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A Rasika’s Journey through Hindustani Music is
the author’s journey trying to understand and
appreciate the abstract, expansive, fluid and
wide-ranging contours of North Indian classical
music. Like any other lover of Indian classical
music from South India, Rajeev Nair grew up
listening to Karnatic music. Over the years, his
listening preferences veered in the direction of
Hindustani music. This book is a result of his
changed listening preferences.
Meant for intelligent listeners who want to go
on a journey exploring and enjoying the joys of
North Indian classical music, the book provides
details of not only the most basic concepts
vital to North Indian classical music like its
major forms, the concept of gharanas and their
dominant features, the aesthetics of the raaga
and its centrality to the system but also
details about the lives, creative approaches and
musical styles adopted by vocal and instrumental
maestros of the 20th century.
Working both as an act of homage and
thanksgiving to the great masters and attempting
to transmit the joy that the author felt while
listening to their recorded music, A Rasika’s
Journey through Hindustani Music will appeal to
those who have some understanding of North
Indian classical music as well as to those who
want to make initial forays into this vast ocean
of creativity and style.
(Excerpts from Smt.
Sukumari Narendra Menon’s review of A
Rasika’s Journey Through Hindustani Music
published in Kala Kaumudi no. 1667 dated
19-08-2007, pp. 34- 39. All quotations from the
book.)
For many, music is merely a
means of entertainment. They relish it in no
great depth for a while and leave it at that. If
the rhythm is brisk and the song zesty, some of
them break into a quick jig. But for a select
few, the experience of music is the gateway to
the deep, enigmatic, rarefied and sacrosanct
realms of aesthetic and spiritual joy. It is one
that transcends all human barriers and unites
the listener with the other-worldly delight of
pure love; one that pilots him/her towards the
sublime heights of self-knowledge. When one
reads Rajeev Nair’s A Rasika’s Journey
Through Hindustani Music, its is evident
that he belongs to the latter category of choice
listeners. By his own confession, he
never “had the talent to hum or play a song or
tune” or “to captivate the air with the charm of
[his] voice and enchant the winds with the magic
[his] fingers.” Yet the book makes it evident
that he is the owner of deep and rare musical
experiences. He further says in the Introduction
that he obtained “from that ambrosial ocean of
melodic pleasure a few reluctant drops.” They
“transmuted [his] world completely, filled it
with sounds, tastes, fragrances and joys
hitherto unknown.”
The book does not say
much about the minutiae of the grammar of
Hindustani classical music nor about its
wide-ranging technical facets and intricacies.
The author offers only bare outlines and
clarifications regarding these. Yet the very
core of this book is one that rouses and
sensitises our powers of listening and
appreciation. To achieve this purpose, Rajeev
Nair not only resorts to the vocabulary of music
but banks significantly on the resources of
poetry, painting and other modes of expressive
aesthetics. Therefore when he dwells on the
style or approach of a singer or performer, his
language becomes suffused with the glow of
poetry, the radiance of painting and the
vividness of dramatic presentation. His writing
brims with memorable images, vivid metaphors and
animated figurative language. Time and again,
the author tags the various shades of musical
delight to the comprehensive experience of
rasa. Talking of Ustad Amir Khan’s music, he
ruminates as follows: “The bewitching coppery
glow of the setting sun on a tranquil sea, the
mellow gold of the late autumn in the deep
forests, a cupola of stars thrilling the
stillness of night, the stately solitude of a
Himalayan snow peak mirroring the hues of dawn.
Yes, these are the horizons of images and
feelings, the landscape of emotions and colours
your mind glimpses when you listen to Amir Khan.
A voice that up wells like a deep, slow surge of
wind from the vast caverns of the soul. A
voice so removed from our everyday world, ever
mesmerizing us, ever tantalizing us with its
hypnotic aura, its “alienated majesty,” seeping
like moon-milk into our innards, pouring its
enigmatic secrets sometimes in a hush, sometimes
aloud into our inner ears.”
About the experience of
listening to Kishori Amonkar’s Bhinna Shadaj, he
has this to say: it “etches the picture of a
love-lorn maiden nostalgically and expectantly
sending a letter through a pigeon-carrier. The
fluttering of her heart and the wing-beats of
the carrier-pigeon across a dawn-lit sky are
poetically captured by Kishori.”
About Pt. Pannalal Ghosh’s
approach to raagas, he says: “what Pannalal is
shows us is not the vigorous rush or the
sun-struck glitter of the full river of a raaga;
rather what we are drawn into the translucent
beauty of its depths caressed occasionally by a
tuneful ray of light. His slow sections are like
a deep and still river darkened by the midnight
blue of the night sky. Slowly the moon climbs
and troops of stars wink and shimmer on the
tranquil surface of the raaga. No flurries of
tones, no hurried leaps of swaras, no rhythmic
displays disturb the absolute tranquillity of
his alaaps and vilambits.”
