How Kishori Amonkar and her mother Mogubai Kurdikar blazed a trail in Hindustani music
Her music '...for me, is a painting that embodies every detail of someone's life. And in that there is great happiness, great sadness, great anger, great frustration, desperation — everything in one concentrated little piece'. This is how Ustad Zakir Hussain described stalwart musician Kishori Amonkar in Bhinna Shadaj (Note Extraordinaire), a documentary by Sandhya Gokhale and Amol Palekar.
Hindustani vocalist Radhika Joshi created 'Mai ri', a special tribute to this musician, whose story is entwined with that of her mother and guru — the doyenne Mogubai Kurdikar. Radhika's 'Mai ri', rooted in the music and life stories of Kishori Amonkar and Mogubai Kurdikar, was part of Bangalore International Centre's special programming for Women's Day.
The story of this mother-daughter duo who irreversibly transformed how raags would be sung and heard begins in a small village in Goa. Born in Kurdi in 1904, Mogubai was orphaned early. Even as a child who had to find her path in the world, she knew that her mother had wished for her to not just sing but to also make a life of it. Having worked as an actor in more than one theatre company, Mogubai was no stranger to the stage. She had also trained in Kathak and ghazal singing. When work in the theatre stopped, she fell ill and travelled with a relative to Sangli for treatment. There, her daily music riyaaz drew the founder of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana Ustad Alladiyan Khan Saheb to her doorstep, and he offered to teach her.
When Ustad Alladiyan Khan moved to Mumbai shortly after, Mogubai followed him. Radhika describes in 'Mai ri' that this was radical in those times, also because of differences in religious backgrounds. It was not a rosy path for Mogubai in Mumbai. She had to contend with prejudice against women from 'respectable backgrounds for choosing to sing on stage'. Widowed young, Mogubai raised three daughters on her own, while working as a professional musician and teacher. She chose to pass on her musical teachings to her eldest daughter Kishori tai (as she's known).
Juxtaposed with Radhika's renditions of Mogubai and Kishori tai's compositions, spanning an array of raags and musical formats, were narrations about the duo that conjured up images of two strong-willed women, passionate about music, not always in agreement with each other, but determined to sing and grow their chosen musical form. Radhika sourced information for 'Mai ri' from biographies on Mogubai and Kishori Amonkar besides having detailed discussions with her guru Pt. Raghunandan Panshikar, who studied music directly from both.
'Finding information about Mogubai's music was challenging, because there are fewer resources available on her. With Kishori tai it was the opposite problem — there are many newspaper articles and interviews, but since she evolved musically over the decades, some of her thoughts may seem contradictory to what she said earlier,' Radhika points out. Though Mogubai was 'a firm believer of maintaining the purity of the tradition and wasn't one to experiment too much, she composed drut bandishes as at that time there weren't fast paced compositions in many ragas characteristic to the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana such as Shuddha Nat, Sampurna Malkauns or Gauri'.
'Kishori tai was more open to experimentation. She would spend hours trying different combinations of raags. Some jod raags created by tai are Anand Malhar and Lalat Vibhas,' shares Radhika. Kishori tai's love for light music and ghazals was rooted in the fact that her mother sent her to train in other forms and in other gharanas. When Kishori tai sang a film song, however, Mogubai warned her that she might never touch her tanpura again, if she didn't remain faithful to classical music.
Radhika says that Mogubai has taught her the power of dedication. 'In most traditional Indian art forms, students are taught to simply accept what the guru says. By challenging norms and if required later, even admitting mistakes, Kishori tai made space to question texts and what earlier masters had to say,' she says.
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