Interview: At 91, sarod maestro Rajeev Taranath has not stopped pursuing musical excellence

All it took was a moment: an electrifying brush with sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan’s music as a teenager convinced Rajeev Taranath to take up the instrument. “It was a life-changing experience when he played his first movement on the sarod,” said Taranath.

Taranath, born in Bangalore, became a student of Khan in his 20s. But the sarod had little presence in South India in the 1950s as Taranath was growing up. His early training was in Hindustani vocal music, from his father, Pandit Taranath, as well as several Kirana gharana singers.

Now, at 91, Taranath is recognised as one of the foremost exponents of the Maihar Allauddin gharana, a lineage celebrated for its openness and distinct approach to developing a raag. He also carries the honour of receiving guidance and training by other legendary Maihar stalwarts: Annapurna Devi, Nihkhil Banerjee and Ravi Shankar.

In an interview, Taranath reflected on how his teacher Khan’s approach to music has resonated with him. “Fullness. A fullness of emotion and experience,” said Taranath. “His music has had a comprehensive effect on me.”

Khan’s approach to music has inspired and sustained Taranath’s own intense pursuit of the sarod over a lifetime, resulting in his recognition as an artist of international repute.

“I would very humbly say this: Khansahib’s gift to our music is the exploration of the possibilities of sound,” said Taranath. “He could find the quintessential emotional core of any raga. He moves to a note – sits – dwells in that experience like no other. He could pull out the melancholy within any note. A transforming, transformative musician.”

Excerpts from an interview:

How did you decide to pursue the sarod? you had been training as a vocalist for over ten years before that.

The most vivid moment in music I remember is the first experience of hearing Ustad Ali Akbar Khan: it was transforming. I was and am a great admirer of Ravi Shankar’s music, so I used to attend every performance of his when he came to Bangalore, the city in which I lived. That particular time he came with Ali Akbar Khan, who said that he would play the sarod along with him.

Before that, I had heard very little of the sarod being played and definitely I had not heard Ali Akbar Khan play. It was a life-changing experience when he played his first movement on the sarod. He just soared. There was such a stillness in the audience. That was my moment of epiphany, a moment of total grace. As I was listening, my life changed. Music moved to the centre of the universe. I never looked back.

Can you explain why it spoke to you so much?

Well, you know, it’s like falling in love. How can you explain it?

How did your early training in vocal music influence you as an instrumentalist?

Vocal music is at the centre of classical Indian music. The instruments get into the business of miming the voice and, in so doing, find their own genius. Vocalism is the thing that makes a raga more than a scale. It helps sense and convey the “juice” of a given raga.

One of the attributes of the sarod, as it is a fretless string instrument, is that it allows a player to navigate smoothly between notes, and convey vocal-like qualities. In Ali Akbar Khan’s sarod playing there is a kind of impending vocalism. His imagination encompasses vocal sources though it is not that he actually plays bandishes.

Vocalism there is more abstract but there is a storehouse from which he derives movements and ideas of the raga. A musician must have intimate knowledge of vocal music. The relish of it should be felt. In the absence of this relish, our instrumental music becomes very mechanical.

In Carnatic music, the instrumentalist actually plays the kritis or song on the instrument. In Hindustani music, some also do. What is particularly interesting according to me are the other kind of instruments which don’t actually play the song as such but meet the music at the point where the limitations of the instrument itself begin. There the instrument interprets the music in the manner of its own strength.

The sarod does it its way, the sitar does its way, all the while trying to get into the song itself. And at that point, there is a glorious flowering of the individuated music so that as you listen to Ali Akbar Khansahib or Pandit Ravi Shankar you can see that many songs or bandishes are coming in and going out. They are presences, very beautiful presences, but you can’t catch hold of them. And as they come and go the raga is getting built up and the performance itself.

You speak often of the importance of relish in music. Can you speak more on this?

Relish is not something end-oriented. It is an experience so fully set in the moment – like food, for example. When deeply enjoyed, you don’t wait until you are finished, it is every bite, each spoonful.

As a teacher, one cannot truly teach the idea and importance of relish. You can take someone with you along the way, and then see if the value and relish of the music takes effect on that person. One cannot assert it. For this, humility is compulsory.

Do you feel the oral tradition helps them to sensitise one’s ears?

One should know and learn what to listen for. One needs to imbibe this over time, and come to sense what is excellence.

Do you feel and can you talk about how a raga might develop or grow with you over years?

