I said ’I will’ to music much before I said it to anyone else.
Kaveta’s note: Shubha Mudgal said to me during this interview that when she was young she would try to imitate Lata Mangeshkar’s voice and fail miserably. I can now confess that for the longest time I’ve tried to imitate Shubha Mudgal’s voice and failed equally miserably. I feel an uncanny kinship with her – from our fondness for literature, and for dogs (though hers are obviously much more musically inclined than mine, and either sang with her or made her sing) to our obsession for fountain pens.
I was also touched by her self-deprecating sense of humor, her ability to fearlessly speak her mind about things that she does not like but never without courtesy. Seeing artists like her and other women coming up in the creative arts, it’s heartening to see the kind of diverse work that is coming their way today.
From Sukanya Shankar to Sonu Nigam, I’ve only heard really wonderful things about Shubha ji’s humility, warmth and of her remaining untouched by fame. Hers is perhaps that rare website where she spends more time blogging about other singers, many who are up and coming or unknown, than about herself. Thanks to reading that blog, I was introduced to a very diverse range of music and musicians. But what has inspired me most about Shubha ji is how she remains so positive, and also deeply offers her immense gratitude for all the abundance that life has given her.
In this exclusive interview done a little before her trip to perform in what is going to be A MUST WATCH Jugal Bandi concert, hosted by the nonprofit organization SAMAA on 31st May in New York, with the equally amazing Bombay Jayashri, Shubha Mudgal talks about her musical journey, her life as an empowered woman, her involvement in social issues, and why gratitude is an integral part of her philosophy.
In a land where women are considered second rate citizens, you come from a family of very empowered women. How has that shaped you?
My grandmother was born in 1900 and was very progressive. She did not complete her degree but she was in the midst of doing a Master’s degree in Mathematics. She was highly educated, a working woman and very very fond of the arts. But when she told her father that she wanted to learn Hindustani music he said there was absolutely no chance of that because that was not the kind of music girls from respectable families studied. However, he did encourage her to learn the piano and western music. Though I never saw her play any instrument, I see her posing with several Indian instruments very proudly standing in her garden in our family album. My grandmother lost her husband who was a water color artist very early on, so she raised her three daughters as a single parent and worked all her life.
My parents were classmates and I always saw them treat each other as equals. Having been classmates there was a special companionship and camaraderie between them. So I did not grow up in a place where women had to be hidden or were not decision makers. I also saw my father respect the women he worked with. So I was very fortunate.
I also understand that it is really not so ideal everywhere in the world and certainly not so in India. I think India is so diverse that the status and stature of women is also quite diverse. There are areas where men and women really know how to respect each other and areas where women are the decision makers and live life on their own terms. And yet you could travel a few kilometers and find another household where it isn’t so.
I think fortunate women like me need to ensure that the women we interact with, we also treat them with respect and share our experiences with them without hoisting our independence or activism on them. I think the right thing will be to share our experiences and let them decide how they would want to negotiate their own way across society.
My mother Jaya was the oldest and my grandmother gave her and my aunts every opportunity to engage with the arts, to learn music and dance, to go to the theater. They lived in the hills and I remember my mother saying that the great Uday Shankar was making a center in the Almora Hills and my mother would keep trying to peer into their courtyard and see what was happening. She would watch their rehearsals from her home and so it was a vibrant atmosphere. But again when it came to deciding about a profession my grandmother didn’t feel that music would be an appropriate profession for my mother so she never became a professional musician. Both my parents were Professors of English Literature.
But then my mother gave my sister Ragini and me abundant opportunities to learn music, dance, to read poetry, and to really be involved with the creative arts. It was an unconditional encouragement but not the doting kind. We were encouraged to take part in all kinds of artistic activities but were never really asked to prove ourselves.
There was never a question of “When are you going to start performing? When are you going to be on radio?”
It was after I graduated from Allahabad University that my mother sat me down and said, “You need to take a decision whether or not you want to make a commitment to music because till now it has been a serious hobby.”
You learnt Kathak for many years and switched to vocal music at a relatively late age of 16. What made you switch?
When I was learning Kathak, as I got older, I realized I could hold a tune, had quite a fantastic oral memory and could memorize the songs quickly. My mom pointed that out to me and said, “You must learn vocal music if you really want to learn about Abhinaya (enactment). Look at Birju Maharaj ji. He sings and does Abhinaya.” Once I started learning music I was completely fascinated. I would also at times chafe at the dependence of the dancer on the extra aspects of the performance, the singer, the clothing, lighting and the need for an orchestra. Compared to that, singing seemed to be a much easier world. So I was just consumed by the idea of learning music.
Do you think Kathak training helped you as a musician?
