{"id":20158,"date":"2024-04-06T19:01:32","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T19:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/06\/kumar-gandharva-the-lord-of-the-ragas\/"},"modified":"2024-04-06T19:01:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T19:01:32","slug":"kumar-gandharva-the-lord-of-the-ragas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/06\/kumar-gandharva-the-lord-of-the-ragas\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumar Gandharva, the lord of the ragas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kumar<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

The year is probably 1988 or 1989. The radio announcement is prosaic: \u201cYou are about to listen to Raga Nand<\/a>. Artiste Kumar Gandharva<\/a>.\u201d Among the ragas, it doesn\u2019t enjoy the popularity of, say, a Darbari or Bhairavi, or Yaman Kalyan. The three mentioned just now are embedded in Indian culture through film songs, bhajans and ghazals, but Nand is an unknown quantity. The radio crackled and the bandish, \u201cRajan ab toh aaja re\/Thiraa na rahat kajraa aakhan mein rajan.\u201d The carefree, imperious and muscular start to this delicate raga grabs the listener from the get-go. The interpretation is incendiary with gossamer touches on a few words like \u201ckajra\u201d. Nand has been sung by other artistes, but Kumar\u2019s version stands alone; nothing quite like it has ever been sung in that raga. Almost like Rolling Stones\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSatisfaction \u201d or Beatles \u2019 \u201cYesterday\u201d; or if you like your analogy classical then Ustad Amir Khan and Pandit Jitendra Abhisheki\u2019s rendition of Raga Marwa.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A CELESTIAL CENTURY<\/h2>\n

Tomorrow, April 8, is Kumar Gandharva\u2019s 100th birth anniversary but that is a just a numerical milestone. The real reason to celebrate him would be to acknowledge that he wasn\u2019t just a savant, or a prodigy, but also that he didn\u2019t care much about tradition, when you define it as something being timeless. His interpretations were to look at the fundamentals of musical structures that defined tradition and then move pieces that he thought didn\u2019t fit or add bits that others thought were no short of heresy, but which enriched the auditory experience. For Kumar, tradition was something that needed
to be renewed or else it would be an ossification.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, Kumar\u2019s voice production. That is really the starting point. He contracted TB in 1947- 48, when he was in his 20s. \u201cHowever, he recovered in five years without streptomycin. He had another bout in the late 1950s from which he recovered with streptomycin but had one collapsed lung. (This treatment was sponsored by the maharani of Rewa),\u201d says Milap Rane, a Hindustani vocalist and musicologist based in Guildford, UK.<\/p>\n

Singing is all about how much air the lungs can hold. A one-lunged singer is a jet plane flying on just one engine. This imposes huge limitations on the range and the pyrotechnical displays of virtuosity. \u201cKumarji had been taught by BR Deodhar, a singer and musicologist, who was really into voice culture,\u201d says Rane. What Kumar lost out on lung power, he more than made up with the use of phonation, resonance and sudden bursts of amplitude (volume\/ loudness) changes. One rendition of his that is pretty popular is \u201cAeso Kaiso Ayyo\u201d in Raga Bahar<\/a>. It is a raga to welcome spring. Usual approaches to Bahar have a nice, joyous and playful feel to them. Kumar\u2019s is a bucking bronco of a rendition; almost like how a person behaves once they have been drenched in Holi hues and thrown into a water tank of colours. All bets are off and the person has the licence to go wild. \u201cAeso Kaiso\u2026\u201d is all of this and more.<\/p>\n

PITCH PERFECT<\/h2>\n

Voice culture was really Kumar\u2019s starting point to reinvent, in a manner of speaking, the presentation of a raga. In that era, post-1947, the raga elaboration followed a stately flow. The singer began with a very slow tempo, which could go on for 30-45 minutes and then a faster tempo that built towards a climax. Also, because of great vocalists such as Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Abhisheki, male singers tended to start on a really low register (kharja).\u201cKumarji had an incredible ear. He could imitate whoever he listened to down to every pitch. And hence his wide hearing and these influences allowed him to demonstrate musical imagination that had not been heard before,\u201d says Aneesh Pradhan, tabla maestro and musicologist. <\/p>\n

