Pt Jasraj: Because The Experience Of Beauty Is Proof Of Its Value

Art may need to explain itself in certain contexts. Beauty doesn’t.

In the piece that follows, I would be pausing at some points and requesting you to play a few minutes of the tracks embedded to proceed with my case. Without the music, this article would not make sense.

Let us start with the Jaijaiwanti below. If you are at leisure, you may indulge in the entire piece, but for now, playing till 05:40 would do.

Almost every time that I have come across this piece in books or online fora discussing Hindustani music, this bandish —Chandra badan Radhika—as performed by Pandit Jasraj, is shared with a note on its technical complexity, citing that alone as the reason why this should be listened to. And every time I read such a note, I cannot help but think that ‘that’s not the point’. That the forest is being missed for studying the chlorophyll count of a tree.

When I first heard this piece as a child, and when I heard it now for writing this, this bandish in Jaijaiwanti struck me as a moving piece of music.

Music of overwhelming beauty.

You don’t need to be a qualified linguist to guess that the name ‘Jaijaiwanti’ comes from ‘jai’, or victory. And a victory, while being an event of achievement is also a moment of catharsis. To me, this piece always stood as the symbol of that, and of the cost of victory.

When I heard it first, I didn’t know the details of the raga, leave alone the complexity of the piece. Today, I’m better informed but only slightly. But even now, I don’t go back to it for academic reasons, but for aesthetic pleasure and an emotional experience.

And I get it. Every time.

Second, sample this Surdas pada in Yaman. If you have the time now, please play this till 03:54 at least.

Yaman is said to be a raga conveying devotion. A melody in Yaman is sung or performed at the beginning of a concert, as an invocation to the very gods to descend.

As would be evident to you, this is not a typical khayal. The tag that can best fit this piece is that of a ‘bhajan’. But my point is this: to the extent that the purpose of Yaman is to convey devotion, and invoke the gods, are you making the case that this piece falls short of doing that? To the extent that Yaman symbolises auspiciousness of what is to follow, are you saying that you do not get that feeling from this piece?

Over the years, I have found myself being a part of a couple of online groups discussing Hindustani music, and also had the chance to discuss it with many people in-person. Almost always, and fortunately, I was the least musically-qualified person in the room or the webpage. And there was one thing common to most discussions that I witnessed:

Those looking for information in Pandit Jasraj’s music rated his contemporaries over him. Those looking for expression hardly looked anywhere else.

That, if I may, would be the simplest and the shortest possible description of Pandit Jasraj’s body of work.

Perhaps this trait that has come to define his legacy was a part of his being since the beginning.

There is an anecdote which most Pandit Jasraj fans are aware of. In short, it goes like this.

Sometime in the mid 1940s, there was a musical conference to which Panditji’s elder brother, Pandit Maniram, was invited. A teenaged Jasraj was supposed to accompany him on the tabla. Another vocalist, who too was asked to perform at the conference, borrowed Jasraj from Pandit Maniram ji for his own performance. By most records, one of the ragas performed by him was Bhimpalasi.

Later that day, or perhaps the next day, a third singer and Pandit Maniram were discussing that recital. This third singer pointed out what he thought were failings of the vocalist Jasraj had accompanied and that the singer had not been true to raga Bhimpalasi.

Jasraj interrupted and defended the vocalist’s interpretation of the raga. To his arguments, the response that he got was: “what do you, who only beat flesh, know about the raga system?” (beating flesh being a reference to playing the tabla).

So hurt was a young Jasraj by this rebuke that he decided to take up singing and abandon the tabla altogether.

What often gets ignored in the discussion around this anecdote is the identity of the vocalist Pandit Jasraj accompanied.

It was Pandit Kumar Gandharva.

It would take a fundamental change of my worldview for me to agree that there ever existed a musician more expressive than Pt Kumar Gandharva. Apart from whatever else he knew, Pt Kumar Gandharva knew bhaava, and he knew the craft to convey it to a listener.

Just sample this interpretation of a Surdas pada. The verse is supposed to describe the utter desperation of Vasudeva and Devaki in trying to save Krishna from Kansa. Listen to this and tell me with a straight face that you did not experience pathos in some way.

And yet, till today, what can be called the orthodoxy in Hindustani music is uncomfortable with even regarding him as a classical musician.

A young Jasraj had jumped to the defence of this Kumar Gandharva.

What is common to both is that while they divide opinion on their approach to the art of Hindustani music, the Beauty they created with their performance of it was irrefutable.

As a fan of both, I turn to their music for an emotional experience of bhaava. Beyond a point, I don’t care what tags the latest Hindustani music textbook ascribes to them or ranks them where.

And with sincere respect to anyone who might be offended by this, I would say that it is the approach of such artists which really gets to the core of the question—what is the purpose of music in human life?

It is expression.

The primary responsibility of music, and hence of a musician, is to express an emotion. Anything that aids in it, should be incorporated in the art. Anything that does not, should be discarded.

Look at it this way. What is the purpose of a map? To help you reach from point A to point B.

However, the most accurate map of a city would have to be the exact size of the city itself. But would it help anyone get anywhere? It would be 100 per cent accurate, but what would be its value?

My introduction to Ram was through Tulsidas but my introduction to Krishna was through Pt Jasraj. I had heard, literally, the glories of Krishna much before I got to reading them.

The first two lines of the piece embedded below form my earliest memory of music: karaar vinden, padaar vindam. Mukhaar vinde, vinive shayantam.

As a child, I did not understand the words, much less the raga. Notes were out of the question. But it was because I liked the music so much, that I got to finding out more about this stuti and others that Pt Jasraj sang, what they meant, what ragas they were in, where they were taken from, what was the story behind a particular name of Krishna, and so on.

Jump to 2020, there are at least five different versions of the Gita kept between the bedroom and the living room in our apartment.

If the spiritual has to survive and prosper, the chances of its survival increase if it is presented in an aesthetically pleasing and attractive form. The metaphysical must be expressed in physical terms.

Textbook accuracy can impress, but no more. What pleases and attracts the human senses is Beauty.

But this Beauty too has a role to fulfil. Through the senses, it must reach for a higher value beyond them. The physical must aspire to be integrated with the metaphysical.

It was this cycle of expression that was the identity of Pandit Jasraj’s music.