Harmony and hardships: A new book explores the struggles of today's Hindustani musicians

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2 days ago

A little over two decades ago, Priya Purushothaman landed in India for a one-year immersion in Hindustani music. Freshly out of college and trained in Carnatic violin, she came from a passionately musical Indian family based in New York, her imagination filled with stories about the legends of the classical arts and the sacred and exalted notions of parampara, sadhana, riyaz, taleem, gurus and shishyas.
The one year turned out to be two decades and what was once a dream world became her life. Along the way, the imagination encountered the many realities, some elevating, some overwhelming and some frustrating, of what it means to become a modern Hindustani musician. She is today a vocalist of the Agra gharana, a disciple of some of its finest exponents, very much an insider but also a deeply absorbed observer of its many idiosyncrasies.
What is it like for a female musician to negotiate a fee she richly deserves but is half what men in her field command? What is it for a woman to demand respect, seek the top slot in a festival? How do artists from multi-generational music families deal with the oppressive burden of expectations they bear from childhood? What kind of arduous journey is lined up for musicians who refuse to deal with the marketplace?
Purushothaman's search for answers pushed her to investigate the lives of eight Hindustani musicians. The result is The Call of Music, her recent book that that essays their journeys from the classroom to the stage.
Some of the musicians in her explorations are celebrated names with packed concert calendars, some remain resolutely in the shadows. But they all share one thing – they all have riveting stories to tell of their long struggle to find their own voice in a magnificent tradition with a formidable rule book. A large part of this spins around the tumultuous, backbreaking and often brutal experience of learning that stretches to decades, not years.
Normally such compendia feature legends. After all, who has not heard of Bhimsen Joshi's travels across half of India in search of a guru to find one in his own backyard? Or the corporal punishment that marked the riyaz of Ali Akbar Khan under his father's stern eyes? Or Girija Devi's lonely pursuit? As Purushothaman points out, Hindustani music glorifies age, the theory that creative wisdom only arrives at 60. But her book seeks out younger musicians, confined to a 'permanent position of inadequacy' by this reverse ageism.
'I was inspired by the large number of unknown musicians and hidden voices, many of whom put in as much effort as the well-known ones,' said Purushothaman. 'I wanted to document this hidden domain of musicians who were passionate about music, often at the expense of social expectations. As I started writing, I realised that some stories of more well-known musicians were necessary in order to understand this common, shared drive and dedication towards music. I chose musicians who were willing to honestly share their musical journey.'
As a result, the profiles in The Call of Music include artistes of different styles, ages, and social and cultural backgrounds, their diversity showing that it is possible for contrary viewpoints to coexist in the arts. The melange includes sarodiya Alam Khan, violinist Kala Ramanath, vocalists Shubha Joshi and Shubhada Paradkar, tabla wizard Yogesh Shamsi, singer and gender activist Rumi Harish, Purushothaman's own vocal guru Sudhindhra Bhowmick, and sarangiya and scholar Suhail Yusuf Khan.
Grit and grind
Five years ago, The Disciple, a feature film by Chaitanya Tamhane, had arrived on Indian screens, tracing the angst of a Hindustani classical musician's lonely journey. The film did not say anything the music fraternity did not know – the high ideals of art conflicting with the tawdry reality of the market, the guru's demanding fixation with asceticism, the need to earn a livelihood and find fame.
The film sent the classical world into paroxysms of indignation – it had breached an inviolable line by questioning the shibboleths around the revered guru-shishya tradition. It was without question a bleak view that many complained would put youngsters off an already endangered art.
Purushothaman's The Call of Music celebrates the tremendous resilience of its protagonists, but at the same time, it is brave enough to wade into questions of exclusion, gender bias, and community and caste divides.
For Purushothaman, whose feminist views are often at odds with the idealised norms about what a woman's voice and style should be, the gender questions are personal and political. 'Subconsciously I was more interested in questions of gender and voice because these are issues that came up in my taleem and experience,' she said.
There are several issues she explores in the book with her women characters – the considerable pay gap, the idea of the so-called feminine voice and rendition style in khayal, what it means for a modern woman to sing cliched bandishes about hapless nayikas, the eternal question of juggling a career with domesticity and, radically, what it means to be transsexual in a conservative art sphere.
