Of Gharanas - Harsh
As someone who has listened to concerts for some time and has dealt with artist bios, and i am curious to learn about the concept of gharanas.
A gharana to my understanding is a linkage by lineage or style of music that a group of musicians belonging to a particular gharana practice.
However most gharanas have their identities inextricably linked with geographies - Gwalior Gharana, Jaipur Gharana, Banaras Gharana and Agra Gharana etc etc
I can comprehend this in the sense that in earlier times since commuting between regions was not prevelant and hence gharanas could find convenient identities and good differentation by geographic segmentation
However, now that artists have transcended geographical boundaries, what is the likely future of the whole conecpt of gharanas. What about artists who experiement and form newer gharanas of their own.
and i dont quite comprehend the gharana system as would be evident by my ramblings so far?
A gharana to my understanding is a linkage by lineage or style of music that a group of musicians belonging to a particular gharana practice.
However most gharanas have their identities inextricably linked with geographies - Gwalior Gharana, Jaipur Gharana, Banaras Gharana and Agra Gharana etc etc
I can comprehend this in the sense that in earlier times since commuting between regions was not prevelant and hence gharanas could find convenient identities and good differentation by geographic segmentation
However, now that artists have transcended geographical boundaries, what is the likely future of the whole conecpt of gharanas. What about artists who experiement and form newer gharanas of their own.
and i dont quite comprehend the gharana system as would be evident by my ramblings so far?
posted by SPICMACAYITE at
2:38 AM
3 Comments:
Dear Harsh,
The gharana system was a direct result of music being patronised in the courts of medival India. You would notice that all the gharanas have the name of erstwhile princely kingdoms. Gwalior, Jaipur, Darbhanga, Patiala, they were all princely kingdoms.
The second reason is the guru-shishya parampara. Since a student learnt, more or less, only from one guru, his style was invariably very similar to his guru's.
The gharana system has collapsed today for many reasons. One is that with technology, exposure to different styles has increased.
Secondly, people are much less averse to incorporating different styles into their music. Someone like Pt.Bhimsen Joshi for e.g. has traces of many different gharans in his sangeet, though he is primarily from the kirana gharana.
The efforts of people like Dr.Bhatkande and D.V.Paluskar in popularising music amongst the middle class and taking it out of the courts are also noteworthy.
One of the reasons why the gharana system is receding in importance is that many ppl, like pt.Kumar Gandhrva, found the gharana system to be extremely rigid and dogmatic.
I'd recommend Veena Shasrabuddhe's lectures on Hindustani music. She does deal with the gharana system in one of the lectures.
By
Karthik Rao Cavale, at 1:31 AM
Harsh, I am posting an excerpt from a long article I have written recently...
For starters, a musical tradition is not generally called a gharana unless it exists for at least three generations. This presupposes the necessity of producing at least three able artists, one for each generation – the founder, his disciple and the disciple’s disciple. From the musical point of view it seems important to notice two characteristics of the gharana system as outlined by Pt. Vamanrao Deshpande in his monumental work Indian Musical Traditions:
1. Each gharana has an artistic discipline of its own in addition to the common musical discipline followed by all gharanas.
2. Each gharana takes its origin from the quality of voice production of its founder.
It is worthwhile to recall at this point that swara and laya were described as being the two pillars of Hindustani music earlier on. The treatment meted out to these two pillars and the combination produced thereof is one way to understand the style of a particular gharana. However, many more elements could be added to this list to help us analyze the system of gharanas. In her seminal work titled Khayal, Bonnie Wade has enumerated some of them:
