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Sung In A Certain Style
REKHA SURYA
Thumri and its allied forms
Dedicated to
Begum Akhtar, Girija Devi and Bashir Khan
with gratitude
CONTENTS
1.North Indian light classical vocal music
2. The allied forms of Thumri:
Krishna the Divine Lover (Dadra, Hori, Kajri, Jhoola) Song-translations.
3. Ghazal as related to Thumri:
Faiz and other great Urdu poets. Song-translations.
4. Mystical poetry in north Indian light classical music:
Kabir and other mystic-poets. Song-translations.
5. Rekha Surya in dialogue with Prof. Mushirul Hasan and Ashok Vajpeyi
Couplets and stanzas added to a song are in italics.
PREFACE
For a singer who straddles two cultures, it was tempting to transport one cultural space into another by translating my songs for a concert-brochure when asked to sing at the Smithsonian Institution in 1994. Since then I have been translating my songs for audiences abroad, most of which are re-produced here. These songs are presented in the north Indian light classical style, a genre that bridges the gap between pure classical and mainstream music.
I was eleven years old when I first attended a Khayal concert in my hometown Lucknow, after which I told my mother that I wanted to learn classical music. A tutor was arranged from the local All India Radio station to come home to teach me and after faring well in music exams alongside school, my family declared me musically inclined. I felt deprived during the year that I had to be a boarder in the Irish convent where I schooled, missing most of all my music classes.
Some years later, I met Begum Akhtar who also lived in Lucknow. A common family friend had arranged a meeting in her home, where I was graciously received but my request to learn from her was flatly refused. She said she had stopped teaching, having had some bitter experiences. Just as we were about to leave, she told me to sing something for her. I sang one of her ghazals and she dramatically said “I’ll teach you just so this voice doesn’t go waste. Come tomorrow morning at ten.”
I began going daily to her. Sometimes my father fetched me from her house on his way home from office and she would tell him, “Let this girl sing on stage”. Sometimes after morning classes, she would tell me to stay back for lunch and we would lie chatting on her bed in the afternoons.
I had told her that I only wanted to enrich myself through her music. It seemed impractical to pursue music as a profession as I was already in my late teens and singers start training when they are five or six years old. She insisted on my taking it up professionally, saying, “You’re intelligent and educated so you’ll make up for lost time.”
She took me with her to Calcutta where after a concert I saw a Bengali gentleman lying at her feet in complete worship. She stoked the embers of her past in hotels where we stayed in Calcutta and later in Delhi, keen that I write her biography though some renowned writers wanted to.
Deeply ethical in an unconventional way, she told me that her idea of sin was* kisi ka dil dukhaana and added mainey kabhi kisi ka bura nahin chaaha hai. She believed that aik achchey fankaar hone ke liye aik achcha insaan hona zaroori hai. Once when I had taken a gift for her she immediately telephoned my parents to say that though not from her womb I was her child so there was no need for presents just because she was teaching me. She kept out-of-season fruit for me since I was always on a diet, and began to insist that I focus on music and give up dancing Kathak—which I had been learning from a disciple of Achchan Maharaj—except as exercise to keep myself in shape. Unwilling to trivialize Kathak as an art form, I left dancing altogether, although I had been told I was a “born dancer”. Ammi, as she was called, died much too soon but still lingers in my mind.
A year or so later, Girija Devi came to Lucknow for a concert. The following evening I was invited to listen to her sing, accompanied by Shanta Prasad on tabla, in the home where she was staying. The host told her that my taalim under Begum Akhtar had been cruelly cut short. Asked about my plans to continue learning music, I mumbled that only after further training in Khayal would I deserve to learn Thumri from her. But she told me not to wait and to accompany her back to Benares after a few days.
