The opulent chandeliers slowly dim to cast a shimmering glow; the resonant chanting of “Om” reverberate all around; a mellifluous voice breaks into the Saraswati Vandana. A stylish Kathak recital follows before an audience that sits in the baithaki style of the maharajas. These rich sounds of celestial music serenade the start of a 12-hour Indian classical music concert, transporting you to the era long gone with the royals and royalty, which placed classical music artists on a pedestal. Lest you think you are in India or the royal palaces of Jaipur, let us turn up the lights and welcome you to the Inaugural Sursaagar Classical Music Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.
While tens of thousands of Indian Americans are immersed in Bollywood shows this summer and thousands others are being anointed as blue blooded Americans, embracing soccer, piano lessons, hip hop, or indipop music, a select few are trying to sustain the Indian classical art forms and helping showcase the rich and vibrant culture of India in America.
This movement strives at the grassroots with Indians who came here 30 years ago to live the American dream as its foot soldiers. They had worked hard and found the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Today some of them are trying to live vicariously through their children by pushing them to learn Indian classical dance or an instrument or vocal music to give them a sense of a cultural identity borne of their native land. Dance and music schools have consequently mushroomed everywhere, including those by several renowned celebrity artists, such as classical vocalist Pundit Jasraj, Sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan, actress and Bharat Natyam dancer Padmini Ramchandran, to name a few.
Pandit Ravi Shankar with Maestro Yehudi Menuhin and Ustad Allarakha
If there is one artist who put Hindustani classical music on the world map it is sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar. Contrary to popular belief it was not his association with the Beatles that was the beginning of Shankar’s stint as India’s musical ambassador abroad.
“It was Yehudi Menuhin whom I had met in 1952 and had struck a friendship with, who asked me to come over, “ says Shankar. “I met George Harrison years later in 1966. I was already very well known in Europe and USA by then. The only thing that happened was that my meeting with George coincides with the first part of the hippie movement. They called themselves the flower children; there was freedom of everything, the youth revolution. It was very sweet and innocent then and it helped people become more open minded towards music of other nations. Suddenly the younger generation took to my music in a big way, and I became a super star in the pop sense.”
The Monterrey Pop Festival and Woodstock were two mega events that propelled Hindustani classical instrumental music onto the American pop stage. Today, however, Ravi Shankar rues his stint at Woodstock. “When I played in Woodstock I saw everything going downhill. Apart from drugs, I heard there was violence, even rape, theft and robbery. The superficiality with which these people were treating India, the clichÈd scenario with the so-called Kamasutra parties with hashish, the mockery of Buddhism really upset me. I would constantly admonish these people, whenever they came to my concerts to stop taking drugs, smoking, to behave themselves. I’d tell them, ‘You wouldn’t be doing this if you went for a western classical music concert. Indian classical music too, cannot be heard like pop and rock.’ After my unpleasant experience at Woodstock, I stopped playing at all pop and rock concerts, much to the dismay of my managers who were trying to cash in on my popularity, but I am very proud to say I stood my ground and went through that period with dignity. Of course, nowadays, I only play in closed auditoriums like Royal Albert Hall, or Carnegie Hall, where smoking or misbehavior is not allowed.”
Nevertheless these concert tours and the efforts of several NRIs since the late 1960s saw the blossoming of Indian Classical arts into the mega bucks business it has become today. Two such stalwarts who have worked tirelessly to promote the Indian classical arts in the United States are Professor Balwant Dixit of the University of Pittsburgh and Harihar Rao, the younger brother of tabla maestro Taranath Rao, who lives in Los Angeles and has run the music circle series of concerts for almost 3 decades.
Harihar Rao with George Harrison and Lakshmi Shankar.
Harihar Rao came to Berkeley on a Fulbright grant and recalls seeing very few Indian in Los Angeles. He would be accosted by people, who would ask “Are you a yoga?” because he wore Indian clothes. An airport official once remarked about his sitar “Oh you are taking your totem pole with you?”
“It showed the ignorance of the general population about India and Indian culture. I have seen those days and today, every weekend, Los Angeles has five to six Indian activities big or small.”
Rao had already helped Ravi Shankar produce some of the largest music festivals in New Delhi. When he came to the United States in 1961 and Ravi Shankar started his foreign tours, they started a musical circle in Los Angeles and almost 30 years later it’s still being run almost single handedly by Rao, with the who’s who of Indian classical musicans performing there year after year.
