In the Beginning was Dhrupad: Bahauddin Dagar

In the beginning was the vibration, which sounded AUM. The vibration was perceived by humans and internalised as anahata. Humanity heard and moved to and took life from the vibration.  They called this dhrupad and made it into an ornate and refined system of music. Dhrupad was music of the spirit. The inner music (anahata) made into outer music (ahata). 

Sounds of dhrupad were low and slow and deliberate. They were a means to glimpse and honor (darshan) the Unseen.  Emphasis was placed on producing and then surrendering to the vibrations, the only reality.

Humans are restless creatures. Vibrations, whether inner or outer, were forgotten and pushed aside for a less onerous enjoyment. Someone said, ‘Why shouldn’t we imagine more?’. Khyal was born.  For hundreds of years Dhrupad languished, listened to and performed in obscure corners.

One human who went by the name of  Baba Gopal Das and who was a Brahmin decided to change his external religion to Islam and name to Baba Imam Khan. Under his guidance the Dagarvani style of dhrupad rose to glory, delighting and bolstering the courts of Akbar the Great and myriad other princes and rajas across India. From Baba Imam Khan grew one of the mightiest musical families in the world, and the undisputed masters of Dhrupad. One could say the Dagars are indeed the saviours of dhrupad, this ancient form of devotional music with roots deep in Vedic times.

Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Indian Classical music and traces its origin to the chanting of vedic hymns and mantras. Though a highly developed classical art with a complex and elaborate grammar and aesthetics, it is also primarily a form of worship, in which offerings are made to the divine through sound or nāda. Dhrupad can be seen at different levels as a meditation, a mantric recitation, a worship , a yoga or tantra based on the knowledge of the nādis and chakras and also purely as a performing art portraying a universe of human emotions.

It is mainly a vocal tradition based on the practice of nāda yoga, but is also performed on instruments like the Rudra Veena and the Sursringār. For the past five centuries Dhrupad has mainly thrived under the patronage of Mughal and Rajput kings. The picture on the left shows Dhrupad singers Zākiruddin Khān, Allābande Khān, Ziāuddin Khān and Nasiruddin Khān  (clockwise from top left) the foremost Dhrupad singers in the beginning of the twentieth century. The descendants of Zakiruddin Khan and Allabande Khan adopted the name of the genre (The Ḍāgar Bānī of Dhrupad) as their family name and acquired renown as the Dagar brothers

They kept this art alive in the difficult period after 1947 when it lost the patronage of the royal courts. Zakiruddin and Allabande Khan were brothers and disciples of their granduncle Baba Behram Khan, and served respectively in the royal courts of Udaipur and Alwar. They were the foremost Dhrupad singers of their times (late nineteenth and early twentieth century) and were greatly respected for their singing and erudition. Their performances are still remembered with awe and reverence.

Although Dhrupad originated in the chanting of vedic hymns and mantras, it gradually evolved into an independent art form with its own complex grammar. Dhrupad was originally sung in temples and later thrived under the patronage of Mughal and Rajput kings. Fundamental to Dhrupad singing is the practice of Nāda Yoga, in which, through various yogic practices, the singer develops the inner resonance of the body, and can make the sound resonate and flow freely through the entire region from navel to head. This enables the singer to produce a vast palette of subtle tone colours and microtonal shades. The processes of Udātta, Anudātta and Svarita play the same fundamental role in Dhrupad singing as in Vedic recitation. A Dhrupad performance starts with the alāp which is a slow and elaborate development of a Rāga (mode) using free flowing melodic patterns. The elaboration of Dhrupad alāp is done using the syllables of a mantric phrase 'om antaran twam, taran taaran twam, ananta hari narayan om' . The phrases of Dhrupad alāpa are very slow and contemplative in the beginning, but the tempo increases in stages, and in the faster passages playful and vigorous ornaments predominate.

