Melodic links from the past . . .

In the time of Alexander, what must have been the music played in the north western provinces which he annexed and fertilized with enough Greek genes to last for the next few centuries as distinct communities? I like to think there would have been predecessors of instruments like the Rubab, the Santoor and the Pakhawaj. Pashtun music as well as Irani music has these instruments like the Rubab and the Kamanche featuring quite prominently.

Shujjat Hussain's album, Rain, which is a collaboration of Shujjat's strong Hindustani sensibilities with Iranian music played on the Kamanche. The recording that I heard was that of a live performance in Berlin, hence excellent sound quality. The Kamanche's sound is a rawer version of the Sarangi. It screeches in the higher pitch but its ability to impersonate the human vocal chords is amazing, just like the Sarangi's.

The north western music also surprisingly resonates with the rhythm style of Rajasthani and Marathi music. I was in Punjab when i discovered this surprising similarity in the music playing on the car deck of our correspondent in Punjab  with one of the popular Marathi folk tracks. Not just that, but during my travels in Rajasthan, I also came across Bhat music which was very similar to the Gondhal style in Maharashtra. The rhythm dominates the similarity found in the music of all three states. The only other common factor is that it also houses three powerful martial races of India and this could be a reason for the music having travelled during their excursions and campaigns into these territories. The book by Komal Kothari on the Bhat, Manganiyar and other folk musical communities of Rajasthan is a scholarly work which requires dedication to read through. He has actually travelled and mapped each and every family related to these communities across the princely state. I did get a first hand experience of some of the folk artistes in Rajasthan but i probably bumped into the wrong ones since they were nothing more than cheap imitations of some of the popular artists that we see on television.
Many a times I have thought of researching deeper into the reasons behind the similarities in the music of these states. I am going to start doing that on my frequent trips to these regions. I am sure there's already a lot of work which would have been done by academicians on this phenomenon but it would be good to develop my own perspective before I refer to existing ones.

Abyssal music and Colossal Artistes

Anoushka's album with Karsh Kale was a chance dsicovery when browsing for her music on You Tube. The album takes forward Shankar's inheritance in a way that he would have wished for. Ravi Shankar spent the greater part of his life playing with the likes of George Harrison, John Coltrane and Yehudi Menuhin in that part of the world which had never been treated to the magic of Hindustani music. Ravi Shankar was more popularly known as the ambassador of Hindustani music across the globe. Anoushka continues the effort by collaborating with Sting and Ravi Shankar himself on this album.

If you get a chance to hear this album, amongst other interesting parts is the smooth takeover demonstrated by Sting when he picks up on track number four 'Sea Dreamer' from the Sitar solo 'Breathing under Water' and weaves his rhythmic lyrics in the legendary style of the English star. I have replayed this track umpteen number of times without once losing interest in the Indian melody that Sting has redefined to sound as global as it could get. Its interesting to note that Sting and Menuhin  both happened to have inetgrated Yoga into their lives in a serious way. Whether it influenced their music style in any way remains to be explored. Sting also played the role of an activist for eliminating hunger and violence, working with Amnesty International and similar organizations across the world. I remember watching one of Sting's concerts on DVD, which featured many artists from across the world playing in the backyard of Sting's mansion in Italy for a select audience of around a hundred people exclusively invited by Sting. Unfortunately, just a couple of days before this concert, 9/11 happened. As a response, Sting composed the now popular track 'Fragile' and performed it unplugged at this concert.

While this album prominently features Anoushka, there are also tracks featuring Shankar Mahadevan, Sunidhi Chauhan and half-sister Norah Jones which create a distinct flavour for this album. Both, easy listeners and the serious ones alike would enjoy this album and its visual sensibilities.