Studying something like dance or any creative art definitely enriches you to a great extent and having studied Kathak under some very eminent people certainly impacted my music. I may not be able to place my finger on a particular aspect of my music and say this is what I learnt from dance, but there is no doubt about the fact that it enriched my understanding of music and continues to do so. Also today when we talk about being a performer in India, often it means you should be ready to do cartwheels on stage, with the mike in hand and sing alongside. I know I’ll cause quite an earthquake if I dance now… but dance has taught me the right posture, the way you take the stage, the way you gesticulate and that is very evident when I perform. We all borrow from dance movements but we can also learn how to treat rhythm and metric space in music from dance. Learning Kathak was a lovely period in my life.
It took some tough teachers – both human and canine – to get you to toe the line! I read about a Terrier who was quite a task master and you even have a Dalmatian who copies both your higher and lower octaves in sync.
Yes there are some very funny anecdotes but one that has left a lasting memory happened at a point in time when I had started learning music from Pandit Ramashreya Jha Ji in Allahabad. He would permit his students to come to his home every Sunday and you had to leave really early to be there on time because there were many senior musicians who would also come to learn from him.
If they got there before you, there was no chance of you getting a lesson from him. So my parents would wake me up at the crack of dawn and I, a typical teenager would sulk and say “Nooo, I don’t want to go!” But my father would drive me over to Pandit ji’s house. It was a humble home, there was not even a pucca (concrete) floor. And when we reached his home we could hear him practicing by himself
One of the things that he used to give me to learn were these very fast taans (a virtuoso technique used in the vocal performance of a raga in Hindustani classical music. It involves the singing of very rapid melodic passages using vowels). And you really had to work on them and I wouldn’t and then I would get a sound scolding. I would protest on the way back. I would tell my father, “I’m feeling so humiliated being scolded in front of everybody.” And my father would say, “But it was your fault. You didn’t prepare and he was absolutely right to tell you off. If you still want to go back, you’d better be practicing.”
One day I told myself I’m either going to practice and get this right or I am going to stop going for my lessons. So I wouldn’t stop doing my riyaaz (disciplined practice). I whipped up and down the scales, did my paltas (a kind of scale that comes back in the same pattern) and on Sunday I triumphantly sailed forth for my lesson. As I entered, the senior musicians also looked at me with pity and started getting frightened when the taan section came around because they knew I would get a big mouthful. But there I was smiling arrogantly. My Guruji then said “Okay come on let us get started,” and I did. With every perfect taan I would look more and more smug. He narrowed his eyes and when I was done he gave me paltas and patterns that were different from the ones he had given me earlier and sure enough I fell felt on my face, And he looked at me in the eye and said Ab kahaan gayi Chaturai? (“Now where is that smart-aleck attitude?”)
And then I had this little Terrier. She was lovely. Her name was Poil or Pearl after a comic strip character. Pearl, who was the girlfriend of Spooky, the tough little ghost with a Brooklyn accent who called his girlfriend and fellow ghost Pearl, “Poil”.
She was very fond of music and would bark at me until I got out of bed, brushed my teeth and sat down with my tanpura. Till I tuned my tanpura and started singing, there would be nonstop barking. Then she would lie down like a furry little rug in front of me and would be my companion during my hours of practice.
I remember reading that your Guruji made you practice the same raga for 2 years?
I remember my Guruji every single day for doing that. As a young teenager, there were so many things I hated about my lessons at that time which now I cherish more than anything else. What he taught me was to hold a mirror up to one’s work and accept one’s imperfections. It is only when you accept your imperfections that you are able to think about improving. Till then it is not possible. You think you can get by. But this holding the mirror and recognizing what is happening to your voice, to your ability to concentrate, to express – these are nuances he taught me with great patience and generosity many years ago, but those aspects of my lessons are very relevant even today and I am very fortunate to have had such a generous teacher.
You also trained under Pandit Vinay Chandra Maudgalya and Kumar Gandharv ji.
Pandit Vinay Chandra Maudgalya was a tireless and wonderful teacher and I knew that as a founder of the Gandharva Mahavidalaya there were a lot of administrative duties that he also had to take care of. He and his wife were tireless when it came to looking after the Vidalaya and that kind of almost missionary zeal came from their association with the Vishnu Paluskar parampara. I think they were really and truly very exceptional in their tireless devotion to music and music education. He was called Bhaiji by everyone.
There are a lot of teachers who intimidate you but with Bhaiji it was very different. He was always encouraging and would make you feel you could do anything. He would say to me, “Beta, tum yeh ga logi. (You will be able to sing this) I have total faith you will.” And lo and behold you would find yourself singing a new raga that was not familiar to you, or a new composition without any problem because the confidence he gave you was really amazing.
There are a lot of his students who had the opportunity to learn from Kumar Gandharva ji for years. I only got 2 years of occasional meetings and lessons with him. He used to come to Allahabad once a year and Allahabad was where I was born and brought up and the entire music loving city would come and congregate to listen to him. It was like a big event of the year so I had the opportunity to listen to him many times as I was growing up.