At times, the author
relates the experience of music to painting.
Talking of Jitendra Abhisheki’s approach to
raagas, he says: “He always compared a raga to a
piece of canvas, the swaras to colours
and the musician to the portrait painter who
imaginatively and judiciously used the right
kinds of colours to suit the subject.” Of Pt.
Omkarnath Thakur’s style, he has this to say:
“He fills the outlines of the raga with rich
thick oils at times and translucent water
colours at other times to bring forth the beauty
of both the ragabhava as also the
sahitya.” Further, when he speaks of
Omkarnath Thakur’s dramatic mode of musical
rendition, he resorts to metaphors and images
drawn from the world of theatre: “One of the
outstanding traits of his music was his dramatic
employment of timbre and volume of his voice to
heighten and emphasize the emotional colours of
the song text as also the notes of the raga.
Called kaku-bheda, its manipulation gives
the listener the feeling that the singer is
emoting both the song and melodic text in the
manner of a thespian. In fact, Omkarnath was a
vocal thespian who brought out the manifold
bhavas and rasas inherent in Indian
ragas through vocal modulations hand gestures,
and body language. His presentation was truly
dramatic in the best sense. He lived through and
lived out every shade of emotion inherent in the
raga as also words of the bandish. In
fact, the two fused in his magniloquent
performance. He could coo the raga in a velvety
tone like a courting lover, let off a thunderous
leonine roar in the manner of a wrathful
warrior, or wail in deep melting anguish like a
papiha bereft of its lost mate. He was,
to re-phrase Keats’ marvellous remark on
Shakespeare dramatic genius, a “chameleon”
singer who could totally identify and empathise
with the emotions of the characters or
situations he was depicting totally as also
express them though the medium of song.”
Of his experience of seeing
Ustad Z.M. Dagar’s beautifully crafted Rudra
veena for the first time, he has this to say:
“The fabulously carved rudra shone splendidly on
stage like some mythical jewel-studded barge
floating in queenly pride in a sea of awed
silence.” Of Pt. Ravi Shanker’s music, he says:
“His sitar, metaphorically speaking, is made of
the strong oak of tradition, decorated with the
elegant ivory carvings of lyricism and bound
together with the golden strings of
imagination.” Ustad Bismillah Khan’s
marvellously assimilative approach to music is
described thus: “Bismillah culled the nectar
from the diverse musical meadows of North Indian
music in the manner of a honey bee and
transformed it effortlessly into the honey of
fluent melodic joy.”
Only 100 out of the 402
pages of this book deal with the technicalities
of Hindustani music. The rest of the 302 pages
or so are devoted to the life and art of the
great singers and instrumentalists. Despite the
relative paucity of scholarly and technical
facts and information, this book is a truly
astounding reading experience. Chapter I
outlines the chief forms of Hindustani vocal
music such as dhrupad, khyal, tarana, thumri,
tappa and dadra. Chapter II delineates the major
Gharanas of Hindustani classical music and
Chapter III with the classification of
Hindustani raagas, their relationship to
Ragamalika paintings, to time and varying moods.
But the substantial Chapter IV deals exclusively
and exhaustively with the Great singers of North
Indian classical music and the final chapter
with the instruments and instrumentalists of the
Hindustani paddhati.
Such is the vast extent and scope of this book.
Even if this book cannot
be termed as a musical treatise, Rajeev Nair’s
book stands out among the many books that have
come out on Indian classical music. The
memorable reading experience it offers most
definitely makes it
unputdownable!
One cannot think of very many books on Indian
classical music that that are so poetically
expressive and vibrant in approach and style.
Lovely figurative expressions and elegant turns
of phrase which capture the integration of both
nature and the human heart through melody do
indeed heighten the exquisiteness of this book.
They also heighten the listening abilities and
sensitivities of readers. Not only lovers of
music but musicians too will profit immensely
from this book. Amir Khusroo, the 13th
century Persian musician and mystic who settled
down in India reputedly said: “Hindustani music
is Divine.” Rajeev Nair’s book is indeed a hymn
and a song of praise to Khusroo’s wondrous
revelation.
To read
an extract from NDTV, click
here
To read an extract from The Telegraph, 15
June 2007 click
here
To read an extract from Indian Horizons,
Vol 54 No. 4(1) click
here
To read an extract from Indian Horizons,
Vol 54 No. 4 (2) click
here
To read an extract from Indian Horizons,
Vol 54 No. 4 (3) click
here
To read an extract from The Book Reivew,
July 2008 click
here
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