Violinist Kala Ramanath comes from a formidable violin lineage going back generations: the towering N Rajam is her aunt and TN Krishnan her uncle. Her early years were full of the single-minded grind and grit needed to shine in a dazzling family. Despite this, she says, a man in her place would have an easier time demanding and getting respect and fair pay.
'I've had to prove myself twice over… don't you think my aunt Rajamji has made a brilliant contribution to the violin in Hindustani music?' she told Priya. 'Today where is she in relation to other male counterparts? People do not take women seriously. Even now, I've had concerts organized by musicians where I have been treated badly. It could be my stay, where I am placed in a festival line-up. Placing me before a youngster who is a boy, just because I'm a woman.'
Shubha Joshi and Shubhada Paradkar ran into the gender wall of a different kind. Both have big voices and bold singing styles.
Paradkar is an exponent of the Agra gharana, once reputed to be a men-only club because of its robust and open-throated voice throw and animated layakari (rhythm). For embodying those traits, she was criticised as 'masculine' and 'aggressive'. Early in her career, the censure was swift: ''Shobha nahi deta lady artists ko aise gana (this kind of singing does not suit women).''
For Purushothaman, who has faced similar criticism as a Agra gharana vocalist, this is an unfair critique in a music that prides itself on being abstract. Paradkar says she had to tone down the layakari in her singing, but she resolutely continues to do the exquisite nom tom alap of her gharana, the use of abstract syllables to articulate a raga that is considered manly.
Paradkar argues for her right to fashion her own music: 'I don't think that is too masculine. But why do we need to bring gender into this? It is unfair. Understand an artiste as an artiste, not as a female or male.' With an impeccable line of gurus to guide her – Gajanan Joshi and, later, Babanrao Haldankar and Padmavati Shaligram – she is a multifaceted artiste with a wide repertoire. And all the sexist pushback she got has turned her even more fiercely supportive of women students. She understands that for them, like her, the day starts early with care work, cooking and a million tasks before they rush to music and then return to the chores.
Shubha Joshi, a fine vocalist, trained in the Bhendi Bazar style but opted to specialise in thumri, dadra and ghazal. This put her under the tutelage of the indomitable and magisterial Shobha Gurtu. But there was another thing that drew her to the thumri exponent. Joshi's voice was thick and deep, nowhere near the sweet high pitch of Lata Mangeshkar that ruled the airwaves in her growing years and it upset her. Rejection was a given for a heavy voice like hers.
Which is why, when she heard Gurtu sing for the first time in her masterly full-throated voice, it was a revelation. 'A light bulb lit in my head, a lamp was lit ablaze,' she recalls in the book. 'I was so thrilled that this kind of voice could produce such beautiful music.'
Relentless study
Questions of caste and community are rarely articulated publicly in Hindustani music, though they have now been laid bare in the Carnatic world. 'Despite the art form's syncretic history, the ecosystem does not necessarily embrace or uplift the diversity of its practitioners,' writes Purushothaman. It is Suhail Khan – a sarangiya, a member of the band Advaita and now a doctoral scholar – who touches on the subject of caste bias against Mirasis, his community of marginalised hereditary Muslim musicians heartlessly dismissed as 'gaane bajanewale log'.
Likely the most heart-wrenching as well as uplifting personal story is of the Agra gharana singer Sudhindra Bhowmick and his and his family's astonishing struggle to keep alive his art despite poverty, illness, death and terrible adversities. His life reads like a dramatic novella: of a random journey to Bihar as a youngster in search of one Shuklaji of whom he knew nothing, of having degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management but abjuring the comforts a topline career, and of a peripatetic life in search of idealism in music.
'His life has been a free fall with no safety nets, and he has enjoyed the thrill of the ride,' writes Priya of her guru. 'Traces of the pain, intensity and joy of his life glimmer in his eyes, but in his music, it is undeniable, unstoppable.'
But even if you have the safety net of social and cultural networks, you do not have an easy time of taleem. Yogesh Shamsi's tabla wizardry gets him full houses today, but few know of the relentless hours of solitary daily practice at the home of his guru, the venerated Alla Rakha, in a stuffy garage of his flat. The fact that he was the son of the Agra pandit Dinkar Kaikini could not take away from the loneliness, the sweat and grime of that sadhana.
'My gurus have shown me up close and unfiltered what it means to walk the path of sadhana in modern times,' writes Priya. 'To be with your guru through moments of joy, loss, vulnerability, disagreement, and raw honesty, changes the way you make music. I believe this connection is destiny more than serendipity.'