Dhrupad Alap is followed by the singing of a composition with rhythmic improvisation, to the accompaniment of a barrel drum called the pakhawaj (ancestor of the tabla). The Tālas or cycles of beats commonly used are Choutāla (12 beats), Dhamāra (14 beats), Jhaptāla (10beats), Sūltāla (10beats), Tīvrā (7 beats). In the videos on this page can be heard examples of Chowtal and Dhamar. Dhrupad portrays a vast range of human emotions: serenity, compassion, sensuality, pathos, strangeness, anger and heroism and subtle shades of them all. In Dhrupad of the Dagar tradition the notes are not treated as fixed points, but as fluid entities with infinite microtonal shades.The music is deeply spiritual and meditative. The Dagar style of Dhrupad is defined by 52 musical concepts or Arkaans (12 basic alankaras and 40 more). These include concepts like Udātta, Anudātta, Svarita, Sapta Gupta, Sapta Prakata, Sakārī etc. which have all but disappeared from Indian classical music and even from Dhrupad . In the various audio/video files on this site can be heard all these concepts as they are used in practice in Dhrupad performance. (http://www.dhrupad.info)

Tonight’s selection is truly unspeakably beautiful music. A scion of the Dagar dynasty, Bahauddin Dagar, is the son of the great Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, and the only living and active proponent of the rudra veena the string instrument that is primary instrument of Dhrupad.

The Rudra Veena is an instrument that is rarely heard on the concert stage now, although just two centuries ago it reigned surpreme, and was regarded as the king of all instruments. It has a hollow tubular body called the dandi, on which are placed 24 frets, usually glued to the tube with beewax and resin, although some players also use frets tied to the dandi as in the sitar. There are four main playing strings and three to four drone strings. Attached to the tubular dandi are two hollow resonators made of dried and seasoned pumpkins.

Traditionally the veena was played with the player sitting in the vajrasana posture with his legs folded under him, and one of the two gourds placed on the left shoulder. Ustad Asad Ali Khan and Ustad Shamsuddin Faridi Desai are the only reputed players of the traditional veena in India today.

 Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar,  son of Ustad Ziauddin Khan of Udaipur, developed a large and heavy veena that he played in a different posture because it was simply too heavy to be played in the traditional manner. His son Bahauddin Dagar is the sole performer today who plays on this variant of the instrument.  

The Rudra Veena is the ideal instrument for Dhrupad because its sound has the same richness of overtones that the voice acquires with the practice of Nada Yoga. The instrument, especially in the traditional posture, also responds to the flow of prana or vital breath.

The Rudra Veena is meant for a music that is perhaps too subtle and refined for the modern industrial age although it is together with vocal Dhrupad experiencing a revival especially in the west where there are now many serious students of this instrument.

(http://www.tanpura.de/tanpurarudraveena.htm)

Connect with the Universe.

            Track Listing:

            01 Ragini Todi, Alap

02 Ragini Todi, Jod, & Jhala

03 Gat In Chautala

here

Hanging on in Talwandi: Mohammad Afzal Khan and Mohammad Hafiz Khan (reupped)

Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism

The Talwandi gharana (family/household/school) centered in the musically fertile Kasur area of Pakistani Punjab is often mentioned as a ‘cousin’ of the Darbhanga gharana which the Washerman’s Dog highlighted last night in the post on Ram Chatur Mallik.  Both are considered to be essentially dhrupad gharanas though their repertoires include khyal as well.   

Tonight the Dog highlights the singing of Malikzada Mohammad Afzal Khan  and Malikzada Mohammad Hafiz Khan, which quite frankly is some of the most exciting  and exhilarating I’ve ever heard.  The Talwandi gharana, is almost entirely performed in Pakistan and like the more famous Dagar gharana of Rajasthan, the tradition is ‘owned’ and nurtured by a single family.  While dhrupad as an art form has its origins deep in the Hindu worship tradition, it has over the centuries been performed by Muslim singers, including, in the contemporary context, the Dagar and Khan (Talwandi) families.