She assured my parents that she would look after me in her home and so I took the train to Benares with her. That first exposure to Benares was unforgettable. It was the month of Chait, just after Holi. The day after my arrival in this tradition-soaked city, Appa, as she is called, took me with her for what was to be a Chaiti evening. Upon entering a maidaan, we were served thandai in earthen bowls. An assembly of male singers wearing white kurta-dhotis sat cross-legged in a neat semi-circle on an open stage. Soon a chaiti began, with its mandatory “Ho Rama” which distinguishes Chaiti from other light classical forms, as Ramnaumi is celebrated during the month of Chait. Each singer improvised musical phrases of a chaiti and as one singer finished a passage the next one continued till the semi-circle was completed. It was a dazzling evening.
After lessons, I was sent off with a house member on a rickshaw to drink Benarsi lassi, to meet Sitara Devi’s sister who explained the Benares style of Kathak, and to Kishan Maharaj’s house where he proudly showed me the varieties of pigeons he reared and portraits of his ancestors, all tabla maestros. But Benares also had terrible electricity power cuts and I remember feeling sorry for myself when I practised tappa taans with sweat trickling down my back.
I went to Benares intermittently, till Girija Devi accepted the post of Guru at the Sangeet Research Academy in Calcutta. Then there was another turn of events. The Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi had asked me to write on Begum Akhtar as her youngest disciple, as its journal was publishing an issue on her. The Director General of Doordarshan and All India Radio complimented me warmly on the article at a dinner held in Delhi. I thought it a good time to tell him that AIR wrongly bought her live recordings from a man who exploited her and whom she loathed instead of from her husband. The Director General seemed taken aback by this twenty-year-old girl telling him off but oddly, offered me a job upon my return to Lucknow. I was to make documentaries for the newly launched Lucknow Doordarshan and learn technicalities while on the job. My first documentary, on ittar, was selected for viewing at an international documentary festival in Kuala Lumpur and considerably encouraged by this, I continued working for television till I made eighteen documentaries—on tribals called Tharus living deep in the forests of Lakhimpur Kheri, on Wealthy Fisher who at the age of ninety-nine spoke delightfully about Gandhiji and Literacy House, on Diesel Locomotives Workshop, on Sarnath and its Buddhist temples which all have varying sounds of formal prayer, on Bhadoi’s carpet weaving, on Varanasi, on Lucknow and other subjects.
Meanwhile, my old Kathak teacher whom I sometimes visited, had discovered for me a music teacher in Lucknow. His name was Bashir Khan and he was a poor, obscure sarangi player, his brilliance recognized only by local musicians. I left Doordarshan. Acutely missing the hustle-bustle of the editing room and the camera unit at first, slowly I eased back into the world of stillness that is music. Bashir Khan taught me for three years.
I began getting offers to perform and once on a concert trip to Calcutta, Girija Devi, with whom I was staying, suggested I join SRA as her disciple. Bashir Khan was very old. It was after he died that I joined SRA in Calcutta for a year.
Then I moved to Delhi where I live.
* kisi ka dil dukhaana -to hurt someone’s feelings.
mainey kabhi kisi ka bura nahi chaaha hai -I have never ever wished anyone ill.
aik achchey fankaar hone ke liye aik achcha insaan hona zuroori hai -to be a good artist it is necessary to be a good person.
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A
rich combination of poetry and musicianship can
make the Ghazal a highly evolved and unique art.
The
Ghazal as a poetic form originated in Persia in
the tenth century. Though Persian in origin, the
Indian ghazal has a distinctive character of its
own, rooted in the Indian ethos. Its poetry is
written in Urdu, a camp language born in India.
Urdu is a Turkish word, meaning `bazaar for
soldiers'. The base of the Urdu language is Indic;
its vocabulary is a mixture of Hindi, Turkish;
Arabic, and Persian. Urdu emerged when early
Muslim dynasties ruled in India, and crystallized
during the Mughal period. In its formative stages,
Urdu was called Hindvi or Rekhta. The first
evidential ghazal was written by Amir Khusro in
the thirteenth century. This ghazal combines two
cultures clothed in two languages - half of each
line is in Persian, and the other half is in
Brij-bhasha; and each couplet is arranged thus.
