks something like a wheel, albeit
462

with smaller circles that lie within each other. The lines and angles, then, appear as
spokes of the wheel. Based on this, Keil proceeds to explain how this pattern shows up
in numerous different aspects of Tiv culture, from the patterns of making pots and stools
to the overall worldview of the culture. This dynamic model, which implies a certain
amount of movement, is perhaps for this reason more apt than Nayan Ghosh’s metaphor.
Of course, it should be kept in mind that, as in any interview, I set and dictated the terms
of conversion, and NG responded accordingly. One of the terms of our dialogue, which I
conveyed to all my interviewees, was that my project was to determine the essential
differences and oppositions between Bengal and Maharashtra, as I can see so clearly now
in retrospect – even if I did not explain it to my interlocutors in such unambiguous terms.
NG, then, offered a metaphor that seemed to satisfy my search. The value of his
metaphor, of course, is that it comes from a member of the culture in question (or both
cultures, to put it in regional and not national terms), and, although only NG put the
matter in such terms, he no doubt has also been influenced in his thinking by this broader
culture to which he belongs. However, its greatest importance in the present context is
that it gave me, as an analyst, a starting point to arrive a model that does, in fact, account
for, not only the differences between Bengali and Marathi (cultural and musical) style,
but also for the clearly observable differences between the styles practiced and
propagated within the Maharashtra musical region itself.
463

Conclusion
The preceding chapters, then, are my case, so to speak, for including region and
specifically regional influences as important factors in understanding both the recent
history and the current state of the Hindustani classical music tradition. As I have
explained at several points, my approach to this subject has been two-fold: first, to
examine the tradition in the light of the more or less standard approach to the subject
employed by the largest number of both Indian and Western scholars of the tradition, and
second, to explore the issues at hand in light of broader theoretical approaches which
have not been typically employed as a means of understanding this particular musical
tradition. I have termed these two approaches the “Inside View” and the “Outside View”
for several reasons. These reasons include, not only the fact that these two approaches
respectively represent standard and slightly atypical ways of understanding Hindustani
music in scholarly terms, but also because the former more closely resembles the view of
practicing musicians (as evidenced by the answers I elicited from such practicing
musicians in the interview context), while the latter, though in part inspired by the
statements of a select handful of my interlocutors, examines the tradition in light of
broader social and cultural forces that these musicians (again based on my interview
material) most often tend to regard as irrelevant. Because of the resistance of many of
my interlocutors to making connections between regional cultural influences, musical and
otherwise, on the one hand, and Hindustani music as such on the other (a resistance
which I analyze at length in chapter 1), I have had to make some educated guesses and to
fill in the blanks, as it were, left by this resistance. At the same time, though, there were
464

a few of my interlocutors that were more open-minded and willing to examine the
tradition in regional terms, and these individuals, particularly Nayan Ghosh, deserve
particular credit for at least guiding me in the right direction and helping me to begin to
answer the broader questions I have posed in this study.
I feel that, if nothing else, what I have proven in this study is that Hindustani
performance practice and musical style does vary on a regional basis, and I have been
careful to detail exactly what these differences are. Of course, interpreting these
differences and explaining them is a much different matter. Considering, again, that so
few musicians had any explanation for these specific differences as I pointed them out
(beyond the standard view, reiterated many times in the preceding, that any such
differences were simply due to which Ustad had settled where), my conclusions in this
regard remain tentative. Also, I feel it is quite possible that given the same body of data,
another scholar with different areas of expertise, different experiences, different biases,
might very well reach very different conclusions from those I have reached. This is
likely inevitable. For my own part, though, I am a practicing musician as well as an
ethnomusicologist, and although I am well aware that being a performer does not
necessarily entitle one to analyze the music in a scholarly sense (I am referring here to
my interlocutors), it is my strongly held belief that any analyses that totally dispense with
the opinions and views of performing musicians are necessarily incomplete. This is
especially true in the case of Hindustani music, where the musician is simultaneously
composer, performer, teacher, and champion of the tradition and the music itself is
difficult, complex, subtle, and, above all, esoteric.
465

