8/3/2019 Unsung Maestro

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/unsung-maestro 1/1

ur aperrormmg artiste,canbestbe

described as a 'musicians' musician'.A^a ll- kn ow n poet-writer analyses Pandit

Arolkar's signal but ittle know n

contribution toHindustani music.

HE man is frail, almostfragile, and he is approaching the

age of80. He is lean and he walkswith a slight stoop. Thebald domeof hishead seems attached to his

body like thegourd of atanpurais attached to the body of theinstrument. I have always imagin-ed him as a walking tanpura eversince I first met mm. Of course, 1

know thedifference. Thehead of atanpura always rests down and the

I amdescribing has always

his ownhead high.Here is a man whocould easily

have been an ascetic wanderer, a

mendicant sanyasi, a monk in

some desolate monastery, ayogi inpeaceful obscurity. Near enough.Though this man ives in amodest,first-floor flat in middle-classMaharashtrian Shivajt Park in

Bombay, he is essentially arecluse. A bachelor who has

always lived byhimself, hismove-ments are now restricted by ageand health. But a few people visithim regularly as they have donefor more than three decades.

One evening, 35years ago, my

friend Bandu Waze took me to

meet one of his close acquaintan-

ces who, like MrWaze then, was a'spiritual seeker*. That man, littleknown outside a tiny circle of

music lovers at that time, turnedout to be Sharadchandra Arolkar. Iwas 16then and I hadbeen listen-ing to classical music since the ageof three or so. But I had neverheard ofPandit Arolkar.

In Baroda, where I was bornand raised, Ust&d Faiyaz K han of

the Agra gharnna was hemusici-an laureate and in Bombay, whereI hadmoved afterwards, Atrauli-Jaipur-Kolhapur was the populargharana, followed by Kirana.Bade Ghulam AliKhan of Patialaand Amir Khan of Indore werealso extremely popular. Last butnot theleast, was the unconventio-

nal Kumar Gandharva who hadalready, created, a cult followingfor hiskind ofvocal music.

Given this musical scene, who

was Pandit Arolkar andwhere washe? At that time he was nowhereand in that sense he is nowhereeven today. There is not a singlecommercially recorded disc ofPan-dit Arolkar; nor is there a singlecassette recording of his, listed by

any recording company. You may

find some Arolkar in the badlykept^ archives of the All-IndiaRadio and perhaps the SangeetNatak Akademi. The N ationalCen-tre for the Performing Arts has an

archival recording of Pandit Arol-kar. But that is all — all there isfor future students of Indian musicto go by. Nownearing 80,PanditArolkar is hardly likely to leavebehind a more substantial legacyby way of recorded music. That isthe tragedy. Thus, ironically, I am

writing about a man who is alegend in his ifetime. Yes, Sharad-chandra Arolkar is that — with a

vengeance.

Pandit Arolkar is not a perform-ing artiste. That ugly term, characte-ristic both of a decadent sensateculture of feudal aristocrats andtheir industrial agesuccessors of a

consumerist type, does not, thankGod, apply to him. He is a greatsinger, but not a rare and expen-sive seal balancing a ball on hisnose or alion sitting on a stool in

the arena of a circus. Hismusicalskills, his performing ability, ancThis musical knowledge, that is his

ability to illuminate theconceptualstructure underlying Indian classi-cal music, were never availableon

tap throughout his remarkablecareer.

\

Pandit Arolkar; "T he greates t philosopher ofIndian music in this century"

UN SUNG MAESTRO

ry commonly known as 'perform-ing artiste' wasvery slow to dawnupon me. As a poet, I should haveseen it as themost obvious parallelto what is known as 'the poets

1

poet'. Pandit Arolkar wassimply a

musicians' musician.

But that leaves us nowhere.What is it that makes a musicianspecial to other musicians? Is itsome unique skill? Is it virtuosity?Is it an ability to give an insightinto the very nature of a musicaltradition? Is it an overall quality,an ambience, thepresence ofsomecharacteristic ethos in musicalcompositions?

If we consider the lore that isusually presented instead of a sys-

tematic history of Indian music,

we get twokinds of images of themusician. One s themusician as a

ARTISTS ONARTISTS

Pandit Arolkar is a recluse. He

performs and teaches music onlyso that he canmeet hisbasic needswhich are few considering—Iris"spartan life-style. He is the great-est philosopher of Indian musicthis century has produced in my

personal opinion and it is a shamethat his exposition of the spiritualand aesthetic tradition of Indianclassical music is not even record-ed forposterity yet.