Bhairavi - a fantastic read

Just utter the word 'classical music' and more often than not, the reaction of most people would be to either move to a group which is supposedly discussing a more interesting topic or cringe instantly in reaction as if the very mention of this for mof music brought back a memory of being dragged to one of the concerts at the Shanmukhanda hall by parents on a Sunday evening when one would have been happier playing cricket with friends or watching some movie on TV. I have encountered this reaction so many times now that I have stopped testing its effect on any new subjects. However, even for those who dont particularly have a taste for classical music and some of the other finer things in life, can still attempt reading Bhairavi by Peter Lavezzolli. The book is a treasure trove of Indian artistes' brief history.

I happened to pick up Bhairavi from one of my favourite book shopping haunts, Book World, on Fergusson College Road in Pune. The owner's enthusiasm sharply contrasts the attitude of most store owners in Pune. He is always eager to pull out books from the farthest corner and top most shelves in his old basement shop, without so much as a frown. This might sound strange to people from Mumbai who are reading this blog but believe me, in Pune this is the epitome of service. Actually that reminds me to write a blog soon on some of the interesting experiences with Pune establishments. Coming back to Bhairavi, its a treat and an unexpected one at that because when you first read the author's name it does not necessarily give you an impression that this book would contain such minute details of our atistes' lives or profession but once you have read the first few chapters, your opinion is completely reversed. The opening chapter on Ali Akbar Khan is marvellous with accounts of his father, Ustad Allaudin Khan's remarkable place in Hindustani music's history and the permanent impact that his mentorship has made on some of the fundamental aspects of the artform. To give an example from this book, Allaudin Khan's students included Pandit Ravi Shankar, Annapurna Devei, Shri Bhatkhande and of course Ali Akbar Khan. Out of these names, the other names would be very familiar and close to most but take the example of Bhatkhande and just try to understand his contribution to our classical music's conservation and tradition. Bhatkhande was the first person to document all the various Ragas, picking up this initiative from Allaudin Khan and to create a notation system in Hindustani music, which never existed till then. Indian musicians like most other Indian professionals till the last century, believed in oral transmission of knowledge. The case of music was no different and more so because Hindustani music does not demand mere interpretation of great works but lays greater emphasis on the improvisation ability of its exponent. Allaudin Khan amazes the reader with his versatility while the chapter on Allah Rakha Khan and Zakir Hussain moves the readers with the story of a Dogra Muslim who ran away from Jammu at a very early age to spend the rest of his life in elevating the Tabla to a position that was inconceivable before. The book proceeds to explore the influence of western musicians like George Harrison, John Mclaughlin and Mickey Hart, on the dramatic changes that happened to Indian music's acceptance and adoption in the West. Shakti is one such merger of the best of both worlds which, according to Lavezolli, influenced not only its listeners but to a great extent even the musicians that formed part of this dream team. The significant role that Zakir assigned to Carnatic music (who can forget Vikku's Ghatam playing) brought even within India, two schools of music quite close.

Without turning into an academic indlugence of the author, Bhairavi weaves one chapter into another and maintains a link between the stories of the musical geniuses that feature in this book. I would reccomend it as an easy reading book that could go down well with some tracks from Shakti or Ravi Shankar playing in the background. The book also adds some new tracks to one's list of tracks to be collected, like the Sitar Concerto no. 1 and 2 by Ravi Shankar, conducted by Zubin Mehta. That's one piece of music that I am going out to search in Rhythm House, Kala Ghoda at the very next opportunity i get.

Being Cyrus

The 2006 Homi Adjania movie, Being Cyrus, starring Saif Ali Khan portrayed the 'tragicomic' characters in a typical Parsee setting in Mumbai and Panchgani. Saif's character has shades of gray throughout the movie and its very reminiscent of his performance in 'Ek Haseena Thi'. Saif gets sucked into a plot hatched by his employer's wife, to remove all the obstacles, i.e, the mostly single male members in the family, to get hold of the property owned by the Sethna family in which she is married. The movie was a good attempt to capture some key dimensions of the Parsee community's peculiarities and common challenges. Some parts of the movie resonated with my own experiences from spending a lot of time over four to five years in the Parsee community, thanks to that part of my life which I spent with Cyrus.

