From the biography: The secret of the life, art and milieu of khayal singer Arun Kashalkar

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On a rare dry monsoon day in early June, Yogesh and I stood chatting by the road outside Guruji’s house when his phone rang.

“Even five minutes more is going to be difficult,” I heard him saying in Marathi to the caller. “I would help you if I could, but the schedule is packed.”

The caller, evidently a student, was asking for more time to sing at our annual Guru Purnima programme. Yogesh politely declined the request, his voice not betraying the slight irritation that I caught from his flicker of an eye-roll.

As he had done for several years, Yogesh was spearheading the organisation of the event, a yearly ritual in the Hindustani music world when students sing for their gurus, who give a short concluding recital. This event takes place on or after the actual Guru Purnima day, which, according to the Hindu calendar, occurs every year on a full-moon day in the month of Ashadh, coinciding with a period from June to August in the Roman calendar. The occasion celebrates the contributions of spiritual and performing arts teachers, those who traditionally taught students in their homes and became quasi-parental figures. By convention, students fund, plan and execute the music programme, consulting the guru about policy matters, such as, crucially, the line-up and the time allocated to each performer. That year, in our community, close to thirty students had to be accommodated over a day.

About a week after my conversation with Yogesh, a bunch of us walked together to the train station after class. The discussion turned to the Guru Purnima event.

“I plan to sing Bhoop,” said one young student.

“Have you booked the raag?” another youngster asked him. “If you haven’t, do it quickly. Yogesh will want to avoid repeating raags.”

“How much time have you been given?” asked a third student.

“I don’t know yet,” the young student replied.

“But then how will you practise?” the third student persisted.

“Whatever it is, I am sure it won’t be more than twenty minutes,” the first student replied.

“Twenty minutes!” exclaimed the third student, who seemed to think that it was too much, even as an outer limit.

The time allotted to students at the Guru Purnima function was like real estate in Mumbai, a scarce, prized and contested commodity. The time a student got reflected her or his position in the gurukul’s pecking order. Every extra minute could boost a person’s standing. No one had the temerity to bargain with Guruji so Yogesh was left to field people’s requests. As for me, I had requested Guruji to excuse me from singing until I completed my two-year trial period…

Fire 1986–95

…Arun’s study of Vilayat Hussain Khan’s music organically led him to analyse other Agra gharana musicians, beginning with the scintillating Faiyaz Khan. Rhythmic control was only one of his virtues. If Vilayat Hussain Khan’s music was understated, Faiyaz Khan’s was exuberant, even though both rested on the same fundamental principles. “Faiyaz Khan exuded a playfulness and aesthetic effervescence,” Arun told his students. “He had a feeling for what appealed to listeners yet never indulged in gimmicks and was thus able to raise the audience’s tastes. He was free-minded but rooted in his vidya.”

Arun drew from Faiyaz Khan’s romantic touch in bol work. He saw how the Agra singer relegated rhythm to the back burner every now and then to focus on expressing the words, now tenderly, now passionately, like a thumri singer. For these traits, Arun particularly admired Faiyaz Khan’s renditions of Phulawan ki gend (Balls of flowers) in Jaunpuri, Tarapata hoon (I am agitated) in Lalit, Un sanga laagi akhiyan (I locked eyes with him) in Ramkali, and the thumri Bajuband khul khul jaye (My armlet is loosening) in Bhairavi. Arun studied Faiyaz Khan’s pukar and explored its expressive potential. “The intonation of your pukar when you address God should be distinctly different from when you call your beloved,” Arun told his students. “You can harness lyrics to enhance your bol improvisation, but you should not make your voice overly dramatic or emotional because this will detract from khayal’s aesthetic. Khayal’s main aim is not to interpret lyrical meaning but to explore the raag.”

Arun went deeper into bol work. He had to mesh words with music in a way that was aesthetic. He paid attention to sounds in the language, working on softening the enunciation of stop consonants such as k, kh, g, gh, p, ph, b, bh to make his bol work sound smooth. He became hyper-discerning about compositions. He wanted to use those that not only allowed the raag’s essence to bloom and had punchy mukhdas, but were suitable for bol. “The language in some compositions might be impressive,” Arun told his students.

“But compositions are not meant to be recited. They must serve the needs of music.”

For his PhD degree, besides doing a thesis, Arun had to be prepared to present a hundred raags, including several rare and complex ones. In several, such as Hindol Bahar and Basant Mukhari, he could not find compositions that he felt exhibited the qualities that he was looking for, so he created ones himself.