\n
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

There is a story recounted in a book on Kumar Gandharva\u2014his teacher once heard him mimic Ustad Rajab Ali Khan, a maestro of that time, and wanted to test Kumar. So he bought a new (not out in the market) record of Ustad Rajab Ali Khan, sat down Kumar and started playing it. Not only did Kumar imitate the vocal style of the Ustad but he also sang along, as if his brain was prompting whatever phrase the Ustad was going to sing next!<\/p>\n

KumarGPT, anyone? It was like all these music influences had been completely absorbed and were getting presented, when Kumar sang, in a way that even the original artists had not imagined.<\/p>\n

Claude Shannon, the information theory expert whose research created the modern communication systems that we use in phones and computers, defined information as \u201csurprise\u201d. What you don\u2019t know is information. Both Pradhan and Rane agree that Kumar Gandharva\u2019 s presentation had that element of surprise. He could suddenly loudly vocalise a phrase or let loose a swift taan (many notes sung quickly in a sequence) even while he was still presenting the slowtempo bandish. \u201cYou can never predict where Kumarji will go when he is singing. His singing had that dramatic element,\u201d says Rane. His intonation and phonation of words were such that he could simply make a bandish his own. \u201cI had gone to a concert in Pune where I heard him sing \u2018Jab Se Tum Sang Lagli\u2019 in Raga Bhoopali. I was so taken in by how he sang that, for days on end, I just kept humming or singing it to the point my friends started wondering what had gotten into me,\u201d says Sudhir Nayak, one of the foremost harmonium players in the country. <\/p>\n

When Kumar fell ill and retreatedto Dewas in Madhya Pradesh to convalesce, he discovered the roots of Hindustani classical music, which was folk music. He heard those folk ditties and created a set of ragas called dhun ugama (emerged from folk) ragas. Most of them were haunting and compassionate, for instance, Saheli Todi and Lagan Gandhar. <\/p>\n

Some of these creations created controversies. For instance, in Lagan Gandhar, Kumar\u2019s rendition doesn\u2019t just use one variation of \u201cGa\u201d but three, leading some critics to say that the raga should have been called \u201clage na Gandhar\u201d (inability to employ the Ga note). But the most charming story is that of the use of Pa or Pancham in Raga Malkauns, not used in the popular versions of this raga. When asked once at a lecture demonstration in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, in the 1990s, as to why he did it, his reply in Marathi was disarming. \u201cMee Malkauns gaat hoto, tar mala pancham disla. Toh mhanala \u2018mee yeu ka\u2019, tar me bolalo, \u2018ye\u2019 (I was singing Malkauns when I saw the note \u2018pa\u2019. The note said, \u2018May I join you?\u2019 I said, \u2018Please do\u2019).\u201d Like the forbidden fruit, his malkauns with the prohibited note is beautiful.Though his popularity among general listeners is because of his desolate and powerful Kabir bhajans like \u201cUd Jaayega Hans Akela\u201d or \u201cAvadhuta, Kudrata ki Gati Nyari\u201d, they show that he could take something that is usually associated with Bhakti rasa and turn it into powerful existentialism. <\/p>\n

For a man who battled adversity, illness and criticism, his life\u2019s philosophy can be summed up in his creation of a raga called MadhSurja. The raga\u2019s slow-tempo bandish is \u201cBachale le mori ma\u201d (imagined words of a goat being taken for sacrifice). Once the goat realises there is no escape, the acceptance of fate and rejoicing in the last few moments of life are in the fast-tempo bandish \u201cdholiya bajale (play the drums)\u201d. Kumar, he didn\u2019t want to go gentle into that night. He went out in a blaze of incandescent notes setting the listeners\u2019 imagination on fire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The year is probably 1988 or 1989. The radio announcement is prosaic: \u201cYou are about to listen to Raga Nand. Artiste Kumar Gandharva.\u201d Among the ragas, it doesn\u2019t enjoy the popularity of, say, a Darbari or Bhairavi, or Yaman Kalyan. The three mentioned just now are embedded in Indian culture through film songs, bhajans and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.etimg.com\/photo\/msid-42031747\/et-logo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[602],"tags":[25730,2720,25724,25725,25729,25728,35,25727,25726,25731],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20160,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20158\/revisions\/20160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}