My Cyrus was very far from the one played by Saif. Cyrus was not only my piano teacher but also a great friend who taught me more than a few things about life. Cyrus was very gentle and courteous. He would behave quite the same with people from different communities, social classes or interests. The secret to this lay in the fact that he spent the greater or I can say most of his life in teaching the technique of playing the piano to people not only across Mumbai but also the country. Cyrus Panthaky, born sometime in the 1930's, in the quite surroundings of the Dadar Parsee colony in Mumbai, he was one of the greatest interpreters of Western Classical music in our country. Born in a Parsee family, Cyrus had the advantage of being exposed to western and particularly classical music at a very early age. He found his expression in the Piano but he could have just as easily played any other instrument for he had a naturally gifted sense of music which enables one to master any instrument quite easily. Julie Andrews is so right when she sings " When you know the notes to sing, you can sing 'most anything" in the 1965 Rodgers and Hammerstein production 'The Sound of Music'. For Cyrus, music meant everything. In fact, he never separated it from anything he did. His conversations, indulgences and challenges, all of them emerged from and revolved around music. He was one of the youngest people in the country to achieve the Fellowship of Trinity College of London (FTCL) degree in music at the age of eighteen. He was very proud of this achievement and would often talk about that final and challenging examination when preparing us to appear for our grades . He was tutored by a Russian teacher, Olga Cran. I think this was a very big advantage and reason for his robust technique. Russians have amongst other musical attributes, a great passion and respect for technique. One of Cyrus's favourite Russian Gurus was Alexander Peskanov. Peskanov runs an institute which focuses on finger techniques and exercises followed by Russian greats like Rachmanninov and Prokofiev. Cyrus used to play Peskanov's video tutorials for anyone who chose to develop technique rather than just learn some popular pieces to get away as a pianist. Cyrus also made it mandatory for most of us to practice on a 'dumb' keyboard which was basically just the keyboard section of a broken down piano in which the keys were made even stiffer by attaching springs at the hammer end. This contraption and the exercises performed on it made us feel like one of those students who goes through tortorous exercises in the martial arts movies, while the strict master keeps smiling at their agony and impatience. But it did make a measurable difference in our technique for the fingers which were flexed for so long playing on those iron-stiff keys, seemed to just glide on regular piano keyboards. At least we chose to believe so after having gone through that ordeal.

Cyrus not only spent time teaching us technique but also made sure that we developed a deep appreciation for this form of music by taking us to various concerts, including Zubin Mehta's magnificent show with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Of course, he would be in the invitee box of the theatre while we would be seated somewhere in the last rows of the Jamshedji Bhabha Theatre in NCPA. Even those tickets were sought only after spending an entire evening, night and half a day outside the NCPA ticket office on the pavements that carried an awful stench of horse dung and Mumbai's peculiar smell carried all over by the ocean breeze coming from the nearby Marine Drive. But the effort was made worth all that it demanded by the fantastic performance which Zubin Mehta and his orchestra gave in the two hours that the concert lasted. By grace of being Cyrus's students, we could also get a sneak preview of the orchestra's practice sessions and dress rehearsal. He nearly always introduced us to the main artist of any show at the NCPA. He enjoyed Indian classical music as well and even took me backstage once to meet Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons when they performed in Mumbai. Quite late in his life, Cyrus attempted what Yehudi Menhuin also did, to find a common axis between the intersecting planes of western and Indian classical music, though he tried it in much isolation as compared to Yehudi who reached out to the greats and even ended up making a significant change in his lifestyle.