Dixit came to the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, but as a student in Pune prior to that he had had the enriching experience of seeing several maestros in concert. When he came to Pittsburgh, determined to put Indian culture on the map, he started by volunteering at the international folk dance festival in 1962.
“I made costumes for the dancers. We were only 120 students in the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon together, but we volunteered to help in many areas be it cooking, sewing, chauffeuring, carpentry, etc.” In 1984, Dixit’s name was
suggested to the deputy ambassador who was looking for people or organizations to bring Indian classical musicians’ groups to the United States.
Dr. Balwant N. Dixit
“We got 27 musicians from India and did 90 concerts in seven weeks and raised $80,000.” The University of Pittsburgh was requested by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the Ministry of Culture in India to formulate a bilateral cultural exchange program. This circuit started inviting at least four groups of classical musicians from India each year to perform and present workshops and lecture demonstrations at participating universities and colleges. Over the next few years a loose consortium of some 75 universities and colleges was formed and the program renamed the Center for the Performing Arts of India (CPAI). Since then CPAI has become one of the key Indian cultural organizations in the United States that coordinates between 70 to 120 Hindustani classical music concerts and lecture demonstrations for diverse audiences and has raised over $1.7 million in support of its activities.
“When I got some of the artists who are now very famous, they were known in India, but no one knew them here. They were hungry for money as well as name, but I made it very clear to them that if they come they would do so on my terms, because I am answerable to the university. There was an 8-page document, which they had to sign. We hosted a lot of them in our three bedroom house and at times there were six to seven of them staying simultaneously while my wife and kids would stay in one of the rooms. In all 165 musicians have stayed with us. I mastered all the airline schedules, destinations, till I knew by heart all the routes we took,” recalls Dixit.
In North America, between 250 to 300 well-organized concerts of Carnatic and Hindustani music are presented each year by over 100 local organizers. These include universities, colleges, music societies or associations, temples as well as a few individual sponsors. Says Dixit, “In USA if you look at the total population of people of Indian descent its about 1. 7 million. Here 300 North Indian concerts take place annually while even a huge metropolitan cultural Mecca like Bombay hosts only about 100 concerts. So people have done much more here and the credit goes to the NRIs, their wives, volunteers who have worked tirelessly, for free, pampering and paying big money to the musicians.”
The face of Indian classical arts has changed tremendously since the 1960s, according to Rao and Dixit. The artists, who were brought by them in the 1970s and 1980s to perform are now high profile celebrities, no longer as accessible and their fees have doubled or tripled. Says Dixit, “They will tell you all sorts of false stories to get more money, ask for false receipts, ask you how to avoid paying taxes and other underhand things they get away with in India. After Sept. 11 the immigration people are cracking down even harder. I don’t allow such things. Often the accompanists never get paid anything. The main musician gets it all, the accompanist will get a fraction. So I made arrangements for the accompanists to be paid separately.”
As the musicians scramble for top billings, trying to squeeze as many concerts into their tours, the quality of performance deteriorates. Rao says by and large the Indian population is not interested in classical music unless it’s a big name like Ravi
Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan. “Unfortunately with the globalization came the short attention span and high energy consumption lifestyle, which has affected the senior musicians. I have traveled with Ravi Shankar and that life is horrendous. It’s airport,
hotel, concert hall and back, and at times they’d forget where they played a week ago. This is inimical to keeping the art going in the direction it should have for the senior artists. After the 4th year of anyone coming to perform in Los Angeles, I would notice
sameness and a very uninspiring mechanical reproduction of sound. I shouldn’t say this about these great artists but it’s the truth. You can distinguish this between their earlier recordings and the later recording — the vibrancy and inspirational innovation is no longer there. It’s not like western music, which is written and you just reproduce that.”
When Indian artists performed before small select Indian groups, they knew that their audience comprised of true connoisseurs who would be critical if they did not perform their best and maintain the integrity of their art, says Rao. “Today when they perform at huge halls where you can’t even see the faces of the audiences or hear yourself, it’s bound to be mechanical. Then the organizers start looking at their watches, reluctant to pay overtime. All these constraints have made it necessary to present the music in a wholly different way compared to the way it was presented in the old days when the princes were able to support these arts. The contention by some of the big names that they can generate more money than their peers and so deserve more has also been a disaster for a lot of the organizers, who cannot afford the financial demands of some of the senior artists. It runs into thousands of dollars. For the same amount I can bring four talented artists with their accompanists instead. They are as talented, though not as well recognized, and give a much better musical experience than what these stars give.”