If he had been alive he would be 90 this year and I think for me to get the opportunity to learn from him was something I could never have imagined in my wildest, most optimistic dreams. So again for many years I tried to sound just like him and discovered again, that was not going to happen. But for me he stands out as one of those great musicians whose vision whether it was in the rendition of raagdari music or whether it was in the rendition of sargun or nirgun devotional poetry – came with a certain profound quality that left a deep impact on me. I am not a blind follower but I remain devoted to his genius and I feel truly blessed to have learnt even for a short while from him.
“Stories in a Song” is a very interesting concept that your husband, tabla player Dr. Aneesh Pradhan and you created.
I had been talking about a theatrical production where you could tell stories about different kinds of music, not just classical music. So it is not a lecture demonstration. Over the years Aneesh and I had come across anecdotes, historical facts and even some fascinating fiction and I started seeing how it was all happening in visuals. And I would say to myself, I wonder how it would be to see it all enacted and also give information about the songs.
So we went to Sunil Shanbag and he said “Let me see. I am not sure but send me some of the stories.” So we did. He selected some that he thought could be dramatized. He worked with several writers. And he worked with us to audition actors who could also sing. All the music in the production is presented live. It was quite wonderful to see actors ready to rehearse and learn a form of music, which they had not learnt earlier, even though they may have heard it somewhere or were familiar with it. But to actually internalize it to the point of being able to sing it, was wonderful to see. We either chose old compositions that could be rendered by the actors or we created new compositions where we felt we needed to create a new one for that particular production or actor.
It has been 3-4 years since we started doing Stories in a Song. They’ve done about 75 shows all over India. Almost all have been successful. We continue to ply Sunil with even more stories and music and he has been kind enough to accept some of them so more stories are being added. And now it is not the question of which story to present in which show. I hope people abroad also get a chance to see it.
Baaja Gaaja was another project very close to your heart.
You’ve now touched a very painful chord. It was an ambitious project. We saw that so many of the big festivals focus on one kind of music here and host them very nicely. They are great festivals and have been held for over 50 years. But what about the diversity of music in India? This project was started to showcase the diversity of Indian music and to be able to create a panorama of all kind of music, have meaningful conversations about patronage to musicians and support to their art. There were diverse things happening in those 3 days. From 10 am in the morning to 10 pm in the evening we were really talking, listening and celebrating music.
The experience was unforgettable for Aneesh and me. It grew from strength to strength in terms of the good will it generated but sadly we could not generate the funds. Maybe we were not able to market it properly. But we also didn’t want to change the nature of the festival because if you are going to have a celebrity driven festival, there already are many and they are being organized beautifully. Why replicate that?
We had to stop Baaja Gaaja because we could not find funding for it. We put in whatever we could from our pocket and there were people who helped us, We had a supportive venue partner but something like this requires funding – not necessarily a lot of extravagance but we were unable to raise that. So we had to stop at the risk of facing bankruptcy, in 2012.
Tell me about Underscore Records? That has been a great platform for the diversity of music you both want to support.
In 2003 we set up Underscore records. Aneesh and I decided that it would give us an opportunity to communicate with music lovers across the world as that was the time that we started to use the internet. There was such an ease of communication long before online shopping became quite the rage. We also felt it was one way we could help distribute music which was diverse, came from India, and yet was not getting due recognition in the mainstream music industry.
So without any experience of entrepreneurship, we jumped right in and we linked it to one of the largest payment gateways. We also started on a very auspicious note. We were felicitating Pandit Ramashreya Jha on his 75th birthday and a good friend of ours Rajan Parrikar who lives in the United States told me “Shubha why don’t you record Ramashreya ji?” And I said, “I don’t have the guts to go to him and ask him please would you let us record you?” And Rajan said “I’ll do the talking and you do everything else.” Rajan managed to get 2 CDs worth of Guruji’s music and so we started Underscrore Records by distributing the first of the records by Guruji on the occasion of his 75th birthday
A whole lot of our musicians, friends, colleagues and film makers thought it was a good idea but they were unable to understand the medium because they were still not familiar with the internet. So we would spend hours explaining the website to them. We managed to fund it ourselves but we were very fortunate that 4-5 years later we received a Ford Foundation Grant for 3 years and that really was a big support. We had a wonderful program officer and she guided us in a very astute way. Many of the videos that you see where we are spending time and are calling professionals to teach musicians how to use different applications like Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook, which we otherwise would not have been able to do due to paucity of funds was possible only due to the Ford Foundation.
It also helped us reach many many diverse musicians like this young Maharashtrian priest singing folk music and Marathi devotional music in a small temple in Pune. That kind of project would not have been possible without the support of the Ford Foundation.
