My first brush with
music, which enthralled me, happened at the age of three or four.
There was an old
Grundig Radiogram at our place in Howrah – a town of factories, far removed
from art and music lovers. Surrounded mostly by Marwaris, the area did not have
the right environment for falling in love with the arts.
Be that as it may, I
am told that the one way to keep me quiet was to load the record player with
twelve records which played one after the other. The sight of a lever pushing
the lowermost record off the bent rod holding them, so that it gently fell on
the turntable was in itself a fascinating sight.
What followed was
even more so. The record would fall smoothly on the turntable which was already
turning at a good speed, and then the stylus with the magnetic needle would,
quite deliberately and with a royal air, lift itself up from its stand move
over the record and settle down at the precise groove.
The music would start
and the stylus moved towards the centre with the progress of the song, at the
end of which it would again lift itself up and patting itself on the back would
move to rest again on its stand. Then the next record would fall and the
process would start all over again!
Almost every month or
so, all family members would be asked to list the record that they wanted to be
purchased and once the list was compiled, the whole family would travel to
Lindsay Street to a particular shop (whose name unfortunately eludes me now)
and the records would be bought.
At the age of four, I
was also jokingly asked to put in my preference and there was much mirth when I
actually did so immediately. I had heard the song over the Radio (which was
part of the music contraption) and the song had acted like a magnet to which I
was instinctively drawn. The song was “Jo waada kiya who nibhana padega”
sung beautifully by Mohammed Rafi from the film Taj Mahal. I did not
understand the lyrics, but the tune and Rafi’s voice was all that was needed to
make me play the record ad nauseum (for others, not for me – I just could not
have enough of it!).
We would normally
have two types of records then – the 78 RPM (with one song on each side) and
the 33 RPM Long Play record with about six to eight songs on each side) usually
made of vinyl.
The material was
brittle and if it accidentally fell it would break into pieces.
Then came the age of
EPs or Extended Play records which played at 45 RPM. These would contain three
or four songs. This was a wonderful innovation which rang the death knell of
the78 RPM records. The material also changed to plastic and this was supposed
to be “unbreakable”. There was also a record for 16 RPM but very few of these
were available in India.
After the first love
with “Jo waada kiya ….” my list of songs that I loved steadily grew. “Mere
mehboob tujhe…”, “Sar jo tera chakraye…”, "Pipara Ke Patwa....."
(in Bhojpuri), "Kahin deep jale kahin dil…” and many more. Rafi
remained my favourite but Lata, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Talat
Mehmood, Mukesh, Mahendra Kapoor were also inching closer. Some little known
singers also came out with brilliant songs. Sharda with “Chale jaana
zara thehro….”,Sudha Malhotra with “Chain Se Humko kabhi….”.
Bade Papa introduced
me to the music of K.L.Saigal. The strains of “Baabul Mora, Naihar chooto
jaye….” cast its spell over me though this was unusual for most children
found the rendition of this song too boring for their taste. “Ek Bangla bane
nyara...”, “Diya jalao, jagmag, jagmag…” -they were all equally
beautiful. Pankaj Mullick and S.D. Burman were also introduced and caught my
fancy. Suraiya, Raj Kumari and Noor Jehan could not be left behind either.
But two singers with
a very different style of singing were holding their own – Asha Bhosle with her
nasal tones and Shamshad Begum with her rustic voice. In fact, I believe
Shamshad Begum was the original rockstar and her catchy songs became great hits
once again in the age of remixes.
As I was growing, I
gradually started understanding some meaning of the lyrics many of which were
also in Urdu. The beauty of Urdu and the magnificent way in which the language
was suited for music was becoming apparent. The many layers of meanings
hidden in the “Shayari” were gradually revealing themselves and the
beauty of melody with the pathos hidden in the words was becoming more
fascinating by the day. Romance was deeply embedded in the songs.
The usual trend in
most schools was to have an assembly of students in the morning which would
usually start with a prayer sung in chorus by all students. So was it I my
school where one prayer for Saraswati – “Ya Kundendu Tushaar Haar Dhawala….”
would be followed by one other from a collection of about a dozen. These would
be compositions of Surdas, Rahim, Kabir, Tulsi, Mirabai and others. The music
teacher would accompany on the Harmonium and one senior student on the Tabla.
This group singing only served to impress upon me the forms that good music
could take. “Tu Dayalu Deen Haun….”, “Mere to Giridhar Gopal, doosro na
koi….”, “Maiya mori, main nahin maakhan Khayo…” were some of the songs from
the collection.
However, till now, I
had not been exposed to music from the West and that love affair was to start
much later. Though Beatle mania was taking the world by storm, I was then
untouched by the frenzy that these four young men had generated.
During one of my
visits to my village Pakaria I came across a completely different form of
music. The occasion was the festival of colours “Holi” also known as “Phagun”
in Bhojpuri. At about eight I the morning, a ragtag group of villagers
led by one of our servants descended on our house with “Dholaks”,” Jhaal”,
“Majira” and an assortment of musical instruments that were alien to me.
The leader, lovingly named Pritam by his parents, distorted to Pirtamma by the
villagers – an emaciated character, was one of the servants cum farmhand at our
home. Not a man of many words, on that day his talents were on full display.
