Pandit Pannalal Ghosh and Asad Amanat Ali Khan
Tonight the Washerman’s Dog celebrates one year on
the mystical musical blogroll of life!
The past twelve months have
been a total blast. My musical world has grown and I’ve made lots of new
friends around the world. And as with
most journeys in life it isn’t long into the trip before you discover how
little you DON’T know about music. I’ve been amazed at the depth of knowledge
(not to mention record collections) of other bloggers and fans of the Washerman’s Dog.
Over 186 posts the music of
Pakistan and India has been the most widely and regularly appreciated. And that
is where the Washerman’s Dog has
spent most of the year. The number one
most popular post was the collection of ghazals
by Ustad Amanat Ali Khan.
But in the top ten also are some
classic R&B, African selections and good old American blues. My few postings of gospel music have also
been unexpectedly popular as has some jazz.
Thanks to all those who drop by regularly for a chat. Thank you for
your comments and kind words and even corrections!
To celebrate the Washerman’s Dog presents two personal
favorites.
First, the music of the son
of Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, Asad Amanat
Ali Khan. Live vol 1 was a cassette left by a friend on his bedside
table. He was working for a short while
with an aid agency in Peshawar. He had spent some time camping out on the floor
of my house in Rawalpindi over the previous 12 months and I suppose it was his
way of saying thank you.
There is so much to love
about the music on this tape. The selection of songs is outstanding. Asad opens with a barnstorming piece of Sufi poetry by Ghulam Farid (1845-1901), Punjab’s great mystical poet. The song Umaran Lagiyan Paba Par runs for 18
minutes, is sung in Punjabi and has to be one of the finest vocal performances
Asad or any contemporary Pakistani singer has ever produced. A mad tabla keeps
biting at the singer’s heels never letting him slacken the passion, rather
chasing his voice to the very peak of pleading, demanding ecstasy. As honest
and brutal as John Donne. For this song alone the tape is worth your
time.
Asad cools off with a
gorgeous, gentle ghazal Meri dastaan-e-hasrat which while as
long and as searching as the opening track, travels a much more subdued path.
Asad’s phrasing is nearly jazz like. His singing as farouche to the same degree
as it was bolshy on the opening track.
A bit of fun ensues next
with a nice boppish ditty called Zara
Zara in which Asad takes his audience on a mini tour of the world. This is
followed next by two wonderful love poems Mein
tujhe dil se pyar karta hun and Tum
ne mujhe kho diya. In the first he declares his deep love and in the second
he regrets that it was she who lost him.
Back to Punjabi for a song
whose title appears to have been left
off the cassette cover. And finally, the concert closes and the Volume 1
end prematurely mid-stream during another lovely Urdu ghazal, Hoton Pe Kuch Un ke
Mera.
Unlike so many ‘live’ recordings with canned applause and
‘wah wahs’ from the audience, the banter between Asad and his accompanists and
the audience is spontaneous and heart felt.
He gracefully and with humor deflects the repeated requests for him to
sing his father’s most popular song, Inshaji
Utho.
The second selection is by
the ultimate master of the bansuri
(bamboo flute) Pandit Pannalal Ghosh. I
first began listening to this record when I was probably less than 10 years
old. My father bought it in Civil Lines, Allahabad. We played it a lot at home
and is the reason why my favorite Hindustani classical instrument is the bansuri.
Born in Barisal, East Bengal (now Bangladesh) on July 31, 1911, Amulya Jyoti (nicknamed Pannalal)
Ghosh was a child prodigy. He
inherited his love of music and the bamboo flute (bansuri) from his
grandfather, Hari Kumar Ghosh who
played sitar, tabla, and pakhawaj and learned sitar from his
father, Akshay Kumar Ghosh. He also
learned music from his maternal uncle, Bhavaranjan
Mazumdar who was a vocalist. The family first lived in the village of
Amarnathganj and later moved to the town of Fatehpur.
Two apocryphal incidents happened to young Pannalal which had an influential bearing on his later life. First,
at age 9 while looking for a stick, Pannalal
found a flute floating in the river. He retrieved the instrument and so began
his lifelong relationship with the bansuri. Two years later at age 11 Pannalal met a sadhu who held both a
conch and a flute. The sadhu asked Pannalal if he could play the flute, and
young Pannalal obliged. The sadhu
gave him the flute and told the boy that music would be his salvation.
And indeed, it was so.
By 1939 Pannalal,
who was already playing sitar, began to focus his attention on bansuri.
Economic necessity drove him into performing music for the silent films in
Calcutta. At an All India music competition he met music director and composer Anil Biswas and began to play in his
musical productions. It was during one such production when Anil Biswas was directing music for a
dramatization of a work by the renowned poet Kazi Nazrul Islam that Pannalal decided that he needed a bigger flute who's pitch and
sonority would be more appropriate for both classical and light music. He met
an old Muslim toy vendor who was also proficient in making flutes. With his
help Pannalal experimented with
various materials including metal and other types of wood, but decided bamboo
was still the most suitable medium for a larger instrument. He finally settled
on a bansuri which was thirty two inches long, with a sa (tonic) at kali doe
(the second black key on the old harmonium scale). As a flute of this size was
hitherto unknown, a rumor arose that Pannalal
had had surgery to cut the webbing between his fingers to facilitate the large
span required to cover the finger holes of the instrument. Of course, he had no
such surgery, but through dedicated riyaz (practice), Pannalal invented and perfected the technique to play the large
instrument. At this time he would get his bamboo to make flutes from discarded
packing materials found at Diamond Harbor, the large port of Calcutta.
Deforestation had not yet consumed the forest around Calcutta, and the bamboo
was believed to have grown close to the city itself. He practiced hard and
perfected the technique of vocal music on flute. At this time he realized the
need for meend from madhyama swar to nishad or dhaivat shrutis
in ragas like Bihag, Yaman, Bageshree and many others. He experimented and
invented the seventh hole of madhyama.
(http://adagio.calarts.edu/~bansuri/pannalal.html)
Pannalal Ghosh is credited with elevating the bansuri, an instrument mainly associated
with folk and devotional music in India to a serious classical instrument. As
such he is the guru of such better known contemporary players such as Hariprasad Chaurasia.
If you find Indian classical
music somehow ‘hard’ to get into. Or you simply need help relaxing at the end
of a long week, listen to Pannalal.
All will become clear!
Track Listing:
Asad Amanat Ali Khan
Live Vol 1
01.
Umaran Lagiyan Paba Par
02.
Meri Dastaan-e-Hasrat
03.
Zara Zara
04.
Mein Tujhe Dil Se Pyar Karta Hun
05.
Tum ne Mujhe Kho Diya
06.
Punjabi geet
07.
Hoton pe Kuch Un Ke Mera
Listen here. (These are unusually large files. Apologies. Quality is
high.)
Track Listing:
Pannalal Ghosh
01.
Raga Yaman
02. Raga Shri