Underscore has been around for almost ten years and our policy is very simple. We would like the artist’s music to be everywhere. We never ask for exclusivity and we have never said that the only place you can distribute is at Underscore. Baaja Gaaja was Aneesh’s idea of five years of Underscore. He felt what is the point of celebrating this amazing diverse music alone? We should celebrate it with the musicians. That’s how Baaja Gaaja came into being.
I think internet technology has empowered us to share our work on our own terms and conditions and I am grateful that we live in an era where this is possible. It’s a good medium of communication but a lot of the applications need to be customized for Indian music. I think one of the important things about the internet is that you can get like-minded people to form a network. Unfortunately we are also using social media as a 16 year old girl would – to connect with people to meet at Starbucks. Now that may not be the way you will find an audience for Indian classical music. And really speaking traditional Indian music has not been able to communicate using all the internet tools yet. As you said earlier websites are more about talking about oneself, one’s schedule rather than getting information about diverse kinds of music.
But musicians have always been very adaptable and have used their own strategies to get along with a changing world. So as we evolve we will find a way but right now I don’t think wholesome use is being made of the internet to reach the masses.
“No Stranger Here” is another fascinating album. I had as much fun hearing you sing Kabir’s Sai Bina on it as I have had listening to Ustad Rashid Khan sing it the traditional way.
I really wish “No Stranger Here” would have done better than it has. Earthsync, the label that produced and distributed it, was the first label we collaborated with when we set up Underscore. They were doing brilliant production work. The first album they sent us to be distributed was called Laaya and it was beautiful. It was a video they had recorded after the tsunami had hit various Asian countries.
They have their own recording studio in Chennai and were doing very high quality productions so we requested them to distribute their work on Underscore records. And they agreed.
They have been a part of Baaja Gaaja and collaborated with us on very many occasions.
I remember when we used to do a Baaja Gaaja compilation where we would request artists to donate one track and we would put it in this compilation and distribute free one of the people to give us their track were Earthsync and they were also kind enough to manufacture the CD and the cover for us.
So we’ve been collaborators and had wanted to work together for a long time.
I had heard some of their tracks on a very interesting album called Business Class Refugees and so one day I said let’s meet at your recording studio in Chennai and they laid down a few tracks and that’s when it started happening. I decided to choose pieces from Kabir. All the arrangements were largely done by them and all the compositions I sang were done by me.
They have really done a beautiful production and I’ve really enjoyed the new way of walking into a studio and then try to create something.
For fans of Sonu Nigam and Indian Ocean as well as Anoushka Shankar, I have to ask you how has it been working with them?
I’ve known Bickram (Ghosh) longer than I’ve known Sonu ji. For someone who is so incredibly competent at what he does and is very celebrated singer,Sonu Nigam is incredibly patient and down to earth. I only dub occasionally. My work is not to go to the studio to dub three songs a day. So I have some amount of experience but still not the ease with which a professional playback singer really manages to do the dubbing. Each time it’s a new learning experience and I take time to get used to the whole experience. I have to say for as big a star as he is and as accomplished a singer, not for a minute did Sonu give me the feeling that he was irritable, or that he was trying to teach me a thing or two or that there was one-upmanship. I do hope he composes more. He is a very gifted composer.
Indian Ocean band members, the older ones Rahul, Aushim have been old friends, so when Rahul invited me to be part of their new album and sing Gar Ho Sake, I knew it will be a really wonderful easy relationship. I’ve now also met some of the newer members of the band at close quarters and they are also very committed, and very easy going musicians and easy going people. There is no pretense, no hypocrisy. With that kind of easy going vibe it is very easy to collaborate. That very collaboration can start hissing and spitting when everybody is tense about how much importance is going to be given to each person or how much video time each person is getting. There was no question of there being any kind of tension on that issue. They always have a very healthy kind of viewpoint that if you don’t like a part of the collaboration it doesn’t mean that you turn into enemies.
Indian Ocean began doing the kind of music they believed in many years ago before all this independent music, bands and everything else became popular in India. So in a sense they have stood by their conviction for a long time and have built a huge audience, which they richly deserve, The idea of recording independently and distributing on their own terms I think is fantastic. Whether they collaborate with me or not I have always had tremendous respect and admiration for the way they have made the kind of music they believed in.
Anoushka and I didn’t really meet. She had sent me the material. She was not working in India at that time and the Midival Punditz made their studio available for recording in Bombay. We’ve all been huge admirers of Pandit Ravi Shankar and when she asked me to sing a Bangla song written by him, I was honored. I took a Bengali student with me and that is how we collaborated. I guess that is the power of the internet now. But singing that song made me feel that I was connected some way with Pandit ji and Anoushka is very talented.
What have been your own most creative challenges?