He analysed the music of other Agra maestros. He had naturally inherited aspects of Khadim Hussain’s style via Babanrao. But he particularly admired the dhrupad touches in Khadim Hussain’s nom-tom aalaap, his deep gamaks, and his renditions of dhamar compositions. Arun listened closely to Sharafat Hussain Khan, who had trained under three masters, Faiyaz Khan, Ata Hussain Khan and Vilayat Hussain Khan, and had inherited several inflections from his ancestors belonging to the Atrauli and Rangile styles, which were eventually subsumed under the label of the Agra gharana. Arun admired how Sharafat Hussain’s sur never faltered even while singing the gharana’s characteristic triple-note taan patterns at a blistering speed.

Arun developed an even greater awe for the Agra style’s depth and breadth – the nom-tom aalaap derived from dhrupad, the huge potential of bol work, including a version of the soft bol banaav used in thumri, and the creative use of rhythm. He understood why many of its practitioners considered it the sampoorna gayaki, the complete style.

Ajay Risbud, a high-school student, sat in the audience listening to Arun singing, his voice bordering on ferocious.

“Guruji has begun in fourth gear,” he whispered to his friend.

It was a private concert at the home of Arun’s friend Ashok Sahasrabuddhe. About fifty people had crowded into the living room, including about a dozen of Arun’s students. It was raining outside, but the room was also drenched – in Arun’s Miyan Malhar.

After a brief interval, he sang a Khem Kalyan that Ajay’s friend said he would never forget.

Ajay thought Arun could not surpass his renditions at the Sahasrabuddhe home, but soon afterwards, on the occasion of Kojagiri Purnima, Arun sang Malkauns at his own home with even greater intensity, presenting two of his creations, a slow one, Karim rahim (Generous and merciful), one of only a handful of his slow compositions, and his fast composition Maang bharo (Put vermillion in my hair parting), accompanied by Sansare.

Having quit his job, Arun felt deliriously free, like a tiger let out of the nine-to-five cage. He released his pent-up energy into every mehfil. By then, he had a style that stood out as distinct. Students were flocking to him. Ajay showed considerable promise, and an older student, Smita Wagh, was already giving him excellent vocal support. A variety of tabla and harmonium players came to accompany Arun and his students in class. He performed regularly at home, at baithaks and occasionally outside Mumbai, with accompanists of a high calibre, such as tabla players Bhai Gaitonde, Omkar Gulvady, Sudhir Sansare, Vibhav Nageshkar and Yogesh Samsi, and harmonium players Govindrao Patwardhan, Tulsidas Borkar and Vishwanath Pendharkar.

Many people from Arun’s circle thought that at this stage he ought to be blazing concert venues around the country. But he was less sanguine about his prospects. He sensed how the Hindustani music ecosystem, along with the rest of the economy, was transforming in ways that were alien to him. He had glimpsed this change while running a music organisation for a few years with the help of his students, using seed money that Babanrao had donated. Arun had done it for several years, inviting Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori Amonkar and others who were already well known. But he saw how difficult it was to raise money from sponsors for other excellent musicians who were not celebrities, and was in the process of winding down the organisation’s activities.

City

The raag form can be compared to a city’s street network. Its important phrases are like its arterial roads, raag renditions are like journeys across the network, and compositions are like different entry points into a city. The idea of a raag as a landscape diverges emphatically from the linear view found in many books and academic approaches, in which the raag is viewed as just an aaroh and avroh, the ascending and descending scales respectively. In many people’s minds, this pair of scales virtually defines the raag. But they are more like the two halves of a city’s ring road. People who use just the ring road will move around only along a city’s periphery, missing its dense network of streets. So too will those who travel only along the raag’s aaroh and avroh miss its many possibilities.

Another idea found in academic approaches to music is that of the vadi-samvadi, which singles out two notes in every raag as being the most important and second-most important ones. Like the aarohavroh concept, it oversimplifies a complex situation. First, many pairs of notes in a raag are important, not just one. These are pairs that have swar samvaad, or are in consonance with one another. Second, unlike the vadi and samvadi notes, the consonance between notes in such pairs is not necessarily hierarchical. While improvising, one can give these pairs equal importance and move from one to another. In raag Yaman, for example, a singer might work for some time with the pair Ma-Ni and move on to Ga-Dha.

The converse of swar samvad is that one cannot pair any two notes in a raag. The rules for which notes can be paired and which cannot are implicit in the raag’s chalan. As students mature, they can more explicitly employ swar samvad in their improvisations.

“The important notes in a raag at which singers halt or through which they frequently traverse are like a city’s important localities that inhabitants pass through often, such as Churchgate or Dadar in Mumbai. Also, the number of such junctions and their importance vary depending upon the route, its length and one’s stage in the journey.”

— Arun Kashalkar

Excerpted with permission from Chapter 11 in The Secret Master: Arun Kashalkar and a Journey to the Edge of Music, Sumana Ramanan, Westland.