Urdu had not till then consolidated .Along with
the political regime, it shifted to the Deccan ,
and later moved up North again, where it became a
sophisticated and elegant court language. The Urdu
ghazal matured and attained its apex during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it
flourished in Delhi and Lucknow.
A
ghazal consists of couplets, each of which is
complete within itself, and may not resemble, in
thought-content, any other couplet in the ghazal.
All the couplets in a ghazal share a common rhyme
scheme and meter, but are at liberty to be
thematically unrelated. Those who seek the logical
development of an idea in a poem, find the
fragmentary thought-structure of the Ghazal
perplexing; but it is precisely this lack of
thematic continuity which is the peculiar virtue
of the Ghazal, and which makes the Ghazal a
specialized verse-form. Each couplet, holding the
complete expression of an idea, is self-contained,
and is a poem in itself. Despite its limited
space, a couplet is capable of exploring the
entire range of human experience, absorbing and
describing its complexities. Poetic compression is
the distinguishing feature of the Ghazal.
The
Arabic word `ghazaal' - its derivative being `ghazal'
- implies conversing with one's beloved. Its other
etymological meaning is "the painful wail of
a wounded deer". The plaintive note
insistently heard in the Ghazal can be ascribed to
the state of the lover, who is traditionally
presented
in the Ghazal as one in anguish. Major poets
broadened the scope of the Ghazal and looked
beyond the confines of love and wine. They also
moved away from the indiscriminate use of
conventional or exaggerated and far-fetched
imagery and diction. The Ghazal also became a
vehicle of philosophical contemplation, and its
spectrum included political and social issues.
Ghazals
were and are often sung by poets themselves in `mushairas'.
In the music world, they were generally sung by
courtesans, some of who were renowned musicians.
During the early and mid-twentieth century,
prominent Ghazal exponents like Zohra Bai and
Kamala Jharia, the brilliant young Master Madan,
and Begum Akhtar gave a definite shape to Ghazal-singing
- what can be called Ghazal-gayaki.
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"She kept her listeners alive to the poetry
by keeping them constantly expectant for the
`punch' phrase, found in the second line of every
couplet, completing the poet's picture and bearing
its point and essence. She would play around with
the first half of the couplet, building
anticipation, and then, using her innately superb
sense of timing, pause for a split second. Her
fingers on the harmonium would freeze in a moment
of tense stillness. Then she would throw the
punch' phrase; consummating the sense of
drama......
Begum
Akhtar laid bare her soul, and the poet's, in her
ghazals. This naked vulnerability made her
listeners vulnerable to their own emotional wounds
and experiences. One of the reasons for the
popularity of Ghazalsinging is the ability to
identify oneself with the thoughts, emotions, and
situations described, making it meaningful for
one."
In
terms of musical lineage, Ghazal is - and should
be -the off-spring of `Bol-banao Thumri'. (Thumri
is of three types - `Bandish - ki-Thumri which is
composition-oriented; `Artha-bhava Thumri' which
is sung for Kathak dancers, and `Bol-banao Thumri').
`Bol- banana' means creating musical variations in
and around a textual word or phrase. An important
element in `Bol-banana' is `Kahan' - the speech
intonations within the musical framework - which
literally means "manner of speech".
Earlier,
Ghazal was presented in a light-classical concert
as one of the allied forms of Thumri. After
gaining popularity for itself, it has been plucked
out of a light-classical repertoire, and is no
longer associated with Thumri. Today, it is seldom
heard as part of a larger whole. This in itself is
not deplorable, as all art-forms are, mutable with
time. The pity lies in improper musical handling,
and loss of quality. Even Hindi filmsongs have
degenerated, in their quest for commercial
success.