Challenges come at every opportunity. The moment you feel you can sing anything, you are proved wrong. Music is a hard task master and the first lesson it teaches you is never to take yourself too seriously. I am constantly challenged by a lot of the music I have to sing but especially some of the compositions Aneesh has asked me to sing . They can be very difficult. Then I have to tell him that I need time for this composition and I will get back to you. He is a far more daring composer than I am and he gives me these very challenging compositions. I then try to work on them; sometimes it works and sometimes I have to work very hard.
How do you work together when he composes for you? Is the structure rigid or is there scope for improvisation? And where does the husband or wife end and musician begin?
I primarily compose for vocalists and particularly for the forms that I am familiar with, like khayal, dadra or popular music but Aneesh composes for a variety of musicians. His Guru Pandit Nikhil Ghosh was of the opinion that a table player must of course specialize in rhythm and Tabla but must also try to be a complete musician. He must listen to a lot of music. Added to that Aneesh has his own interests and he is a very keen listener. He has had the chance to accompany so many performers including many senior musicians and great scholars so he really can compose for a variety of situations and not just only vocalists in Khayal and thumri.
I recall one project he did years ago where he composed for another percussionist from the Mumbai film industry, a gentleman called Pratap Rath who plays many types of percussion instruments. Aneesh composed for Pratap ji and asked him to play several tracks. The project is called Tarana-e-percussion. And as part of that project, he had composed a very beautiful, sparse, melancholy piece written for voice and he asked me to sing it. He chose what I believe is a whole tone scale in Jazz and because it is very unfamiliar to a Hindustani classical musician I actually told him to find someone else to sing it.,
It was quite a challenge and I rehearsed many times before actually singing it. He uses percussion in it like a bit of coloring, it doesn’t have any groove to it, but is used in a way to create a lonely, sparse quality to it. The lyrics are also very beautiful, written by a young poet Alok Shrivastav.
I think we have been colleagues before we became partners and married each other so I think we have a healthy respect for each other’s work . If it is his composition I will take due care to not try and make it my composition and he will give me the freedom if the piece needs elaboration. I will learn the composition from him but the improvisation will be my interpretation.
I think if there are suggestions on how it should be interpreted I am quite open to it and not only from him but any composer that I work with. I think that give and take is part of any wholesome experience.
I have learnt several things from Aneesh. One that he is always very analytical about his own work and encourages everyone including me to do the same. There is no getting away from yourself if something doesn’t work. Even if was to fool myself and say you know it wasn’t too bad-he isn’t going to let me get away with it, It is good to have a companion who is a very accomplished musician himself and who is also able to understand both vocal and instrumental music but he is not a person who forces his views on anyone.
He makes a suggestion and it is up to me really to see what he is trying to say and if I want to heed it, But there are no ego hassles. My family, Aneesh are all very happy with any success that comes my way. They are complimentary and comforting and yet they will not mince words to tell me if I did not do as well as I should have. As a musician Aneesh is very secure. I cannot even think of a time if we walked down the road and somebody recognizes me and doesn’t know who he is, that he would not be happy for me. It is not going to create a wedge in our lives at all and it comes from being secure people who are enjoying the fact that we care about each other.
You lived on your own in Delhi after your first marriage ended. How easy has it been to be a woman musician or composer then and now?
When I look back at all the trials and tribulations that women performers and artists have had to undergo in the past, I feel my own trials and tribulations were nothing in comparison.
Perhaps for me the biggest struggle was to just understand that I have been taught by some fine musicians and had to now find my own voice in music and that I continued to do.
I think it would be difficult for any woman to live alone, even if it wasn’t a single woman, but a married woman musician or even a musician couple; it would be difficult for them to rent a home in the city because people don’t feel a musician would be a good person to rent their home to.
I think it’s because of the trials and tribulations of woman musicians in history and their immense sacrifices that we have had it very easy. Whether they were professional songstresses who came much earlier or whether it was the women who came from gharanedaar families but did not become professional musicians-it is because of them that it was easier for me to become a full time musician and to gain respect in society. So taking that into account I feel it would be callous of me to glorify my own trials and tribulations.
And today I believe there is respect for women composers. There always has been. If you listen to Gauhar Jaan even in the first recording that was made in India, her pen name is there in the composition. In Hindustani classical music many of the women performers and singers have also been composers. For some reason they have not felt the need – and this is an interesting point- to insert a pen name. But when you meet people who have learnt from the great Mogu Bai Kurdikar, they will tell you that this is Mai Mogu Bai’s composition, or if you speak to Shruti Sadolikar or Ashwini Bhide Deshpande, all of them are composing and people are singing their compositions.
So it is not difficult to be a woman composer today. I think what is important for the artist is to follow their artistic compulsion, not blindly, but again in that analytical way in which tradition teaches us. I think it is important.
I worry about the need artists feel sometimes to be accepted and that need becomes a trap. I think it is wonderful to go out on the street and have someone walk up to you and say – “Can I give you a hug because I loved this popular song that you’ve sung,” or “I have heard you sing raag Purya Dhanashri so many years ago and I really loved it.”