The audience for the classical art forms is limited, says Rao. “Even though we have a board of directors with two or three very influential Indian businessmen who have tried to give away free tickets to their friends for concerts of younger musicians who are very good, still people will not come, leave alone give donations.”
Rao observes: “The Indian community in recent years seems to be hung up on several tangents. One is temple building and I can’t even begin to count the number of temples, murthi staphana and gurus coming here. This glamour of film stars or popular musicians like Daler Mehdi is a bigger draw. When Amitabh Bachchan brought his group the front rows were $5,000 and the show was sold out. There was a traffic jam going back to the freeway from UCLA(Univesity of California in Los Angeles). We do get small grants, but they are not adequate. This is a purely Indian enterprise from which we hope others will also benefit, but every time we write for a substantial grant we get the comment that Indian community is so rich — one of the richest in America — why doesn’t your own community support you?”
Sudha Chandrasekhar
Sudha Chandrasekhar, an accomplished dancer in several classical dance forms, who runs a dance school in Michigan with her three daughters, says: “The young Indian generation has become very Bollywood conscious and believes that the Indian art and culture can only be preserved through the movies. They think what they see in the movies is the real thing. I have a group of very dedicated parents of 250 students who are learning under me and the people I have taught from the 1970s and 1980s are keeping their tradition. There are some students who have migrated here and have set up dance schools and are teaching traditional dance. However, most of the NRIs here do not realize what we went through, the tapasya we did to reach where we are and instead of giving us an opportunity to grow and teach the traditional way, we too have to compromise.”
Sashikala Penumarthi, a renowned exponent of Kuchipudi who runs a dance academy in Atlanta while teaching credit courses on Indian dance at Emory University, says though she has seen a tremendous spurt in interest in the past decade in classical dance, it’s a big challenge to teach dance here. “In India they are already exposed to the culture right from the time they are born. Here you really have to teach them every single thing, even how to walk gracefully. A lot of kids want to learn a dance item and go away. When I was learning we had to go step by step, but now a lot of students even in India want to jump ahead, learn some major items and go on stage and perform. The world is so fast now, nobody has any patience to learn or go deep into the art.”
Padmini Ramchandran, a well-known actress and classical dancer and part of the famous Travancore sisters, with a Russian stamp in her honor, also started a dance academy in New York in the 1970s after her marriage and migration to USA. She says that most parents are more interested in the Americanization of their children and are always rushing around from one activity to another, leaving little time for their kids to learn dance the proper way.
Rao is contemptuous of the popularity of the whole Indian dance scene. “These kids learn the Bollywood dances and their glamour struck parents will shell out cash and buy tickets for the entire neighborhood. I was a judge at one such concert and was appalled at what these kids are made to do on stage and it’s not going to change. Rich families spend thousands of dollars on their child’s arangetram, but if you ask them to support a musician there isn’t much response. Ali Akbar Khan in fact said once that Indian students are the worst, because their commitment is very fickle, and families often bring their young kids thinking oh my boy will be playing the tabla in six months with the bhajans in the temple.”
Just as India lost hockey to the west and then yoga, it seems the passion for the Indian classical art forms is being taken more seriously by Westerners. Two such Westerners are Matthew Rosen, a visiting scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass, and Katherine Martineau, a graduate student in Anthropology and Women’s Studies at Brandies University, Waltham, Mass.
Matthew Rosen
While studying at the University of Michigan Rosen heard a Sarod recital on CD by Ali Akbar Khan playing raga Chandanandan and was hooked. He started by learning sarod from one of Michigan’s leading sitarists and music teachers, Dr. Rajan Sachdeva, until a chance meeting with sarod maestro Buddhadev Das Gupta and his son Anirban Das Gupta opened the doors for him and he hasn’t looked back since.
Katherine started as a ballet dancer and soon tired, looking for something more exotic. Initially she thought of learning belly dancing, until she saw someone perform Odissi and was enthralled. “It was exotic and spiritual at the same time.” To learn more about India, she took courses in Hindi and Sanskrit, researched the origins of Indian classical dance and ended up for a nine month course at Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra’s dance school in Bhubaneshwar.