Cyrus gave us all a big surprise once when he took us to Mumbai's oldest and trusted music shop, Furtado's near Metro theatre, to have a look at the recently introduced digital pianos from Yamaha. Cyrus, who had so vehemently opposed the influence of digital music on the tranquility and quality of acoustic music, was suddenly promoting a hundred percent digital impersonation of the piano. But the reason for this change was clear when we tried the instrument. It not only reproduced piano tones that only the Steinways and Yamahas could produce but also took away the dependence on the handful of piano tuners in the city who were needed almost every month given the havoc that the humid climate of Mumbai played on the piano strings. On Cyrus's directions, we all purchased a piano each at a handsome amount of over a hundred and fifty thousand rupees in those days. Our parents' trust in Cyrus was really affirmed that day. Even today, I enjoy playing on that piano which has accompanied me to three cities with very little effort in moving it unlike what would have happened with an acoustic one.

For all that Cyrus gave us and particularly me, as I would always like to think, we didn't do much for him other than organize his annual student concert by raising funds from the local community in Dadar Parsee Colony and Dadar Hindu Colony or taking him out for dinner to one of his few favourite restaurants, like Status at Nariman Point, on weekends. I can never forget the kind of attention and time which i received from Cyrus unlike anyone else in my life. But the troubled times that I went through over the last few years and partly my unforgivable mistake of not staying in touch regularly, took me away from Cyrus and Cyrus away from me, forever. Cyrus breathed his last on 10th August 2009 in the Parsee general hospital on Warden road, without my knowing. It was one of the rudest shocks that woke me up from my self centred stupor. I would always like to hope and imagine that in his last moments he must have been hearing and mentally rehearsing his favourite Beethoven creation, the magnanimous Fifth symphony, which we both practised and performed numerous times together as a duo.

Being Cyrus meant being so many things and not all were easy, a western classical musician in a country whose musical tradition is several centuries older, a Parsee who chose to follow a branch of christianity, an aging professional who maintained his standards till the end with no exceptions unlike many who turned to popular music or playing Hindi movie songs on the piano, a teacher who invested his time in every promising student with no expectations of any different material rewards but the hope that his tradition would be continued in posterity. Being Cyrus meant, at the age of seventy five, getting ready in a formal suit every evening and leaving for the Taj to perform for opulent, but not always dignified, listeners. It meant taking care of an equally old sister who also chose to not marry, like him. Being Cyrus would have meant a very different way of leading life for me and I did have that choice at one point. I secretly regret that choice sometimes when the mundane life of a corporate professional gets on my nerves.

If only out of my own selfish interest, I wish Homi Adjania would have met this Cyrus and painted the life of this musical genius on a medium that can reach far more people than this inconspicuous blog.