There was a time when, naively,I thought that a singer like Pandit

Arolkar wasobliged to outperforma Bade Ghulam A li,a KesarbaiKer-kar, a Bhimsen Joshi, an AmirKhan, or for that matter, a KumarGandharva, in order to prove hisworth as a classical singer. Now> I

know better.

THE realisation that sin-

gers like Pandit Arolkar were notonly rare butalso not in thecatego-

hero. This is the adventurous per-

forming artiste whoacquires his

repertoire of skills from a succes-sion of gurus, each one greaterthan theprevious one, wins sing-ing contests defeating acknowledg-ed maestros of other gharanas,and eventually becomes a kind ofmusical royalty by himself. Thereare many variations on this broadgeneral theme. But the musician-hero's tales of conquests, detailsof thegifts and iches won by him,his rising stock among thewealthi-

est and the most powerful patronsin India, hiseccentricities and howthe whole world notonly toleratesbut loves them, etc, are allunmista-kable ingredients of the musician-hero's myth. In complete contrastto this musician-hero, wehave themusician fakir: Other variations on

this same theme are the musician-yogi, the musician -siddha, the

musician-Bodhisattva, the

musician-as-an-accursod-gandharv

— # By D ii ip Chitre §—

a, etc. Here the musician is not aperforming artist setting out todefeat other musicians at musicalcontests andtournaments andfinal-ly emerging as the all-conqueringmusical hero. Here he is the quin-tessential spiritual seeker, theasce-tic and the mendicant, themysticand the sadhaka. Neither his

means nor his ends aresecular or

material or sensory or objective.His entire quest is spiritual andmusic for him is either themysteryitself or a means of solving the

mystery that is brahman, orAbso-lute Being. The musician-hero is

like the king and the musician-fakir is like thesage. Onerules the

world; theother dwells in thefore-st among nature's mysteries and

understands itsinnermost secrets.Pandit Arolkar is a rare pheno-

menon inour midst because he s a

true-to-type traditional musician-fakir or musician-sadhaka.He is

not thecompetitive hero-musicianwho must prove hisworth, concertafter concert. One of his two

gurus, Krishnarao Shankar Pandit,was the liCTO^nrKstcTaTr̂ tYpe. In

him, the aggressive aspect of

Gwalior gayaki, thedisplay of all-round musical virtuosity, over-shadowed allelse. 'Panditji' as hewas known to us, had a leonine per-

sonality. He was a tall, handsomeman with a charismatic presence.Brought up in the tradition of

north Indian court musicians, heknew how to capture an audience

and hold it by the scruff of theneck till the end of a concert.

Pandit Arolkar's other guru was

Krishnarao's uncle, Eknath Pan-

dit. Eknath Pandit was a beenkaror veena player and one of the

descriptions of Gwalior gayaki is

that it is a been-ang gayaki. Anotherelder musician influencing PanditArolkar's concept of Hindustaniclassical music was again a

'beenkar', Krishnarao Muley, the

author of an excellent treatise onIndian music in Marathi. In fact,while Pandit Arolkar's relation-ship with his two veena-playermentors seems tohave been extre-mely rewarding in terms of the

ideas and insights he developed,there always seems to have beensome conflict and tension betweenPandit Arolkar and KrishnaraoShankar Pandit.

Thirty-five years ago, when I

first met him, Pandit Arolkar wasjust recovering from a serious, crip-pling illness. Then, as now, he liv-ed alone in his small, bachelor'sflat at Shivaji Park inBombay. He

was in hisearly 40sthen. Helook-ed just as fragile as he does now.

Even his voice, though musical,

was very frail. One could not ima-gine himbeing able to sing vigo-rously for three or four hours, asstamina is a prerequisite of any

public performance of khayal.Ofcourse, myimpression waswrong.Although still recovering from a

serious illness, Pandit Arolkar was

already back to hisdemandingear-

ly morning" practice sessions.Sub-

sequently, I had the privilege oflistening to himpractising early in

the morning. Once, I recall goingto his flat before five o'clock in

the morning and being treated to

rare compositions in Bhairov-Lalit, Lalit-Bahar, Bhairav-Bakaras well asclassic ones inTodL Butthat wasonly after Pandit Arolkarhad accepted me as a sensitive, sin-

cere, andserious listener ofmusic.Around this time, the now fam-

ous painter Mohan Samani(known to hisfriends asDaji) starr-ed visiting Pandit Arolkar. DajiSamant, other than being a greatpainter, is also an excellent cookand a good sarangi player. Samantused to claim that thesarangi was

a better musical instrument thanthe human voice and I waswitnessto anacrimonious argument betwe-

en Daji Samant and Pandit Arol-kar on this subject which ended,luckily, when Pandit Arolkar sanga well-known bandish in Yamanchallenging Samant to reproducejust itsmukhra or refrain. Samanttried every evening for one wholeweek before admitting defeat. It

was a silly contest except for thefact that Pandit Arolkar never losthis cool andgave us,afterwards, afantastic feast of compositions in