Some others have gone a step further and made it their livelihood. Nancy Lesh is a cellist who has been singing dhrupad for 20 years; Sharon Lowen moved to India over two decades ago and is a well-known exponent of Odissi. Warren Senders and Steve Gorn are two internationally renowned artists who excel at Hindustani vocal classical music and Bansuri respectively. So what is it that attracts them to the Indian classical art forms, considering how difficult it is for a non-Indian to learn the intricacies of Indian classical music or dance. “It’s true,” says Rosen, “As far as music goes its easier for an Indian to understand the grammar — in western classical music rhythm and melody is not so important – harmony is. Whereas in Indian classical music it’s the opposite and it’s a very hard mental switch. And that coupled with the fact that the rhythms are so much more complicated. The improvisation in Western music is often in free form and it’s certainly not that way in Indian classical music. It’s the whole architecture, whole grammar, what phrases are important, what is the Rasa you are supposed to evoke. Yet, it is so compelling. I had been working for a long time with a rock band wondering how can you put spontaneity and improvisation in rock. Why should it be just aimless jamming and soloing, which you see in bands like The Grateful Dead? That void was filled in me by Hindustani music. It has structure, technique, and also the emphasis on the Rasa and what you are going to evoke from the music. It is a daunting task to master all that and yet that is what makes it most exciting.“
Katherine says there are not many Odissi dancers in the USA. “People are attracted to it when they have a personal experience of either watching it live or talking to an exponent of dance the way it happened to me. A lot of Europeans are attracted to the classical dance form from theatre and are interested in Rasa.”
According to tabla maestro Swapan Chaudhuri, who performs extensively both internationally and in India and also teaches at the Ali Akbar Khan school of music in San Francisco: “A lot of universities worldwide have a world music department now. So the interest in Indian music and a desire to learn has increased manifold. There are different kinds of world music, but Indian music has very rich, strong sentiments and feelings, which really touches the heart in spite of being mathematical, and that is what makes it so much more unique than other forms of music.”
So where do the musicians and organizers see the Indian classical music heading?
Ustad Kader Khan
Tabla maestro Ustad Kader Khan, who comes from a long lineage of musicians and runs the Kalavant Center for Music and Dance in Manhattan in New York, says that initially when he came to the United States in the late 80s he saw few Indians learning music. “Recently, however I have seen Indian Americans showing an increasing interest in the Indian classical art forms and I feel that in the next 15 years or so we will see a revival in a big way and a return to our performing roots. Many people who came here 30 years ago were doctors and engineers, not professional musicians. As a result many of them had no interest in the classical performing arts. All they wanted to do was to excel in their professions, establish themselves and be financially secure. Now that that has been achieved, suddenly they are missing the music, the arts and are trying to expose their kids to it. I feel that when these youth grow up and become parents they will be the ones to really encourage their children from the very beginning to enjoy a classical art form.” Kader Khan also says that artists like Ustad Zakir Hussain have really excited the imagination of people with their innovations and performances with artists of other ethnicity.
Dixit says that the organizers have also changed . They are also becoming realistic. “People like me were willing to take out the time, put money from our pocket, volunteer ceaselessly, to make it happen. The younger hi-tech generation is more focused on the business angle. The dotcom people are not concerned about the young up and coming musicians. They’d rather have a musician who was at the peak 25 years ago, but now can barely move his fingers on his instrument, perform, because he is still a big name. I tell people why are you wanting to see Vilayat Khan when his nephew Shahid Parvez today is so much better. Or Purbayan Chatterjee who is 26 and an amazing sitar player.”
Rao agrees: “In the early 1960s and 1970s when these artists came, the big incentive other than their music was a visit to Disneyland! For them visiting Mickey Mouse was as if it was a shrine for Ganesha! Now their rates have skyrocketed and personally I would like to encourage lesser known, but equally gifted artists from India, because their economic involvement is at least for now much more affordable and also because I want the classical music audience to see the new lush crop of the younger musicians that is available that may go unheard in USA.”
Rao says that like Dixit he spent his own personal money and invested much of his time to organize concerts. Now in his 70s he is finding it hard to find a successor, “Which idealistic Indian, who has the knowledge or connection or vision to do a back breaking, thankless job like that, or even have a spouse or family who will be supportive in these endeavors, will help me continue the efforts?”
Dixit says barely 1 to 5 percent of Indians attend classical music concerts. In large cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and at university-sponsored concerts, non-Indians constitute almost 80 percent of the attendees. “It is safe to conclude that Indian classical music even after it was brought to the attention of audiences in North America some 40 years ago, has not entered the mainstream.”
Dancer Chandrasekhar remains optimistic nevertheless: “The arts are given to you as a heritage. Once when I performed before Pundit Nehru he said Indian artists have a fantastic tool in their hands to teach the world the power of classical art forms and we must strive to the maximum to let the world know about the beauty of the culture of India. I know it’s hard, but for me this is not a struggle. I have faith that in the years to come Indian classical art forms will carve the niche they deserve in the United States and the world.”