Remembering Alauddin Khan

OFF BEAT

One of my lasting regrets as I grew up in Calcutta and acquired a taste for Indian classical music, was that Alauddin Khan did not perform in the city any more.

There were few ways in which a teenager's life could be more enriched than by attending those music concerts and "festivals". It involved initiation (somebody had to take you to your first concert), ritual (from locating the concert to discussing its performances threadbare thereafter), slow learning and gradual imbibing of the folklore that is so much a part of great musical traditions.

My children, who have grown up mostly in Delhi, have not had the benefit of becoming a part of this tradition, although the capital has its own quota of concerts and music lovers.

Perhaps it is the demands of modern-day schooling. By the time you are grown up enough to begin to explore, you have to decide what you wish to be in life, a musician or a reasonably good student, and concentrate accordingly. There is little time to try things out, dabble and discover the many treasures lying hidden from direct view.

But there is a greater threat to the future of Indian music than the demands of rigorous schooling. It is a new political idiom that is ignorant about the richness of our heritage, gives today's citizens a distorted view of our history and tradition, and creates a strange new breed that matches its ignorance with arrogance.

An example of this new aberrant Indian is the Madhya Pradesh minister for culture who has objected to a cultural academy being named after Alauddin Khan "" to him merely someone born in Bangladesh "" and asked why it could not be named after Tansen.

If this political idiom takes a deeper hold of the country, little of its cultural heritage will be left "" at least in the north "" for subsequent generations of Indians to savour.

The essence of a broadbased tradition is its richness, diversity and complexity. It is the furthest from a monolithic culture propagated by single issue fanatics. Academies can indeed be named after Tansen, as scores of them across the country already are.

Both are legendary standard bearers of the same tradition, ultimately intolerant of only one sacrilege, the false musical note.

Tansen was one of the navaratnas of Akbar's court whose music, legend has it, could physically light a fire with its intensity. Alauddin Khan was the court musician of the Raja of Maihar.

He came there after a long journey and the fact that Madhya Pradesh was able to give him a final home should be a matter of great pride to its citizens. He began his life's journey in the last century in what is now Bangladesh and gravitated to Calcutta. But unfortunately, to the city's discredit, he did not receive adequate recognition.

The story goes that the Raja of Maihar "" a great music lover who had a huge collection of musical instruments "" was looking for a resident musician and Alauddin Khan, looking for a patron and a haven, eventually came up before him.

The raja wanted to test the musician's prowess and asked him to play some of the instruments. Over one afternoon, Alauddin Khan played them one by one. The job was his but he accepted a salaried sinecure only reluctantly, because he needed to keep body and soul together.

Today, the memory of Alauddin Khan or Baba, as everyone fondly called him, is worn out and neglected. A recent visitor to Maihar recalls that even the signboard that the Madhya Pradesh government had put up outside his house, was hung upside down!

An annual concert used to be held in Maihar by his disciples (prominent among them being musicians like son Ali Akbar Khan and son-in-law Ravi Shankar) to keep alive his memory, but not anymore.

Baba put Maihar on the musical map of the country. He founded the Maihar gharana, such is the distinctive nature of the music he created and the number of musical stalwarts to emerge from among his disciples.

He himself took talim (became a disciple) from different gurus over time but in the end created his own music. It brought the khyal, as opposed to the dhrupad, style of rendering to instrumental music. The Maihar gharana was born within the tradition of the Rampur gharana, but went beyond it.

Aside of technicalities, Baba's music was marked by simplicity and melodiousness. If there was a popular revival of Hindustani classical music in the last half-century, then most of the credit for it goes to Baba among instrumentalists and Bade Gulam Ali Khan among singers.

Baba was an innovator too. One of his greatest innovation was the Maihar band, which combined Hindustani classical music with folk and western music and used a range of both Indian and western instruments from the flute to the clarinet and the sitar to the cello.

It all came about because, at the request of the raja, Baba adopted two dozen children, rendered orphans by an epidemic, taught them music and welded them into an orchestra so that they could earn a living.

The last time the band performed in Mumbai, its members represented the fourth generation of musicians who have carried on the tradition. Baba also innovated within the strict confines of classical music, creating several new ragas like Hemant and Bhuvaneshwari, which showed his powers of synthesis.

Incomparable as his music was, Baba is best remembered for the sort of person he was and the values he held dear. He was a simple man who was also a demanding teacher with a quick temper. A lot of his ire fell upon his own son Ali Akbar who, at one point, thought of running away from home.

As with most great classical musicians, his inspiration was primarily spiritual. He was a deeply religious man who transcended religious boundaries. In Maihar, he would climb a thousand steps every day to go up to the famous shrine of Sharada Devi, a manifestation of Durga, and play before the deity. He also offered namaz regularly.

Baba represented the oneness of India and was one of the greatest torchbearers of its classical traditions. To deny his Indianness and be ignorant of his art is like Barbarians sacking the library of Constantinople. It correctly shows up that mankind is ultimately divided not by religions but ignorance.