Yaman — usually one of the firstraags anystudent of north Indianclassical music learns. Because of

its familiarity, Yaman seems asimple raag. The untrained liste-ner isusually impressed byunfami-

liar orexotic raags, thinking that amusician's range and repertoire is

wider and icher themore unfamili-ar theraags hepresents. This is amisconception encouraged by

certain latter-day gharanas that do,

not have access to the deeperresources of the tradition. Mosttraditional cheezas come in theform ofprecise words set topreci-se music handed down through anuncompromising oral tradition. An

individual singer is expected to

meditate and improvise upon thetraditional cheez, accepting its

core structure as a givenprogramme.

In fact, khayal is a kind ofmusi-cal discourse on the text of the

cheez. It was Pandit Arolkar who

made me aware of the fact thatraags areonly broad categories for

understanding types of musicalstructure. The cheez demolishesthe popular myth that each raag is

designed to produce a specificrasa oremotion ormood. Ineveryraag there arecheezas conveyinga vast andsubtle variety of emo-tions andmoods. It is not only the

notes of music butalso the tempothat affects our feelings; and thewords that aresung guide the sin-

ger and the listener into specificareas of meaning that are transfor-med into music.

Khayal is poetry projected as a

spontaneous musical form. In Pan-dit Arolkar's own picturesquephrase, it is fluid sculpture'. Liste-ning to Pandit Arolkar's presenta-tion of any khayal, onemarvels at

the absolute artistic precision andeconomy of form achieved by the

singer. Pandit Arolkar takes the

utmost care to render the originalpoem with fidelity andsensitivityto its verbal structure and mea-ning. He-draws his musical formout of the given bandish. If, for

instance, he is singing a Sadarangcomposition addressed toMoham-mad Shah Rangila, he takes oneback into the entire 18th centuryethos of the original presentation.He does notlimit this approach tokhayal alone. I have been thrilledto discover the rippling inner core

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of the meeting of a thumri, a

ghazal,or a tappa rendered by Pan-dit Arolkar. Heunravels thenuan-ces ofseemingly simple words and

phrases and makes then) focalpoints of musical progression. It

was from beenkar KrishnaraoMuley, I believe, that Pandit Arol-kar got an idea of thebandishes of

the thumris sung byChunna — thewife of beenkar Bande Ali.PanditArolkar recreated these thumrisso

effectively that listening to them I

almost thought that he had learntthem from Chunna herself. If not,I thought, he hadpersonally heardher perform. Pandit Arolkar has

this amazing ability to restoreoriginal khoyals, tappas, thumris,taranas, bhajans by removingfrom their contemporary versionsevery trace of corruption and dis-

seen at different levels: His treat-ment of any well-known cheez,tappa, thumri or bhajan revealshow subtly anddifferently henuan-ces the familiar composition byquickening or slowing its flowingform; theoriginal tar anas cdmpos-ed by him show howimaginative-ly he deals with themost abstract,non-representational and mercuri-al genres ofvocal music.

Over theyears, Pandit Arolkarhas trained a few disciples and

today Sharad Sathe and NeelaBhagwat provide impressive proofof Arolkar's effectiveness as ateacher. Over theyears, too,Arol-kar has performed publicly as amusician, giving regular concertson the All-India Radio and a few

other performances before selectaudiences. He has been recorded

tortiontMt Iris unerring sensei of for their archives ~by the Sangeettraditional stylistic values refusesto tolerate. His research intobandishesisrigorous andmethodi-cal, meticulous and ogical, percep-tive andartistically sensitive.

This is possible because PanditArolkar is one of the finest origi-nal composers of music of our

Natak Akademi and the NationalCentre for the Performing Arts.And yet, somehow, one has he fee-

ling that Arolkar's greatness couldnot beadequately influential in ourtimes because ours is not the age

in which musician-sanyasis areconsidered theequals, if notsuper-

time. Hisgenius as a composer is iors, ofmusician-kings.