Dhrupad was and is conceived as a sacred music, often used for ritual as well as concert performances, but with different sectarian emphases-Hindu, Muslim or Sikh-depending on local circumstances.

In Mathura, north Bihar and West Bengal, the known dhrupad traditions all flourished in association with Hinduism of different varieties; dhrupad was employed for both court music-making and for temple ritual, but it was adopted to whatever Hindu cult was locally prevailing. Thus dhrupad texts from Mathura typically celebrate Radha and Krisna, those from Bihar the Shakti goddess Kali. [Also] the Mathura tradition was essentially a temple tradition [but] Muslim singers from the Agra gharana may have also contributed to this ritual use of dhrupad.

A similar situation seemed to have existed in the Punjab. Before Partition, dhrupad was a popular art form for which members of the Talwandi gharana were particularly noted. It is said they were employed by Sikh religious leaders to compose music in the dhrupad style for use in the temples of Amritsar and elsewhere; they also taught Sikh and Hindu pupils sometimes adopting Sikh or Hindu titles and dress. Thus music of ultimately Hindu origins was adapted by Muslims for use in Sikh ritual. Today, however, members of the Talwandi gharana project an exclusively Islamic identity, singing dhrupads largely on Islamic themes, and claiming an Islamic origin  and role for the whole genre. This can be understood as a response to the religious climate in which they find themselves.

(‪Dhrupad: tradition and performance in Indian music, Volume 1 By Ritwik Sanyal, Richard Widdess, pg 33)

At the time of Partition the Talwandi gharana was headed by the great dhrupad singer Mohar-e-Mauseeqi Malikzada Mian Mehar Ali Khan. He was born in 1913 trained by his uncle and father in law, Mian Maula Bakhsh and migrated with him to the rich town of Lyallpur in his youth on the invitation of a wealthy Sikh patron. This was a smooth transition after the loss of princely patronage. Till the time of Partition the family performed in traditional settings before highly select audiences cultivating interest in the rich genres of alap and dhrupad. 

The departure at the time of Partition to India of Sardar Harcharan Singh left the family of these great dhrupad singers to the vagaries of chance, and after the exhaustion of funds and savings had to turn to the official media with whom they had some success in the early fifties due to the personal interest of the Radio Pakistan Director General Z.A.Bukhari. After Bukhari, the family was left without any support from the media and was mainly supported by the younger son's (Malikzada Muhammad Hafeez Khan) employment with government and the private sector in non-musical capacities. The family however continued its daily practice of music and also taught pupils and performed whenever possible.

This resulted in the brothers Malikzada Muhammad Afzal Khan and Malikzada Muhammad Hafeez Khan springing into prominence. Their resurgence also coincides with the resurgence of interest in dhurpad the oldest extant genre of music in our tradition on the Indo-Pak sub continent. The duo has travelled and performed abroad, has evoked considerable research interest and despite all possible opposition from the official media and its attempts at artificial reinterpretation of cultural heritage to suit vested interests, continues to flourish and transmit its rich knowledge of music to pupils in the family and outside the family. It also has attracted foreigners who are in training in Lahore where the family’s main proponent Malikzada Muhammad Hafeez Khan resides. The example adequately indicates that such strong forces cannot be diverted and manipulated easily. It also indicates that despite all the criticism levelled against the modern media (even by the orthodox musicians) it is a liberating force which has provided some support to even very esoteric art forms by the general liberation that it has injected in the patronage and propagation structures.

(Music in Pakistan - The Story of Five Decades by Khalid Manzoor Basra)

                  Track Listing:

01   Adana Bahar

02   Hussaini

03   Mian ki Malhar

04   Multani

Listen here.

Dhrupad Samrat: Pandit Ram Chatur Mallik (Reupped)

Maithili Krishna and flute (north Bihar)

This album of a concert in Brindavan is powerful medicine.  The singer, Pandit Ram Chatur Mallik, is 80 years old but his voice is as strong and as authoritative as a man’s a half a century younger. It is deep yet playful and agile. He sings secret ragas of his family. Composed and polished and handed down for as long as the grandfathers have sung, even before they were appointed as the Maharaja’s court musicians.  In between the sets the old man recites the verse he is about to sing in a crisp eastern Maithili Hindi.