1. Preference with respect to ragas.
2. Preference with respect to talas.
3. Preference with respect to compositions.
4. Preference with respect to performance tempo and its acceleration.
5. Preference with respect to improvisatory movements and types of articulation.
6. Structure of and strategies adopted to portray slow, medium and fast tempo compositions.
However, in no way should this list be considered exhaustive simply because it is impossible to arrive at a general theory with respect to gharanas and their stylistic affiliations. On the basis of the discussion up till now, let us take a couple of gharanas and talk about their birth and evolution, stylistic perspectives and peculiarities to illustrate this point further. Gwalior is commonly accepted as being the first gharana in khayal gayaki and the names of Ust. Nathan Khan Peer Bakhsh, Ust. Bade Mohammad Khan and the three famous brothers Ust. Haddu Khan, Ust. Hassu Khan and Ust. Nathu Khan are taken with reverence for having sculpted this style. For Pt. Vamanrao Deshpande, the hallmark of this style is its “lucidity and simplicity depicting a simple fusion of swara and laya.” The khayal gayaki of the gharana is described as being ashtang and it is estimated to have moved at madhya laya adorned with linear laraazdaar and halaq taans studded with gamaks owing to its dhrupad influence. The first evidence of this gayaki is to be found in the short recordings of Ust. Rahmat Khan (son of Ust. Haddu Khan, d. 1922) which portray a kind of voice throw which is probably impossible to imitate! It is also commonly accepted that Ust. Rahmat Khan’s style influenced many artists of his generation including Ust. Abdul Karim Khan (founder of Kirana gayaki, 1872-1937) and Ust. Alladiya Khan (founder of Jaipur-Atrauli gayaki, 1855-1946). Pt. Madhusudan Kanetkar told me something very incisive in this regard. Asked about the style of his contemporary Ust. Abdul Karim Khan, Ust. Alladiya Khan is reported to have said: “Rahmat Khan ke baad Abdul Karim Khan jaisa sureela gavaiya nahin hua!” Not only does this show a high regard for Ust. Abdul Karim Khan, it is a reflection of how high the Ustad held the gayaki of Ust. Rahmat Khan (negating rumours that he was unhappy with his son Ust. Manji Khan for having been influenced by Ust. Rahmat Khan’s gayaki). In terms of preferences, the gharana is said to ‘specialize’ in familiar ragas like Alhaiya Bilaval, Yaman, Bhairav, Multani, Shree, Hameer, Basant etc. and make use of talas like Tilwada, Ektaal, Jhoomra, Ada-Chautaal and Teentaal. The bandishes (mostly traditional ones) are held in high esteem in the gharana and are looked upon as a “tools for showing different shades of ragas,” according to Pt. Laxman Krishnarao Pandit.
Let us now turn our attention to the gayaki of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana which takes its inspiration from its founder, Ust Alladiya Khan. Pt. Vamanrao Deshpande describes the style of this gharana as one which “achieves a complex fusion of swara and laya such that its musical medium becomes laya-conditioned swara.” According to Pt. Rajshekhar Mansur, “there is no pause and leisurely development of notes in our gharana. Music is conceived to be a continuum with the various components of gayaki looked upon as a well-knit whole to be carried forward together.” The vakra taans employed by this gharana are truly its striking feature because they conjure images of a whirling spiral being extremely intricate in nature as well as movement. In terms of preferences, the gharana tends to use traditional bandishes and use them primarily as musical vehicles rather than consisting of literary element. The gharana shows clear and marked [preference for aprachalit (or achhob) ragas such as Nat Kamod, Raisa Kanhra, Adambari Kedar, Sampoorna Malkauns, Basanti Kedar, Sorath, Lachchhasaakh etc. and utilizes talas like Teentaal, Jhaptaal and Roopak since they have an even, regular flow which allow an intricate patterning of rhythm and melody.
However, such analysis, though useful for conceptual clarity, does not give an adequate view into the gayaki of the various gharanas. I believe that the only tool for acquiring a sense of the differences between gharanas is to listen to the available recordings of their accepted masters. For example, it is impossible to understand the variety and diversity within the Gwalior gharana without listening to the recordings of Ust. Rahmat Khan, Pt. Ramakrishnabua Vaze, Pt. Krishnarao Shankar Pandit, Pt. Rajabhaiya Poochhwale, Pt. Vinayakrao Patwardhan, Pt. Narayanrao Vyas, Pt. D. V. Paluskar and others. Similarly, Jaipur gayaki cannot be comprehended without paying close attention to the styles of Surshri Kesarbai Kerkar, Pt. Nivruttibua Sarnaik, Pt. Mallikarjun Mansur, Pt. Vamanrao Sadolikar, Smt. Laxmibai Jadhav, Smt. Mogubai Kurdikar and others. It is the empirical evidence gathered from such an exercise which could possibly grant a clearer understanding of the differing styles of the gharanas in khayal gayaki.