It’s a wonderful feeling but at the same time I cannot start making music with the idea that everybody around would accept what I am doing.
I feel I have been well taught, I feel I am sincere in the way I study music and I will continue to be a student of music all my life. If there is approval and acceptance- wonderful. But if not then I ask myself what would I do? And I have only one answer-I will still do the same thing.
I think it is very important for artists to feel that they can follow whatever their artistic urgings tell them to do and not be somebody else.
I think I was steered in my journey in a particular direction because of my parents and my family and because of my teachers. But as I was growing I wanted to sing everything. I would listen to Lata ji and sing what she had sung so beautifully and memorize the songs, sing them and then I would listen to myself and say “My God how horrid I sound and how beautiful she sounds’.
Now in a sense learning those songs and trying to negotiate those wonderful trills and glides that she did so effortlessly was a training in itself but it was also a realization that it is pointless trying to be Lataji because there is no other Lataji.
Similarly when you think of Kumar Gandharviji or Jitendra Abisheki ji – when you are learning from them, you try to imitate and assimilate but you realize no sooner that my God I don’t even sound like a good carbon copy so the lesson and the inspiration I draw from each master, some of whom I’ve learnt from and some whom I’ve never seen, only heard their records, that they were all people who were themselves musically.
This is the centenary year of Begum Akhtar and everybody under the sun is massacring compositions so beautifully rendered by her. I am a great admirer of Begum Akhtar yet I cannot be like Begum Akhtar, so I can’t even try to present a bad copy of compositions that she presented so beautifully but yes I listen again and again to the expressions, the deep understanding of Urdu poetry. All that is a lesson in itself.
The guru can only give you generously-you have to have the comfort level to create the delicate balance and that also comes from the training. For musicians it is important that we must continue to learn the rules and then hope to transcend them one day. That is the journey.
Websites are talking about self-promotion and gurukuls are… fill in the blanks for me. Hari ji (Hari Prasad Chaurasia) has one, Suresh Wadkar ji has one and there are others, but the common allegation is that many of the musicians with gurukuls aren’t following the guru shishya parampara.
You are going to get me into trouble now! Well I have been to Hari ji’s gurukul once and he was very much there. He is known across the world amongst musicians for his immense commitment to riyaaz.
For me gurukul is the guru’s home, whatever condition it may be in. It was there that you went and learned. No one had designer gurukuls and there is no harm in your having a designer gurukul if you’ve been fortunate enough to raise the resources. It should not always have to be a rundown, shabby space. But I think when you set up an institution there has to be a vision and a certain detachment from it. You will own it in principle and you will own the vision but you will need to give it to other people, to run it for you if needs be and you need to review your work again and again. For example a lot of institutes have come up in India and they have certainly served the cause of Indian music but 50 years down the line is there a review of even the syllabus or are all the institutions looking at the same syllabus, rearranged so that the sequence of ragas may be tweaked a little for one institution and tweaked a little for another institution without trying to see how can we make music education more vibrant? Surely that is not an unreasonable thing to ask of a gurukul?
You’ve taken deeksha from a particular Krishna sect? They look at music in a very unusual way.
As a musician, the entire tradition and the association of Krishna mythology is around you. You are exposed to it in every turn you take in your journey as a musician. A lot of musicians go to Brindavan to perform seva.
A friend Veena Modi came to me many years ago-she was not a friend then and she wanted to learn music from me. I said you know I am learning myself so why don’t you learn from Bhaiji? But she was adamant and then she started bringing some pieces of Krishna poetry to me and would ask me to compose. Again I said I don’t know how to compose please go to Bhaiji and she said “No you just take a look at it.” Finally I asked her, “Why do you want to learn music?” And she said, “Hum kuch aur nahin karna chahtey hain – hum siraf raag seva karna chahtey hain.” (I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to serve the raga). That word aroused my curiosity. I asked what that meant. So she said, “Why don’t you come and meet my guru?” There were several pieces where I did not understand the context of the reference and she said her guru would also explain it to me.
So I went and met her Guru. His name was Acharya Purshottam Goswami and he said, “You know when you make this offering of music to the Lord, do it without focusing on technique or trying to impress anyone. Bhav se kariye, kala paksh chod dijiye.” (Forget the craft, think of the offering that you are making with emotion.) And I was saying to myself, “I am a trained musician and this gentleman is asking me to forget about technique?” I found that so strange. The gentleman spent many hours with me explaining the poetry and the much deeper philosophy behind seemingly simple lines. I got a glimpse of the ethos in which this tradition flourished. It was very fascinating and I would go back again and again to Brindavan.