            My beloved has not come home, o friend

            How shall I remain patient?

            In my blossoming youth the separation tortures me

            How shall I endure day and night?

In an era where Indian music has adapted itself to modern age and changed its face to a degree which was unthinkable only a few decades ago Ram Chatur Mallik remains one of the few legendary figures of the past—a past in which musicians were performing only for a selected few who could either elevate them to a status almost equal to that of an Emperor or otherwise reduce them to that of a mere servant, if not worse. This was the age of the maharajas, the ruling chiefs and landowners who regraded it as a mark of distinction to ornament their courts and sessions with outstanding musicians. They had to prove their value in the face of stiff and uncompromising competition. Cheating was not possible as the audience mostly consisted of people who knew the music by heart, often performed it themselves, and had to be constantly no only entertained, but again and again, challenged and surprised to acknowledge the superiority of a musician.  It was not rare for concerts, even of great artists to be interrupted mercilessly if they happened not to be up to the mark. There was no dearth of musicians in all the different styles who moved around all the formal and informal gatherings, constantly trying to surpass each other. Music was a daily routine, inseparable from the activities of the courts. 

Ram Chatur Mallik, the last great court singer of Darbhanga, in northern Bihar, has seen it all and has sung for all of them. Darbhanga was one of the richest princely states, and the late Maharajadiraj Kameshwar Singh owned a fleet of private airplanes, flocks of race dogs, hundreds of elephants, sent his laundry to Paris and invited the Indian and British nobility to tiger hunts and games of polo and tennis. Selected members of the court, among them Ram Chatur Mallik, were taken on trips around the world for which drinking water was supplied from India.

Ram Chatur Mallik was a close personal companion of Raja Bahadur Bishweshwar Singh the young brother of the Maharaja. He was a musician himself and devoted his life to the pursuance of the art. The stars of the Indian music world were his regular guests and Ram Chatur Mallik proved to be the match not only in the ancient dhrupad style, but also in khyal and above all in the romantic thumri. He was a close friend of Ustad Amir Khan and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan.

Pt. Ram Chatur Mallik

His own heritage has been the austere dhrupad, coming to him through his forefathers Radhakrishna and Kataram, who had arrived in Darbhanga towards the end of the 18^th century. They had studied their art from Bhupat Khan, descendant of Tansen, the famous singer of medieval Indian history. In 1785 a terrible drought paralyzed north Bihar. Madhav Singh, the rule of Tirhut, as the area was called at the time, asked the two brothers to invoke rain through a magical performance of Raga Malhar. History tells that a downpour so heavy that the two singers were immersed up to their chests, began immediately. Madhav Singh erected a marker that can be seen to this day in front of a Kali temple in the town.  The village of Amta and the surrounding area were donated to the brothers by the Raja. The brothers adopted the title, ‘mallik’ (landowner/lord) and the family has lived there in service to the royal family ever since.

Ram Chatur Mallik was born in Amta in 1902. At the age of 5 he astonished his elders by repeating a musical composition line for line without having any previous training. From them on his destiny was sealed. He followed in his father’s footsteps as the most prominent singer of Darbhanga court.  Besides from his father, he received training from his fathers mentor, Kshitipal Mallik, considered the most brilliant singer of his age.  He went on reap every award the Indian state could give but appreciated his audience’s name for him, Dhrupad Samrat (Emperor of the Dhrupad) the most.  He died in 1990.

The recordings on tonight’s post were made in 1982 at a concert in Brindavan, the home of Krishna and the dhrupad. He is supported by his grandnephew and disciple, Abhay Narayan Mallik and Purushottam Das on pakhawaj.

(from the liner notes)

Track Listing:

01.  Vinod: Alap

02.  Vinod: Dhrupad

03.Sindura

04.  Paraj

Listen here