This leads me back to Janaki Bakhle, whose controversial recent monograph Two
Men and Music (2005) has served as both an inspiration for this study as well as a
cautionary example. In terms of the former, Bakhle has demonstrated the necessity of
interrogating the statements of practicing musicians, as the ideology they espouse can at
times be deceptive. In Bakhle’s case, this means thoroughly deconstructing the claim
that caste, gender, and especially religious community are unimportant in the context of
this musical tradition. While I, again, do not entirely agree with Bakhle’s conclusions,
her approach has been valuable in the present context because I myself have dealt here
with a type of socio-cultural influence which many (though not all) musicians similarly
see as a non-factor in understanding their own music and Hindustani music generally.
The logic for this denial is very much the same as the logic for denying the importance of
religious community. That is, most performing Hindustani musicians honestly believe
that the only important factor in, for example, evaluating a musician is how well or badly
they play or sing. In this sense, then, they are not unlike many, if not most, musicians
from any other part of the world. At the same time, musicians do not live, practice, teach,
and/or perform in a vacuum, isolated from the broader workings of society (although the
fact that musicians did essentially operate in such a vacuum in the feudal context may
partly explain why so many hold on to such a view), and, as such, we can reasonably
assume that musicians have the same fears, prejudices, biases, etc., as any average citizen
of India. This, then, is the starting point of both Bakhle’s and my own work.
However, I differ drastically from Bakhle in the sense that, not only am I myself a
performer of Western music and a student of the Hindustani tradition, and not only am I
466

committed to a methodology that includes the views and opinions of current practicing
musicians as a substantial element in my analyses, I am also sympathetic to the tradition
in aesthetic terms. That is to say, I find this music to be emotionally moving and
beautiful, in the broadest of senses. Of course, from Bakhle’s standpoint, this is more
likely to be a handicap than an aid in scholarly analysis. It is those that are detached from
and, in a certain sense, uncommitted to the tradition who are most able to see it in the
cold, clear light of reason and objectivity, as Bakhle would have it. She expresses as
much rather explicitly in her aforementioned discussion of how ethnomusicologists are,
to use her term, too “structurally dependent” on their music teachers cum interlocutors, a
dependence which can (and almost always does, in Bakhle’s view) result in
“insufficiently critical attention to the histories that musicians and their hagiographers
tell” (2005:16). Bakhle, though, expresses her feelings toward this musical tradition and
its practitioners much more clearly, I feel, both with her treatment of the various
historical figures she discusses as well as with the overall tone of her work, a tone that I
feel can be quite reasonably described as both scathing and combative. No doubt, her
reply to such a critique would be that, if she has in any particular case “crossed the line”
in her evaluation of certain figures, it is only because her work is intended as a sort of
corrective, or even an antidote, for a century’s worth of hagiographies. At the same time,
though, there are other politically-minded, left-leaning scholars who have managed to
accommodate both an aesthetic appreciation for classical art forms and a leftist political
philosophy within their own academic work, some more gracefully than others. Vinayak
Purohit, as noted in chapter 7, makes clear his appreciation of Hindustani classical music
467

throughout his work, even if he has, in my view, rather artificially tried to separate the
music from both its practitioners and from the social milieu in which it developed in
order to avoid contradicting his rather strident political views. Raymond Williams,
though, has articulated on a number of occasions the rather reasonable view (at least in
my opinion) that political alignment is simply not necessary for producing great art. To
give one example, in discussing the idea of “commitment” on the part of writers and the
apparent problem of evaluating the work of writers whose political alignment is not
progressive in the leftist sense, Williams notes that it is “better to recognize social reality,
which in our own time as in others has produced good and even great reactionary writers,
as well as the others whom we may prefer, for different reasons, to honour and
remember”(1980:211).
However much I differ from Bakhle’s approach in my work; however much I find
her conclusions to be distasteful and often unfair to historical figures who have made
important and demonstrable contributions to the tradition which have benefited both
practicing musicians and the average music lover alike; and however much I find her
studious avoidance of an engagement with living musicians who can speak back and
argue with her conclusions to be cowardly, I do not deny the importance of her work and
certainly would never suggest that she is not well within her rights as a scholar to produce
such a work. However, I do have some concerns about the direction in which such a
study might possibly lead the academic study of Hindustani music as a whole in the
future. The first such concern is that a study such as Bakhle’s implicitly valorizes the
notion that an understanding of specifically musical processes, in other words of “how
468