There exist quite a number of other gharanas in Hindustani music and I am going to name a few of them (along with the names of their founders) to give a glimpse of the total picture in terms of the social organization of khayal gayaki. The Agra gharana is said to be one of the oldest gharanas tracing its origins to Haji Sujan Khan. However, khayal gayaki was introduced into this gharana by Ust. Ghagge Khuda Bakhsh (who is supposed to have learnt from Ust. Nathan Khan Peer Bakhsh of the Gwalior gharana) and the style was made immensely popular by Aftab-e-Mousiqui Ust. Faiyaz Khan (1870-1950). The Kirana gharana existed as a gharana of instrumental music prior to the emergence of Ust. Abdul Karim Khan (1872-1937) and Ust. Abdul Wahid Khan (d. 1949) who transformed it into a khayal gharana. The Rampur-Sehaswan gharana traces its roots to Ust. Inayat Hussain Khan who learnt from Ust. Haddu Khan (1849-1919) but the style was popularized on the performance stage by Ust. Mushtaq Hussain Khan (1874-1964) and Ust. Nissar Hussain Khan (1912-93). The founders of the Kasur-Patiala gharana were Ust. Ali Bakhsh and Ust. Fateh Ali Khan but the style was made truly immortal by the legendary Ust. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (1902-68). Similarly, Ust. Chhajju Khan, Ust. Nazir Khan and Ust. Khadim Hussain Khan are credited as being the founders of the Bhendi Bazaar gharana but it was popularized by Ust. Aman Ali Khan and Smt. Anjanibai Malpekar (1883-1974). There also exist other gharanas such as Mewati gharana, Delhi gharana and Benares gharana but there does not exist enough historical information about their founders or peculiarities of style.
It needs to be kept in mind that even though gharanas are looked upon as a sort of “pedigree” (to use Daniel Neuman’s description) for a musician, it is common occurrence to find musicians who have learnt from a number of gharanas. What I am trying to emphasize is that gharanas are not watertight compartments and there has always existed a considerable amount of len-den between them. For example, Surshri Kesarbai Kerkar learnt from Ust. Abdul Karim Khan, Pt. Ramakrishnabua Vaze, Pt. Bhaskarbua Bakhle and sitar-nawaaz Ust. Barkatullah Khan before receiving a sustained taalim from Ust. Alladiya Khan. Ust. Mushtaq Hussain Khan is reputed to have said that “one never acquires art from one gharana alone; if one wants a variety of colours, one must learn many gurus.” However, this does not negate the importance of building a grounding and base in a particular gharana before moving to another and this is precisely the point which continues to be stressed upon by all the living greats.
At the same time, we have witnessed the emergence and rise of musicians who have broken down the (thin) boundaries between gharanas and their role cannot be stressed enough in the continuing evolution of khayal gayaki. It was perhaps befitting that Pt. Govindrao Tembe (1881-1955) described Pt. Kumar Gandharva (1924-92) as a “question mark” on the system of gharanas. Similarly, the style propagated by Ust. Amir Khan (1912-74) has held many vocalists under its spell for more than a couple of generations now. While an in-depth analysis of the styles of these two stalwarts would probably require a separate paper altogether, it is enough to state here that musicians like these have only strengthened the belief that “change is the only constant.”
Harsh, I hope this has been helpful to some extent. The geographical connotation of gharanas is related to the place where the founder came from and in some cases, the place where the practitioners of that gharana found patronage... so for example, Atrauli was the birth place of the ancestors of Ust. Alladiya Khan saheb but Jaipur was where they found patronage so the gharana is commonly known as Jaipur-Atrauli.
Regarding the point you make about the relavance of these geographical connotations of gharanas in the present context, I would say that they fulfill the function of acknowledgement... acknowledgement of the genesis of the tradition since antiquity and purity are two notions classical musicians constantly struggle to invoke for everything they do...
Now to respond to Karthik's comment. I do not think that the gharana system has collapsed... it continues to exist and will continue to do so simply because of the reason I invoked... antiquit and purity of tradition! It is not just contemporary performers who have learnt from many people and thus don't bear a distinct chhaap of any particular gharana... see my example of someone like Kesarbai and the quote of Ust. Mushtaq Hussain Khan...
The point is that in no way can the gharanas be conceived of as watertight compartments and they never have been simply because music is an abstract art form... and give and take is inevitable and unconsciously done! :-)
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Irfan, at 2:28 AM
Obviously, gharanas still exist. Nobody who listen to Ashwini Bhide would doubt the influence of Kishoritai's music on Ashwiniji's singing.
The whole point of the gharana system was to create some kind of distinct categories, and what I meant to say was that it might no longer be possible to categorise people in this manner.
Aarti Ankalikar, for e.g. has had the benefit of learning from Shri Vasantrao Deshpande of the Agra and Gwalior Gharanas, and then from Smt. Kishori Amonkar of the Jaipuri and Shri Dinakar Kaikini of the Gwalior styles. You wouldn't know which gharana to put her under! Same with Pandit Jitandra Abhisheki, or his disciple Smt. Subha Mudgal. Their sources are simply too diverse for such a classification to be possible.
Vocalists of the same style also, nowadays have very little in common. Compare the Paayalia Jhankaar More of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi with that of Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.
There will still be people who remain loyal to their own gharana, but the gharana system as a tool for classification of musicians might not be valid for too long in the future.
By
Karthik Rao Cavale, at 5:45 AM
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