They settled themselves in our courtyard and then started a continuous flow of
“Phagua” or songs specifically sung during Holi. The start was sedate but
gradually gained in tempo finally reaching a crescendo before ending at the
same sedate tempo as the start. The singers and the musicians also matched the
tempo. Starting with sitting on their haunches, they would then lean forward on
their knees, and rise with the tempo of the song facing each other as each
would aggressively try to outdo the other in the way they sang or played their
respective instruments.
All they demanded in
return for the rendering of “Hori re rasiayaaa…..” was a continuous flow
of food, “bhang” and “ganja”. Pirtamma had a lovely rustic voice
and till this day I am at a loss to understand how he could generate so much
power in his voice from such a small frame. This performance continued till
late in the evening till the musicians were either too tired or too intoxicated
to sing anymore. They did not leave but lay down there and were lost in deep
slumber as the sun went down. My regret has always been that I could not record
the performance for posterity, having no means to do so then, and that this
fine art is now lost to the world.
In the village, I
also came upon another type of music.
A farmhand, who
worked in our fields named Baldeo, was a sturdy man of indeterminate age. He
would usually start his day well before sunrise with a break for a couple of
hours at eleven for a bath and lunch. He would end work at about five in the
evening after tending to the cattle and thereafter would lie down in the hay
waiting for dinner at about seven.
This interlude would
be spent singing “Nirgun” or songs to the formless almighty in a
beautifully sonorous voice. In the quiet and the dark of the evenings the
lilting tune and his beautiful voice would have been enough to stop the angels
in their tracks had they been lucky enough to be around. He did not sing to
entertain people but to thank his God for the peace that he had received in
this life.
Fortunately,
commercialization of music had not reached the village, else I would have been
deprived of firsthand experience of this piece of heaven.
My musical
introduction with the west happened when I was approaching my teens.
Our neighbour on the
Ground Floor in New Alipur was a Navy Captain and he had a German music system
which used spools of tape. During his voyages he had collected a large number
of spools of western classical music and when he was home during his periods of
his leave, he enjoyed listening to music alone with a glass of whiskey on the
rocks.
Fortunately, city
houses being clustered together, the strains of music wafted in through our
windows and actually helped me concentrate on my studies. I had no idea about
who Bach, Beethoven and Mozart were (and even today the knowledge is at best
sketchy!) but the music was soothing at times, sad at others and violent from
time to time. Abrol Uncle was my initiator to Western Classical music.
When Abrol Uncle
moved to his company’s quarters in a posh part of Calcutta, the apartment was
rented by a balding middle aged bachelor of nondescript appearance and few
words. Bhaskar Ghosh was the complete anti thesis of Abrol Uncle.
There were rumours
that he had been passed over by his lady love and had been unable to come to
terms with the loss. A lonely character, quite genial but not very social, he
would spend the evenings alone playing his violin. The discerning listener
could interpret the melancholy sound of his violin as not merely music but
outpourings of a broken heart. His sorrow and the sound emanating from the
strings of the violin would be one.
The turning point in
this journey came with the release of the film “The Sound of Music”.
The music in the film
was probably the first with which the uninitiated of my generation could
identify. Not all earlier musicals had been able to create such inroads into
the Indian middle class youth before this. There had been the occasional “Come
September” but the interest had not sustained. “Doe A deer…..” did what others
had not been able to. It brought Western Film music into the Desi middle class
household. Love Story, Dr Zhivago, Roman Holiday, My Fair Lady, Saturday Night
Fever all followed in its wake over a period of time, some with a rebirth.
At this time, another
character came into my life with other forms of western music. Rana, my next
door neighbour, had a collection of some marvelous music. Jim Reeves, Francis
Lai, Englebert Humperdink and the like were his favourites. Gradually I was
becoming aware of the range of pop, rock, reggae, country and any other forms
of music.
And I discovered the
Beatles! Well after they had last played together. Cliff Richards, Abba,
BoneyM, Bob Marley, Simon and Garfunkel, Roger Whttaker, Jhonny Cash, Frank
Sinatra, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin, CSNY, Elvis
Presly, Neil Diamond, Carlos Santana, Bob Dylan, Tex Ritter, Susan Raye and
scores of others came out of nowhere and became my friends for life. Usually I
would become a fan of most of these musical legends well after the
"in" crowd had moved on.
Indian music was also
changing for me. With the rise of A R Rehman, Indian music took a new turn. The
sounds were different, the spirit was different. The poetry or Shayari of yore
was missing but had been replaced by something beautiful. “Dil hai Chota sa…..”
was no less romantic compared to “Raat Ke Humsafar……”. “Toota Toota ek
parinda…..” had as much pathos as “Bekaraar Dil, tu Gaye jaa………”.
The exposure to a
variety of music started with the humble transistor (Aap ki Farmayish, Binaca
Geet Mala, Musical Band Box) followed by audio cassettes, developed with CDs
and DVDs went further with online access and I am sure will keep changing the
way musical appreciation happens. I have experienced this change. I can enjoy
Bhimsen Joshi and BoneyM, Grateful Dead and Hemant Kumar.
Words
do not matter. Instruments do not matter. Neither do technicalities.
Since
I am uneducated as far as the technical aspects of music are concerned, I
am free.
I
am free to enjoy any music without being looked down upon.
I
am free from snobbishness and from barriers.
I
listen and enjoy the music from Shankarabharnam as much as I enjoy Lucy In The
Sky with Diamonds.
The
Gurus may frown at the lack of purity of choice and appreciation but all I hear
is music to my ears.
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