the music works,” is totally dispensable in analyzing a musical tradition in broader socio-
cultural terms. Contrary to Bakhle’s methodology, I would argue that the sound of music
is indeed relevant, even to understanding music’s social import. Music is, no doubt, the
most abstract of all conventionally defined forms of art, but to say this is far from
asserting that the sounds are unimportant. In my view, studying a musical tradition
without at least a basic grasp of its structure is very much akin to studying, for example,
Hindi literature without knowing Hindi, i.e. by reading only English translations. Yes, a
scholar can no doubt get at much of a particular musical tradition’s social significance
without examining the music itself, but the point to be made here, I feel, is that social
meanings adhere to certain specific sounds. As those sounds change, these social
meanings change, and vice-versa. I am well aware of the fact that most non-musicians
would dismiss this argument as the desperate attempt of a music specialist to fight off the
interdisciplinary interlopers poking around and even making themselves at home in the
territory previously reserved for me and my kind. The truth of the matter as I see it,
though, is that musicologists like myself who take the theory and performance practice of
the musical tradition they study seriously are the last remaining defenders of this
knowledge as relevant and germane to the academic study of music, especially non-
Western music. So, defend it I must, with whatever meager resources I have at my
disposal.
Of course, Bakhle is by no means alone in her implicit dismissal of such
‘specialist knowledge.’ A concern of mine, then, which is more specific to her work, and
thus more crucial in the present context is, in essence, the way in which Bakhle justifies
469

her work, or, in other words, the intended relevance of her work. I understand that we
live in an increasingly politicized world, and the field of academic study itself has
correspondingly become more politicized. As many scholars have taken great pains to
demonstrate, the production of knowledge is always, at its very root, a political act.
Thus, the apparent shift toward politicization which ethnomusicology, among other
fields, has taken in recent years can be argued to be, as much as anything, the result of
acknowledging this underlying truth regarding the relationship between power and
knowledge. However, as a life-long inhabitant of ‘music schools’ (as opposed to centers
for area studies or anthropology departments), i.e. on both the undergraduate and
graduate levels, I have observed quite clearly that, while the study of Western music has
also become increasingly politicized, it has not been to nearly the same extent in the case
of non-Western traditions. Scholarship which focuses on the minutiae of well-known
pieces of music and of the biographies of canonized composers (the study of “Mozart’s
shopping lists,” as one of my colleagues likes to put it) is as common as ever, even as
more critical approaches such as gender and queer studies slowly infiltrate the field. My
feeling, though, is that essentially “non-political” (if there is such a thing) studies will
have a place yet in the field for some time to come, and the reason for this is the often
unspoken assumption that Western classical music is “our music,” the music of our
culture. This, of course, brings in the related and, I feel, quite debatable notion that the
cultures of Europe and the United States are coterminous. I am, again, well aware of the
history of this country, and, more specifically, that the roots of our country lie in Europe,
in European culture and in European political philosophies. It is, though, quite a different
470

matter to say that American culture is European culture. However, there are obviously
quite a few wealthy patrons of the arts and of university music departments who feel
differently, and their money speaks quite a bit louder than my keyboard.
At the same time, I do not wish to take such patrons of the arts to task, as I believe
that the Western classical music tradition is absolutely as deserving of scholarly attention
as any, but not more so. This, then, is the crux of the matter: that western classical music
and other arts are considered intrinsically valuable, while non-Western traditions are only
seen as a means to get at larger social, cultural, and political processes. In other words,
for many, if a non-Western musical tradition is not relevant in political terms, it is simply
not relevant. There are, of course, many individuals and larger institutions that are
responsible for marginalizing the study of non-Western music for its own sake. The chief
among these is the United States government, the primary source of funding for most
overseas research. It is also not surprising, considering the foreign policies pursued by
our government post 9/11. It is more surprising, though, that a liberal scholar such as
Bakhle would so willingly (though inadvertently) collaborate with the conservative
government of the United States on this project of marginalizing an important aspect of
her own culture. Scholars, of course, crave power as much as politicians or anyone else,
for that matter, so you take it where you can get it, I suppose. Perhaps, as has so often
been the case in this country, Hindustani music and other non-Western musical traditions
will only receive the attention they merit, i.e. attention paid to their intrinsic, not simply
their extrinsic, value, when private patrons step forward to fund the study and promotion
of these traditions just as they have the Western tradition. Again, though, I would be
471