Brubeck and Breweries

Dave Brubeck brought alive the most endearing melody in 5/4 time. It must have taken some courage to move away from the traditional time signatures and attempt something like Take Five. I have never found a jazz melody more repeatable and hummable than this one. I heard it again at lunch yesterday at Amit's place. It went so well with the beautiful vista of the Arabian sea that their house faced and the dull, sultry Saturday afternoon. Of course, it couldnt have been the same without that chilled glass of Califirnian white wine and the warm hospitality extended by our host. If one takes a stroll down 100 feet road in Indira Nagar, Bengaluru, he can find 3 storeys above the only Cafe Coffee Day outlet on that road, a pub inspired by the name of Dave Brubeck's evergreen melody. I have spent countless evenings at Take Five and other than the name and the very appropriate music that they play, one of the greater attractions is the three dozen types of beer that they serve. You can find golden, dark, amber - almost every kind of tint that beer can carry and with it flavours ranging from caramel to walnut to fresh wheat. Chimay dominates the other brands available in Bengaluru but it deserves that place. So, one can spend a great evening at Take Five in the psychedelic company of Brubeck's and Belgium's finest.
Jazz always brings to my mind the visuals of young Charles Ray from the movie Ray where he is desperate to find a teacher who can help him master the piano and eventually he does become one of the legends of Jazz and a completely self-trained one at that. Hundreds or Thousands of musically gifted black folk must have undergone the same trials and tribulations in the early part of the last century when learning the piano or the violiin or for that matter even the trumpet was a privilige of the non-coloured population while to the rest it was almost a forbidden passion. But its owing to this fortunate tragedy that today we have Jazz music. The same coloured community put together its self taught technique of western music and the genetic sense of Afro rhythm to come out with a new music form that would take the western world by storm over the next half a century and give sleepless nights to many white parents in the U.S.A and Europe because of the ferver with which their kids were consuming this sinful music. Some sense of the abhorrance can be sensed in the movie 'The Talented Mr.Ripley' where Jude Law's character takes an immense affinity to Jazz and makes regular visits to clubs in Italy playing this near censored form of music in annonymous night clubs, much to the dismay of his rich and 'cultured' parents in New York. The early critics of this music even compared it to something alike to the noise made with pots and pans by Siberians to drive away wild bears. Jazz's etymology is much disputed but its origins lie in the southern states of America. Some say it was a slang word Jass that gave the artform is eventual name.
For a moment the initial rejection of this music could also be attributed to not just the racial flavour that it provoked but also the dramatic difference in the way this music was performed. The age old tradition of repeating works written by masters was suddenly being destroyed by these handful of self trained, rebellious musicians who believed in improvisation. For them, the true reflection of the musician's ideas in his music seemed more important than playing out the exact reproductions of someone else's ideas that were stored in a three hundred year old manuscript. This would have been a blunt, blasphemous act in the eyes of the classical pundits in the west. Surprisingly, for Indian classical musicians this would mean nothing too different than what they have been practising for the last many hundred years. There couldn't be a better example of this convergence than the group Shakti formed by Zakit Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia and John Mclaughlin in the 70's.
While Dave Brubeck and his quarter followed a so to say traditional Jazz route, its interesting to hear Al Jarreau's expression of Jazz. The seven time Grammy Award winner, has reproduced Take Five in a Scat version which is so Al Jarreauic with all the accompanying madness. Another one of his takes is on My Favourite Things from the movie soundtrack Sound of Music. The guy's just so original. Maybe one of our Indian composers can take a cue and do an Indian take on Take Five.

Nusrat and Michael Brooke . . . The Night Song(s)

The tracks Lament or Intoxicated from the album Night song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brooke speak volumes about the musical understanding of these two geniuses and not only that of their own traditional styles but of the other's as well. Electronic music could have sounded nothing but intrusive with Qawwalis had it not been for Michael and if not for Nusrat's original voice the overall impact of the tracks would have been anything but cliched. Maybe this is where the years of penance comes into play. Even in a slightly lighter and more popular track like Tere Bina Nahi Lagda Dil Mera which has high recall for all those who follow Nusrat, there is a freshness that Michael has lent with his innovative use of guitars and once again some fantastic electronic elements. The song truly evoles what its rechristened title suggests, Longing. Interestingly, this album's title has also been thoughtfully decided because it couldn't have been heard at any better time than the night. We have spent many evenings on my terrace listening to this album with friends who equally enjoy music.

On this album, Michael holds his ground by chosing to do what he's best at - infusing unique guitar sounds in the original melodies and embellishing it with select electronic sounds. Michael's brilliance with use of guitar sounds goes back to The Joshua Tree by U2 where Michael created a unique guitar sound for the group. He uses a technique of directly plugging the guitar into a preamp instead of a voiced guitar amplifier. He adds a variety of effects using processors and this makes his guitar sounds very unique when one hears tracks like those on this album with NFAK.  At the same time, Nusrat pours out his passion taking the listener in a few seconds to a meditative state. Even those who are not ardent listeners of any particular genre of music have been mesmerized by these tracks whenever i have played them. The high point of these tracks is their repeatability. I seldom come across creations that one can listen for years together and not get tired of the voice or the music. I have been listening to this album since 2005 and the sensitivities continue to grown on me. But its not one of those albums which doesn't get your attention at the first instance but needs to grow on you. This one catches the listener unawares because of its sound as well as the first class sound mixing.