Well, it all depends on the individual artist. Each one of us tries to get his imagination out of his voice or fingers. The meeting of a person’s physical capacities and imagination and the extent to which he or she can successfully translate one to the other makes his particular talent. In that sense these ragas are inexhaustible. One must be aware of the vastness of each. A raga is bigger than any one of us. Like a cave, ocean or mountain, its unexplored areas are always there.

Take, for example, one of the best-known ragas in the classical field, take the raga Yaman – I feel and have always felt that I could go on playing that raga throughout a lifetime. And without repeating. It is like many of these continuous processes that our body has – like breathing, it goes on over a lifetime. Our relationship with a raga is like that.

It is not a new or old raga that we are talking about at all in this field. There is a raga. There is an individual. You come to know a raga either peripherally or you come to know a raga over time as you know your mother. And how much can you know your mother? Can you tell me? I can’t tell you.

There is the experience of meeting a new friend from the first “hello” to knowing them so well you can relax fully with them. You have that great privilege of true familiarity, where each can take the other for granted in a sense.

When I began learning, training for technical virtuosity and gathering as many ragas as possible might be desired, now it is no more so. I just become deeper friends with a few ragas. They are always there in my neighborhood, my musical neighborhood. They know me and I know them, so I can take some liberties, although I cannot affect their quiddity. Their essence I cannot touch. But I do feel free while playing those ragas, and even while not playing, they are going on in my mind.

Can you speak about riyaaz and the unfolding of the raga?

Every student or musician has to get into riyaaz. It is where one lovingly and patiently irons each crease out. It is a private matter, a place for honing skills and techniques. Learning and practicing then, is like setting hurdles up for oneself: set up one hurdle, conquer that and then set up a tougher hurdle for next and then conquer that one as well, even as an athlete might train, and continue this as an endless process. Intensity in the artist is a result of this process – not so much a starting place.

And it is a place for exploring imaginative possibilities. A student learns and imbibes a specificity of ideas – not mere approximations, and then moves over time to a gradual expansion of imagination, of possibilities. Spreading the ideas or vistaars is like seeing how one can spread a small pat of butter on a piece of bread.

An understanding of the vastness of a raga, of its possibilities, begins to happen progressively more and more. Similar to climbing a mountain, the higher one goes, step by step, the more one sees. You can push at the boundaries of a raga but must take great care that it does not break. If you do, you are then in a kind of musical anonymity.

With age, experience or perhaps with choice of ragas one finds corners and spaces that seemed hidden in the raga before. There is a kind of patience that you learn to take with you to the raga. If you’re patient, the raga will speak to you eventually.

On this, Baba [Ali Akbar Khan] made a Zen-like statement to me at a point in my musical development where I could appreciate it. When I questioned him about an aspect of developing a particular raga, his reply was to get on the road and begin walking, and the road itself would show the way.

What about your own riyaaz, has it changed or evolved over the years?

I have always kept up my own practice, though uneven, as my life itself has been uneven, but what I have seen develop in my own practice is something akin to what the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh refers to as “mindfulness”, a greater awareness and clarity of both what I am doing and why. This has led to a shortening of the time spent.

Mere fatigue from long hours is not in itself an achievement. I work on tonal clarity, how to improve tone. And exploring, getting to know the raga. In this sense, I don’t recognise the phrase “mastering a raga”. It is more a process of becoming in relationship with it.

A raga should go on being with you in some sense throughout your day.

Can you talk of the process of striving for excellence and of achieving mastery in an art form?

There is always a desire in you to go on achieving greater excellence in music. It should be possible for me to find expression for all my thoughts through my fingers. My fingers themselves should become my imagination. But the amazing factor in this process is [that] as you achieve more, your imagination grows wings, gets flustered and becomes more fertile for greater possibilities. That is because my imagination is restricted by my inherent potential to play or sing. That is why one needs to practice, strive to achieve more.

As you learn more, achieve more, your fingers acquire more expertise, greater efficiency. The possibilities of your fingers keep growing. With the growth of our efficiency, our imagination also grows. As you move closer to excellence, you begin to see more. The higher you go, the more you see. One contributes to the other. The higher you go, the greater is the urge to see more. There is no end to this. Our entire journey is towards this excellence.

More than the satisfaction you get in performing for an audience, it should be possible for you to derive greater satisfaction when you are playing for yourself. This truly is another very important step in our pursuit of excellence. Against this background, playing in a concert is merely a supportive aspect for your practice. And it is this which enables you to make more and more in-depth music.

P Satya, a student of Rajeev Taranath, is an accountant by trade.

A newly released documentary film, Pt. Rajeev Taranath - A Life in Music, directed by Amshan Kumar, will be screened in Mysuru on October 21 and Pune’s Film and Television Institute on December 8.