emiss if I made it seem that I do not consider Bakhle’s contribution specifically or such
politicized approaches generally to be valuable or of academic merit. It is simply that I
feel that Hindustani music, as much as Western classical music, deserves to be studied
from every angle, from the aesthetic to the political. I am not interested in this implicit
racism which has it that music outside of the West is worthless other than as a tool of
promoting a specific political agenda, whether that agenda be essentially conservative or
liberal. Leaving aside the more specific contributions of the study in terms of either
Indian musicology or ethnomusicology more generally, this then, I feel, is the most
valuable contribution that the present study can make to the scholarship of any type of
music. Whether I have been successful in achieving this end is, of course, up to the
reader to decide.
472

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Indian Music. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate.
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Interviews/Personal Communication
Abhisheki, Shounak. 2005. Interview. Pune.
Atre, Prabha. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Banerjee, Amyaranjan. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Banerjee, Anindya. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Bhagwat, Neela. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Bose, Partho. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Bhide-Deshpande, Ashwini. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Chakraborty, Ajoy. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Choudhuri, Deepak. 2005. Personal Communication. Calcutta.
Choudhuri, Shubha. 2005. Personal Communication. Gurgaon, Haryana.
Dasgupta, Amlan. 2005. Interview. Calcutta
Dasgupta, Buddhadev. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Dasgupta, Somjit. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
480

Datar, D.K. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Deshpande, Ram. 2005. Personal Communication. Bombay.
Deshpande, Satyasheel. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Deshpande, Suryaksh “Raya.” 2005. Personal Communication. Bombay.
Dixit, Dr. & Mrs. P.K. 2005. Interview. Benares.
Dublay, Samir. 2005. Interview. Pune.
Ghosh, Bikram. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Ghosh, Dhruba. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Ghosh, Nayan. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Ghosh, Shankar. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Grover, Neera. 2005. Personal Communication. Bombay.
Haldankar, Srikrishna “Babanrao.” 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Joshi, Yashwant. 2005. Interview. Bombay
Kaikini, Dinkar. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Karmakar, Gourishankar. 2005. Personal Communication. Calcutta.
Kashalkar, Ulhas. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Kichlu, Vijay. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Kumar, Kartick. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Mazumdar, Tejendra Narayan. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Massey, J. 2005. Interview. Benares.
Mishra, Amarnath. 2005. Interview. Benares.
Mishra, Ishwar Lal. 2005. Interview. Benares.
481

Mukherjee, Amit. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Mukherjee, Kumar Prasad. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Mulgaonkar, Arvind. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Nadkarni, Mohan. 2003. Interview. Pune.
Nag, Dipali. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Nag, Mita. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Paranjape, Keshav. 2005. Personal Communication. Bombay.
Parikh, Arvind. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Phadke, Sudhir. 2003. Interview. Pune.
Pradhan, Anish. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Raikar, Milind. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Ranade, Ashok. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Sadolikar-Katkar, Shruti. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Sahasrabuddhe, Veena. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
Samsi, Yogesh. 2005. Interview. Pune.
Sanyal, Ritwik. 2005. Interview. Benares.
Sen, Purnima. 2005. Interview. Calcutta.
Shirodkar, Vishwanath. 2005. Interview. Bombay.
482

VITA
Jeffrey Michael Grimes was born in Irving, Texas on February 26, 1974. He attended
high school at Lubbock High School, Lubbock, Texas. In 1992 he entered Texas
Tech University. He received the Bachelor of Music (with teaching certification)
degree in December of 1996. In August 1997, he entered the Graduate School at The
University of Texas at Austin. He received the Master of Music (Ethnomusicology)
degree in May 2002. He has served as a part-time instructor in the music department
at Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, since August 2006.
Permanent Address: 5725 74 th St., Lubbock, Texas 79424
This manuscript was typed by the author.
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