I was fortunate to be accepted as a disciple by his son Acharya Shrivat Goswami. That poetry is the kind that the more you delve into it, the more it offers you. It is a different world. I can’t even begin to tell you. It has given me a great deal of peace and solace.
Pandit Ravi Shankar said in an interview with me, “What most people don’t realize is that before the outside influences came into India, both systems of music followed the same Bharat natya shastra and we had no problems understanding and developing our music, or keeping the same tempo or counting beats on our fingers. Even the old Pakhawaj players from the south maintained the same system and we had so much in common technically. But with the advent of the emperors came the gold coins and the musical wrestling matches where the tabla player was pitted against the vocalist, and people started playing to the galleries. As a result the two styles of music became more and more distant from each other, and today it’s more of a competition, rather than appreciation for each other.”
So when you collaborate with someone like Bombay Jayashri how does it work? And in your opinion do you see it more as a fusion of two distinct styles or a remarriage of styles that have more in common than we are led to believe these days?What should we expect on May 31st?
Well the basic vocabulary and grammar are indeed similar and there is a lot that is shared between the two traditions. But in the jugalbandi we haven’t really tried to create comparisons or contrast in the conventional way. We haven’t really tried finding a scale that is common to both systems of music. We are celebrating the diversities so we have tried to do that by creating presentations driven by various ideas.
For example, in one item we may present sahitya which is saying similar things. If the song text is talking of longing, then both the Carnatic piece and the Hindustani piece will talk of that. In some we may say let us do something which actually creates a contrast. So Jayashri ji may sing something in Adi Taal and I may sing something in Rupak taal.
There is a great deal of security among all the musicians and celebration of each other’s skill and scholarship, craft, technique and art. So what is interesting is that in all the reviews we have received in India, people have always talked about “good teamwork” when speaking of our collaboration. I think that is a compliment I really cherish. Jayashri ji is accompanied by two very accomplished musicians, J. Vaidyanathan on Mridangam and Embar Kannan on Violin and I have Aneesh on Tabla and Sudhir Nayak on harmonium.
The jugalbandi that you will see and hear is not only between Jayashri ji and me but a collaboration that is happening on all levels. So you will see a jugalbandi between the instruments as well. There will be a piece where Jayashri ji and I will not start the jugalbandi – the musicians will.
It is very important to highlight all these areas, where we share something and where we are diverse and try to create a collage where all this can be enjoyed.
I have really enjoyed working with Jayashri ji and her musicians each time. I have never done a jugalbandi with anyone and the first time we performed together was several years ago in Chennai.
We realized there was not enough time to rehearse and we did not want it to be a sort of on the spot jam session. So we decided we would do just two pieces together – one that I sort of brought into the collaboration and one that was suggested by her. That is how we started performing together.
But over the years we have created an entire repertoire where we actually collaborate on all of the tracks we present.
She has studied both Hindustani and Carnatic music and she speaks very good Hindi as well. She is very good with braj bhasha and all the song text that my repertoire contains. So it’s a pleasure to work with her and the fine musicianship from the entire team.
It’s cool that you also appreciate other singers and give opportunity to the right singers to sing your compositions instead of hogging every song for yourself. These days every composer is singing their own songs, especially in films. Yet we didn’t hear your voice in the film Dance with the Wind, even though you were the music composer.
I think we chose the right voices for the characters in Dance with the Wind. Rajan Khosa also knew what he wanted so I think it was a good choice. I don’t sing a lot in films but I’ve had the pleasure of working with Debojyoti Mishra for Raincoat and I have sung for him later as well. Recently I sang for Aparna Sen’s Goynar Baksho and he had done the music again, and of course for Sonu Nigam and Bickram Ghosh in “Jal.” But yes I don’t have the kind of wonderful voice and skills that someone like Sonu Nigam or Shankar Mahadevan have to be able to take a song that belongs to someone else and make it your own and sing it as if you’ve known it forever. That is a very special gift. My voice suits very specific situations.
For me, my gift is different. It’s the gift of music I have been given in my life and that has been my biggest milestone.
What is on your iPad/phone and what kind of literature are you reading?
I’ve been lately listening to a lot of archival music – a lot of Siddeshwari Devi and also this album called Gifted Women of the World, I’ve also been listening to a lot of qawali and to all sort of music the kind of work that is happening today, collaboration in the Coke studio etc.
A lot of my reading has been around literature that I am working on to set to music or that I have been thinking of composing.
Of late I have been looking at Hindi poetry from the chaayavad period – works of the poets Nirala and Mahadevi Verma. We have been working on some compositions.
Aneesh and I were saying why does thumri and dadra only have to be in braj bhasha. Today we are not speaking braj bhasha so why can’t we perform it in Hindi as it is spoken today or academic kind of khadi boli.
