Subhra Majumdar traces the decline of the night-long classical music concert
Unsung and unseen, a venerable, home-grown musical tradition has died out on us. The all-night Hindustani classical music concert, once an essential part of the winter cultural season, is now all but gone.
Delhi’s Shankarlal Sangeet Sammelan used to be an all-nighter until the 1960s, but ends by midnight now; as does the Swami Haridas Tansen Nritya Mahotsav, while the Vishnu Digambar Jayanti Music Festival finishes even earlier by 10 pm.
In Gwalior, the Tansen Sangeet Samaroh now continues all-night only on the last night, rues veteran music critic Ravindra Mishra. “Among the only ones that continue to be all night,” he says, “are the Dover Lane Music Conference in Kolkata, the Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan in Jalandhar, the Sankat Mochan Music Festival in Varanasi and the Sawai Gandharva festival in Pune.
“The Saptak Music Festival in Ahmedabad also goes on into the wee hours of the morning,” says Sunita Budhiraja, a Delhi-based rasika. This festival is also one of the very few that, as in the past, begin in the morning with a music competition for young artists, with the winners getting free entry to the evening concerts by senior artists.
For music rasikas of a certain generation, all-night music performances were the very apogee of the listening experience — hearing at first-hand singers of the calibre of Bhimsen Joshi or Jasraj bringing in the dawn with Bhairav or some other morning raga, and then lingering over steaming cups of tea discussing the high points of the rendition. “Going to an all-night session used to be a family outing,” says Rama Sundar, a disciple of Tejpal Singh. “Children were taken along and slept through the concerts on parents’ laps.
It happens now as well, says Purnima Beri, general secretary of the Shree Baba Harivallabh Sangeet Mahasabha, which organises the 136-year-old music festival. “We have people coming in from Hoshiarpur and smaller towns, who bring along rajais, sit on the gaddas we lay out and listen through the night. A few years ago we thought we’d limit the performances to 2 am, but there were loud protests from everyone.”
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But that’s Jallandhar; in Delhi, unfortunately, there are few takers for all-night concerts. Some years ago, the organisers of the six-decade-old Digambar Jayanti Festival arranged buses for the late-night audience. But they found so few takers that after the first day of the three-day festival, they stopped the service.
The reasons for the decline of the all-night concert are evident.
“The main problem is security. After the 1984 Sikh riots, all-night concerts have not been granted permission by the police. Halls do not take bookings beyond 10 o’clock,” says Mallika Banerjee, faculty at the School of Performing and Visual Arts at Indira Gandhi National Open University. “Public functions are not permitted to go on night long. The restrictions apply even for outdoor venues,” echoes Mannu Kohli, general manager, Music Today. Uma Sharma, veteran Kathak dancer and one of the organisers of the Swami Haridas Mahotsav, says the problem is the lack of corporate sponsors, which limits the choice of artists and the publicity to draw people in.
Shujoy, a student in Ahmedabad, says that there’s so much music to choose from these days, including live sessions on YouTube, that it no longer makes sense to sit through a night-long session. For office-goers, mid-week concerts — most of the festivals are held to mark the death or birth anniversary of an ustad — are difficult to attend.
The end of all-night mehfils has also affected the music sung/played. As the singing of ragas is based on praharas, late-night ragas seldom form part of repertoires these days. Instead, early evening ragas such as the Puriyas and Yamans, Bihaag, Des, and their admixtures have flourished. Recalls Anjali Bhattacharya, a keen concert-goer, “How often does one hear a Darbari or Malkauns any more [meant to be heard after midnight]?”
With the dying out of all-night mehfils has also gone the long, leisurely explications of ragas. “These days each performance lasts for at most an hour. Earlier they would go on for three to four hours as singers drew out each nuance in their exposition,” says Mishra.
