Song of real India
ANJANA RAJAN
| The classes and the masses meet in our films. From Begum Akhtar to M.S. Subbulakshmi, melody has known no barrier. |
A Classic is forever :Noted film director Muzaffar Ali (second left) with Jyoti Sabharwal (left), publisher Stellar, Prof. Rita Ganguly, musician, and Pawan Verma, Director General, ICCR, releasing the book ‘Ae Mohabbat… Reminiscing Begum Akhtar,’ in New Delhi.
When it comes to ghazal fans, there are those who swear by Begum Akhtar and then those who prefer the more modern version, as represented by, say, Pankaj Udhas, Hariharan and Ghulam Ali.
Over the decades, as melody and instrumentation embroidered the poetry, critics of the metamorphosing ghazal felt it was entering the realm of film music. And Begum Akhtar was hailed as the epitome and the bastion of classicism.
Indeed the divide between classical and ‘filmi’ music is quite entrenched, to the extent that when classical singers even sing playback for films, it is considered an event. But, as the recently released biography of Begum Akhtar, “Ae Mohabbat… Reminiscing Begum Akhtar,” penned by her disciple Rita Ganguly, shows, the Mallika-e-Ghazal herself spent a considerable part of her career as a film actress-singer as well as a theatre star.
Begum Akhtar was not the only singer of her time to blaze across the silver screen. M.S. Subbulakshmi not only starred in “Meera” in Tamil and in its Hindi remake “Bhakta Meera”, but also captured hearts in the title role of “Sakuntalai”, a Tamil film based on the story of Shakuntala, in which her co-star was the eminent Carnatic vocalist G.N. Balasubramaniam (see picture below). Her other films were “Sevasadanam” and “Savitri”
Another set of legends of classical music — vocalist Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar, violin maestro Mysore T. Chowdiah and mridangam vidwan Palghat Mani Iyer — acted in a film called “Vani”, recalls an old-timer.
“Begum and films”
Ganguly, who has been assiduously keeping the memory of her guru alive over 33 years — this event marks the 34th — promises that while this year her birth anniversary celebrations focused on the book release, next year the focus will be “Begum and films”. The process has already begun though.
Film personalities like Muzaffar Ali, Naseeruddin and Ratna Pathak Shah, Sushma Seth and others were present at the book launches in various cities.
From the days when singers feared they would lose their life as the air of their lungs would be sucked out by the recording machines of a studio, to today’s reality shows where youngsters across the country vie for recording contracts, India’s singing industry has come a long way.
In the book, brought out by Stellar Publishers, Ganguly relates with interesting and compassionate detail the journey of her guru from being the daughter of a ‘respectable’ Saiyyad family — whose love for music so distressed her mother — to Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, and then to Begum Akhtar.
Akhtari Bai signed a contract with Corinthian Theatre for Rs.300 a month. She made her theatre debut with “Nai Dulhan”, a new production of the well known scriptwriter Agha Munshi. The play had music composed by Jhande Khan, who later entered the Bombay film industry.
Renowned for having composed 62 completely distinct songs in a single raga — Bhairavi — he was later famous for his hit songs for the film “Chitralekha” based on the novel by Bhagwati Charan Verma.
It was surely the distilled classical training that produced such masters and their masterpieces. The song Akhtari Bai opened with in that first play was in Soheeni, a dawn melody, a raga she had learnt under Ata Khan’s rigorous methodology.
Akhtari Bai’s first film, “Ek Din Ka Badshah”, was directed by Tahir Hussain. She sang seven songs in the film. Her other films included “Ameena”, “Mumtaz Begum”, “Roop Kumari”, “Jawani Ka Nasha”, “Naseeb Ka Chakkar “and “Anaarbala”, all made, the book tells us, between 1934 and 1940 by East India Films of Calcutta. Her last film was “Roti”.
While the films of yesteryear did not require the singers to materially change their musical style, film music today is a genre of its own.
The ‘purists’ feel the form gets diluted in the popular medium. “I don’t think so,” says Ganguly. “One has to understand, anything that has reached a classical status cannot be harmed by a little experimentation. The ghazals which Ammi sang as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi and what she sang in the 1960s were different. A healthy change is very important in a classical form.”
Healthy change
The very fact that youngsters are singing ghazals today, she points out, shows this healthy change. “We often make the mistake that something classical has to be very difficult,” she remarks. “Something which has rules, which has a science, which has seen the test of time — it is classical.”
Therefore, she concludes, “Any classical form is in no danger whatsoever from any experiment.” Besides, the oral tradition which is a part of Indian culture ensures that things change even as they are preserved. “That’s how our Vedas survived.”
And if audiences can’t recognise a thumri but can sway to the same song when Madhuri Dixit skips along with it, so be it. “There is no need to tell them, if they are liking it, that it is a thumri or a ghazal. Why should they know it?”
In tune with tradition, Rita Ganguly too appeared in Pradeep Sarkar’s “Parineeta”. But her parting anecdote somehow brings the divide back into focus.
Once, recounts Ganguly, she performed in Bihar. The audience was 35,000-strong. To ‘balance’ the effect of classical music, the organisers had invited a film band to perform too! “I was about to leave. But my musicians said, at least sing for a while. We will be paid.” So she relented. But the moment she began singing, the crowd was in raptures, remembering an old album of hers featuring thumris and dadras and making requests. “I thought they were hooting, but they were not. I was so happy. You see, this TV and all is available only in a few metros.”
Welcome, then, to the melody of real India.
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