There is no way that one can hear conflicting music styles in these kind of creations unlike the downright cheap gimmicks of wannabe artists from both sides of the world. I have personally witnessed the thievery and quite often massacre of traditional music by DJs who travel across continents to Mumbai just to record a few loops of the Shehnai or Sarangi, which then interject some second grade club mix to give the revellers a karmic feel in Goa and Bali shacks. On the other hand are greats like Michael who work with a much broader purpose and import the richness of Hindustani music into their own concepts. One great example of folk music finding a global audience thanks to such efforts is Dil ki Doya by Paban das Baul and Sam Mills. They feature on the album Real Sugar produced by Peter Gabriel's Real World label. Mills found this bard on the Indo-Bangaldesh border from where they proceeded to some jamming sessions with Mills on the piano and eventually found their way on this album. There couldn't be a more visual song than this one and when i say that I am putting it in the class of what Rimsky Korsakov or Edward Grieg were trying to do with music when they wrote the vivid works like Scheherazade or In the hall of the mountain king. Without ever having heard any words of Baul in my whole life, I nearly deciphered the entire song and validated this with my friend Probir Mukerjee's grandad. These sort of accompishments have opened a whole new set of possibilities for music from across the continent to come together and 'fuse' in the real sense. One more example that I cannot stop myself from quoting here is Shakti and particularly Lotus Feet from Remember Shakti Vol.2. Of course, I don't want to do injustice to Shakti by not dedicating an entire blog to it but to put it in a nutshell, Shakti is probably the most successful attempt so far at truly mixing sounds and musical cultures. Many have taken it from there and used similar combos though not quite as honestly.

These examples serve the single most important purpose of reminding us how unaffected collaborative music remains despite the political and territorial differences that are raging across the world.

Wooly origins

"Who were the Sufi music greats before Nusrat?" asked my friend Gundu, during one of our many gupshups on my terrace. Frankly, I had no name to quote and that led me to believe that I have been so lost in Nusrat and Abeeda's works that I have not gone much beyond that as far as Sufi music is concerned. Again, I wasn't sure if we should commit the mistake of labelling all that is sung by these masters as Sufi music because we have already done that in the case of Hindustani music by covering everything under it as Indian classical music. This may have happened due to the lack of a better term or as a result of traditional classification done by those concerned in the British administration. Western classical music unlike Indian classical music is an appropriate class since it indicates any piece of music that received patronage from church or nobility in Europe between the 17th and early part of the 20th century. On the other hand Hindustani music cannot be defined within a specific time frame and this is not only because its impossible to find the original manuscripts but more so because it does not have an end date. Hindustani music survives on the exponent's ability to improvise which is a complete departure from the exactly opposite practice in Western classical music where its the degree of precision in reproduction of composed works by an individual or an orchestra which supercedes any other facet of the music. If we were to now imagine the challenge of defining Sufi music in the same way as Hindustani music, it wouldn't be wrong.

Sufi, the word itself is derived from Safaa which means pure and Suf which refers to the woolen cloaks wore by clerics in those times. Sufi is a mystical tradition in Islam and its followers often use music as a means of expressing their ideology. It must have been through the Afghan and Mogul invasions that the sect would have come into contact with Indian musicians. This could have possibly led to the evolution of Sufi songs and Quawwalis as we hear them today. Paimona by Zeb and Haniya is a great example of how music in the Indo Persian region can be clearly analyzed in traditional Hindustani structure of Astai and Antara. The same commonality is found in Nusrat's renditions. One theory also suggests that Amir Khusrou founded the principles of Hindustani music and is hence also responsible for the Persian, Turkish and Afghan influences. The meditative quality of Hindustani music could also potentially be derived from its roots in medieval Indian traditions as well as Buddhist influence in the North Western region.

Hence, I may not be able to answer Gundu's question with a set of names before Nusrat but probably by unravelling the evolution of this music style. I intend to use this blog space to present some hypotheses and ideas which are open to debate and opinions.