“How could you even imagine something like this?” said the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi, turning down filmmaker Yousuf Saeed’s request for a six-month visa to pursue a research fellowship on Pakistan’s Sufi shrines. After a protracted bureaucratic run-around, which lasted longer than the time he had intended for his visit, Saeed finally made it across the border, returning with a film on traditions of Indian classical music in Pakistan.
The film talks with musicians of an earlier generation — among them the late Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s nephew, Nisar Ali — about pre-Partition days, when music lovers from across undivided India would flock to Lahore for its famous soirées, held at dargahs and on the rooftops of homes. Post-1947, the imperatives of establishing a Pakistani identity based on difference from India made the country’s artists rename ragas (Shiv Kalyan became Shab Kalyan) and the only medium of patronage, the radio, banned anything that had the names of Hindu deities in it. Musicians who migrated to Pakistan from the gharanas of Patiala and Gwalior, Lucknow and Delhi took to writing books explaining how their music was part of their tradition, how the best musicians of the soil had been Muslims. But all to little avail, so those interviewed claim, specially after repeated war rigidified positions even further.
It is the contention of the artists interviewed in Khayal Darpan: A Mirror of Imagination (on sale via Ektara) that classical music after 1947 declined not just in Pakistan but also in India, despite government patronage. But the film is not so much about cultural decadence as it is about experiment and evolution: the Kirana gharana introduced the vilambit (slow tempo) in Pakistani Punjab, where hitherto a vigour had been prized in the singing voice, one “coming from the breast”. The Pakistani Punjab style of thumri, on the other hand, influenced the thumri form in India, an interesting case being that of a visually-challenged artist who spent four years in Bhopal, negotiating cultural mores.
The ghazal, considered closer to the Pakistani identity, was better tolerated than other forms and, becoming heavily influenced by the classical tradition, came to be performed in the thumri style. Vocalist Badruzzaman describes classical music in Pakistan as having been gradually pushed into oblivion through the rise of ghazal, folk, qawwali and pop music in the country. But, as noted lawyer and musician Raza Kazim says, classical music itself needed to be reinvented to appeal to a younger generation; it needed fresh currents to keep it from being seen as “Government of India music”. “Our instruments were in a bad state as they were meant to be traditionally used as accompaniments,” says Kazim. So he made a new one — the Sagar Vina. Such an attempt would have been labelled heresy in India, he says, making you wonder if SPIC-MACAY will hold a special screening of Khayal Darpan for Delhi’s classical musicians.
[First published in Tehelka.]
Why so? Countless musicians have made improvements on their instruments, built new instruments, and adopted western instruments for Indian Classical Music. And none of them are branded heretics. Vishwamohan Bhatt and Salil Bhatt use the Hawaaian guitar, renamed as the Mohan Veena and Sattvik Veena. Parur Sundaram Iyer introduced the violin to Hindustani music, just as it had been introduced to the Carnatic style ages ago. Santoor was a folk instrument before Shiv Kumar Sharma revolutionised it. This time, N Ravikiran will have a rhythm pad to accompany him when he plays in the Music Academy for the December Festival in Madras. Indian music has never turned its back on innovation.
I don’t see why SPIC MACAY should have any problems. We aren’t orthodox, you know.
I don’t really understand what exactly you are trying to prove. Do you mean to say that Indian classical music has evolved more in Pakistan that in India? All the past meastros might have been Muslim, and some might have even been Pakistanis, but most of the torchbearers of the various gharanas of North India are here in India. Kishori Amonkar for Alladiya Khan’s Jaipur Gharana, Ajoy Chokroborty for Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s Patiala Gharana, Sawai Gandharva, and through him Bhimsen Joshi and Gangubai Hangal for Abdul Karim Khan’s Kirana Gharana.
And what about the Carnatic idiom, something that retains the status of a living culture in South India even today?
I have nothing against Pakistan or its version of Classical music, and I like to listen to old recordings of past masters of Pakistan a lot (such as the ones made available on Sarangi.info). But I wonder whether it is necessary to eulogise anything Pakistani or Islamic and criticise anything Hindu or Indian to be counted as a member of the Secular brigade.