Most
present-day Ghazal-singers, being unversed with
Thumri; have not drawn their musicianship from it,
arid are unacquainted with its intensely emotional
element of `Pukaar', which literally means
"to call out"; hence their Ghazal-gayaki
lacks passion. A Thumri-singer who is well-versed
with Urdu, and who comprehends the poetic
structure of Ghazal, can render Ghazal ideally
;for a sound Thumri-singer has the necessary
Khayal background, and has also been trained to
pour passion into a musical renderirig and to
evocatively elaborate textual phrases.
Yet
even a Thumri-singer's musical elaboration must be
restrained and judicious in Ghazal; if the poetry
is swamped with excessive musical treatment, the
poetic thread between the two lines of the couplet
gets lost. My teacher, Begum Akhtar, once told me
that a ghazal is like a painting. The poetry is
like the painting itself, and should be given
paramount importance, never to be dwarfed or
overwhelmed by the musical portrayal, which she
likened to an appropriately ornate picture-frame.
Ghazal-gayaki
must have covert musicianship. Overt musical
technique like `sargam' and `tihai' - borrowed
Khayal characteristics being popularly used -
disturbs the romantic aura of the genre, even
while such technique imparts classical seriousness
to the Ghazal and dazzles audiences with its
inherent virtuosity.
The
decline of Urdu as a language, started during
Begum Akhtar's time. ,
She
herself, aware of the fact that after the Indian
subcontinent's partition fewer people in India
understood the nuances of Urdu, chose to sing
along with Ghalib and the other masters -
commonplace poetry which had mass-appeal. However,
musically she remained true to the Ghazal form.
Soon after her death, the void left by her in the
Indian Ghazal world, was filled by Pakistan's
Mehdi Hasan, who awed audiences by his command
over the classical idiom. He rendered Khayal -
oriented rather than Thumri-oriented ghazals in a
tender and sentimental manner rather than with the
full-throated and passionate style associated with
Begum Akhtar. This soft and sentimental style of
voice-production became a trend-setting
phenomenon. Upon his departure from India, he left
in his wake a host of Bombay-based Ghazal-singers,
who borrowed his manner, but who were unable to
reproduce the musicianship. Also, influenced by
Pakistani orchestration; they adopted several
accompanying instruments, particularly the guitar.
Because
of diluted and tune-oriented Ghazal rendition,
they essentially belong to the world of Hindi
film-music or `light music'. Their treatment of
ghazals as mere songs makes these ghazals
musically identifiable with Geet. These tunes,
often framing pedestrian poetry, has drawn crowds,
and so while the Ghazal has spread from the elite
to the masses, it has also degenerated.
Some
contemporary Urdu poets are writing forcefully in
very simple vocabulary - meeting modern
sensibilities. With its changed metaphor, some of
this poetry has retained literary quality, even
while most commercial Ghazal-singers, select
trite, sub-standard poetry for mass appeal.
Audiences
often accept what is available to them, for lack
of an alternative. Sometimes audiences are
musically ignorant, but they can be trained to be
discerning and discriminating, simply by being
given good fare. Audiences do not create
artists - artists create audiences. Excellence of
standard and commercial viability need not be
mutually exclusive. If artists choose to be
unaware of this, and wish to merely entertain, as
so many do today, a vicious cycle can set in - as
it has between audiences and artists, in terms of
deterioration in quality. If facile Ghazal-singers
seek justification by saying, "This is what
audiences want" why is it that when audiences
receive good fare, they gladly accept it, even
without complete comprehension? Coleridge
has said, " Poetry is best ~appreciated when
half understood". Perhaps this is true of
both poetry and music.
When
scientific technology is giving ever-new heights
of excellence to audio-cassettes etc. - the medium
which takes music to its vastest audiences -
should the Ghazal lose its integrity and plummet
down?
REKHA SURYA
*
Journal of the Sangeet Natak Academy - No. 37
"The
Living Legend becomes a Legend" by Rekha
Surya
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