Aneesh also came up with this lovely composition from Nirala ji’s epic poem “Sandhya Sundari” where he personifies the evening as a very beautiful young woman. It’s an epic poem but he took some lines from it and composed it like a dadra. I am also working on another piece by Nirala ji and on one of the most beautiful nazms written by Sahir Ludhianvi set to music by Aneesh, “Aao ke koi khayal buney kal ke vaastey.”
I was recently invited to sing at the Wajid Ali Shah festival curated by Muzzafar Ali and I took poetry written by Wajid Ali Shah and composed the pieces. Both Aneesh and I have a very large collection of music and we are avid listeners. So wherever we go, we look for the opportunity to listen to other musicians. I think it’s such a great thing to be able to sit back and listen to somebody.
I want to mention Saida Begum, a singer from Punjab who took my breath away. In her track Dum Dhola, there was something so poignant about it, that quality called-taseer-a certain ability to move the heart and mind of listeners, that anguish in her voice , it speaks to me in way that I couldn’t help writing about her on my blog. I’m hoping we will hear more about her. She doesn’t perform outside of Punjab too much, but how wonderful that the record label that recorded her has made her accessible to those outside of Punjab.
You have been very aware of social issues in India. Do you think the lot of women is going to change at all with the Modi government?
I was one of the artists who actually signed a petition some weeks ago just before the elections saying that apart from governance and corruption which are very important issues, people must make their electoral choices based on people who they feel will not be corrupt. Secularism is a very important thing, and immediately abuses were hurled at us for being pseudo secularists. I have never had any qualms in stating that I detest violence of any kind particularly when it is aimed against a community or a race. No one will ever find me saying that what happened in Delhi in 1984 was less of a problem than what happened in 2002 in Gujarat.
Whatever abuses people may want to hurl at us I do know that whatever the pseudo secularists-as they call us, may say, we certainly speak in a more civilized fashion than a lot of them. It was ugly, the kind of language that was used. In a democracy it is necessary that diverse and contrary opinions must co-exist so I condemn the fact that when Lata ji said she hopes Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister, people started saying the most ugly things about her. I think one Congress MP even said “You got the Bharat Ratna during the Congress regime, so return it”. It was so petty . I’m glad I’m among those people who has made my reservations very public but I believe in democracy.
Today the nation has voted BJP into power. Everybody is going gaga about the magic wand that Mr. Modi will wield. I have a difference of opinion and if I am proved wrong I would be very happy to admit that,
As far as women are concerned I don’t think women are safe anywhere in India today. This is a very complex issue that has festered in society for centuries so to make a change there has to be a commitment not only from the government or any NGO working in this area but from every one of us. A commitment that we will try and bring about the change in every way possible. I am not a grass roots social activist but I will be willing to do whatever I can in my own humble way.
I don’t see changes, on the faces of women, in the air, or in the course of the elections, as of now.
After the tragic Nirbhaya incident, we had people from every political party say the most horrible things about women. So I can’t be euphoric and say the lot of women is going to change with the new government when only 11 percent of people who have been elected are women and 34 percent of elected politicians have criminal records.
When you look back any special memories that you cherish?
I think the first was when my mother sat me down and gave me the freedom to take a year off after my graduation and decide if I wanted to make a full time commitment to music. That changed the course of my life. I really cannot thank her enough for having had that conversation with me, to make me aware of the commitment, the majesty and dignity of music. It took me just a month to commit but my parents readily accepted my decision, not knowing what the future held and continued to support me emotionally and every other way as long as they were around. They are no longer with me but I know I would not be either the musician or the person that I am without their support.
The second was when I received a letter from my Guruji Pandit Ramashreya Jha ji. I had sung for the Radio Sangeet Sammelan which was broadcast on the radio every year. I didn’t have the guts to call him and say “I am singing and would you listen to my broadcast?”
But then I get this lovely letter from him and it said “I listened to your broadcast and I liked it. Despite the fact that you have not been in Allahabad I can see that the manner in which I have taught you has continued to influence you.” Now that is a certificate I truly cherish. So that is a very important moment in my life.
The third was a sad but poignant one. I had a dear friend, Anita Kalra who passed away from throat cancer. In her last moments I got a call from her daughter that in her hoarse voice mom is asking for you. I was not in Delhi but reaching back the next day, I went straight from the airport to the hospital
And there standing in that dismal hospital room I sang one of her favorite chaitis for her, barely 48 hours before she breathed her last.
I stood there and I sang, and she smiled through her pain mouthing those words silently with me. It was very sad and yet a very poignant moment for me. It showed me how fortunate I am to have the gift of music to give to someone and how deeply music can impact a person. You take it almost for granted, this part of you but then it can be such a companion for someone in so much pain, this divine quality of music. The companionship of music never lets you feel alone or sorry for yourself. You know I said “I will” to music before I said it to anyone else. And I realized what a wise thing it had been and how blessed one is to be able to learn music. It’s hard to describe, but it taught me a lot… that moment.