Celebrating Kumar Gandharva: Confession Of A Carnatic Music Fan's Conversion To Hindustani

The riches of classical music (of any type) is not easily apparent to most kids. For, it doesn't arrive with the mainstream mass appeal of film music. And so it was to me while growing up. 

But the fact that I grew up in a household where Carnatic music was a constant descant helped to nudge me towards its immense beauty.

However, those were the times (70s and 80s) when music was available mostly through the services of All India Radio (AIR). The venerable institution — bless it — did its best to take to the masses various musical arts.

And one of the rites of passage in our family then was to listen to the Saturday night 'National Programme' in which, from time to time, you got to hear the greats of Carnatic music.

One typical Saturday they had announced Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar concert, and dad and I had gathered in front of the family radio — a valved Murphy set — to listen to the doyen unfold his bag of tricks, as it were.

As it happened, due to some technical reason that Saturday night they couldn't broadcast the scheduled Iyengar concert, and in its place they chose to air a concert of a Hindustani musician.

Now, my father and I knew nothing about Hindustani music. If truth be told, we did not understand or appreciate Hindustani music as we couldn't fathom its inner beauty.

As lay listeners, we were of the opinion that Hindustani musicians just droned and droned by elongating, mostly, a single syllable or word to the entirety of a concert. Admittedly, we knew no better.

But we still went ahead and listened to the broadcast as we had nothing better to do that night. Just as well. For, the concert changed everything for us. 

Music in its primal beauty

Hindustani music, suddenly, looked (sounded) different. Its beauty had become apparent to us. 

It was all because the singer whose concert we heard that night presented the music in a way that no other Hindustani musician that we had listened to previously could. I don't remember the songs now. But can recall that one was in Bhimplasi.

There was another song in Kaapi. One in Yaman, too. Now, these are ragas that are also in vogue in Carnatic music. But in Hindustani style that night, it seemed to us, the quintessential beauty of those ragas came out in resplendent style.

The credit of converting two tone-deaf listeners to life-long converts to Hindustani music goes to Kumar Gandharva — his centenary year begins from 8 April.

It was the great man's impromptu concert that night that opened us to an artistic world whose delights lay deprived to us for long. We were literally blown away by his unfussy music presented in an unpretentious manner. There was an instant hook to his presentation that caught us inevitably.

The unwavering sense of sur and tal, and the organic flow of intelligent musical phrasings all came out in conspicuous relief that night. Every note landed with the precision of a guided missile. But each one came with different and delectable subtleties. 

The hallmark of any good music is that it opens the door for other good music. That is what Kumar Gandharva did to us. Soon, we were able to understand and appreciate the other gems of Hindustani music. 

Very many years later when I tried to rationalise what made me fall instantly in love with Gandharva's music I kind of grasped that Gandharva had the rare ability to present music in its primal beauty. 

The thing is Gandharva made high art accessible without in any way diluting its classical core. It is like trying to teach the intricacies of the theory of relativity to a high-schooler. It is not impossible. But it takes a person of great knowledge and talent to pull that off with panache. 

Kumar Gandharva sure was one. The man, who had just one functioning lung, could seemingly hold a note for eternity and still pack it with mind-boggling musical minutiaes.

It is now well known that the man was a life-long student of folk music in Malwa, largely the western part of present-day Madhya Pradesh. This kept his critical faculties open. 

That is why, he refused to be constrained by the limiting lattices of any particular gharana.

Like a sweeping river, he took all that was in front of his fluent flow. This was at the heart of his compositions: Geet hemant, Geet varsha, Geet shishir, and Triveni bhajans of three great saints — Kabir, Surdas and Meera, which to this day, remain a musical tour de force.

"Kumar Gandharva studied and analysed the unpretentiousness, form and content of the folk music of the region, collected 300 odd songs, cast them in notation and kept humming the tunes he so composed. The outcome was the variety of his now famous dhun-ugama ragas, which find place in his magnum opus, Anoop Raga Vilas, published in 1965, a collection of independent compositions," said the The Illustrated Weekly in 1984 in a piece to commemorate the great singer's 60th birthday.

"It contains 136 bandishes, of which 107 are in 57 old ragas and 17 composed by Kumar himself in 11 ragas. In addition, he has composed a bandish each in 12 ragas, which embody a manipulation of two or more old melodies — a stupendous achievement this, by any standards, much more so for one who has had no formal academic education," it added.

Rebel with a reason

Despite hailing from a traditional family — born in a village near Belgaum into a Lingayat family, given name Shivaputra Siddharamayya Komkalimath — Gandharva had the spirit of a musical rebel (in an agreeable sort of way). 

Even though he was identified as a prodigy in his young age (for his musical prowess he was given the title Kumar Gandharva by the religious head of his Lingayat community while he was only 6), he was not ready to follow in the predictable paths of conservatism.

Perhaps his brush with death due to complicated lung problems (because of which he shifted to the dry surroundings of Mewa, Madhya Pradesh) and the five long years he spent away from music for recuperation, shaped his musical ideology.

It was probably because of this that his songs came with innate philosophical heft and a spiritual shine. After all, a man's music is the window to his soul.  

Gandharva musical experiments did not have the rough serrated edge of a revolutionary but had the soothing touch of a seer.

He did not destroy musical traditions. Instead he set out to create his own.

He had a natural understanding of musical grammar, and all his musical offerings were bulwarked beautifully by the solidity of traditions and in general devoid of gimmickry that is known to unfortunately attach itself to many musical experiments. 

Ragas like Sanjari, Malavati, Bihad Bhairava, Saheli Todi. Gandhi Malhar and Sohoni Bhatiyar — his creations — stand testimony to this. Innovations need not be unorthodox was the subliminal message of Kumar Gandharva and his music.     

In a sense, Kumar Gandharva, in spirit, is a lot similar to the Tamil film musical genius Ilaiyaraaja. In that both approach their music through the doors of their instinctive folk music sensibilities.

That is their chosen way to both internalise and externalise their music. Whenever Raaja uses Carnatic ragas, which is often, you get to feel them in a way that they are meant to be — in their pristine form, shorn of all artifice.

You can access their music at your level, whatever it may be. That is why their music holds equal appeal to lay persons as well as to the cognoscenti, and anyone in-between. 

Kumar Gandharva's music too was always attended by this felicity and fecundity. In the book Between Two Tanpuras, music critic Vamanrao H Deshpande, wrote that there was no adulteration in Kumar Gandharva's music. "The product is oven fresh always," he said.

Little wonder that this writer's mind can still bite into the Bhimplasi heard nearly 49 years back and find something tasty to chomp over.