Between 1904 and 1907, while The Gramophone Company was busy recording Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and Gauhar Jan in Mumbai, another company called Ram-a-phone was recording local singers from Kalbadevi and Girgaum, localities in south Mumbai that were hubs of Hindustani music.
These included both male and female singers who gave concerts, but who were not well known outside the city. Ram-a-phone’s only known surviving catalogue is one from September 1907. On the cover, its star singer, Chanda Karwarkarin, poses like a seasoned virtuoso singer, leaning on a table with a gramophone. The catalogue is in Gujarati, the mother tongue of Mumbai's mercantile class, including the owner of Ram-a-phone, many of whom were patrons of music.
The catalogue contains a list of more than fifty songs that Karwarkarin sang for the company in a number of ragas, such as Todi, Multani, Bhimpalas, Sohoni, Malkauns, to name just five. Today, about 25 songs have survived with record collectors.
Raga Malkauns
Raga Shree
Gauhar Jan’s and Karim Khan’s recordings are online and they are celebrities even today. But hundreds of talented singers like Karwarkarin have gone into oblivion.
Few biographical details of Karwarkarin are known. Her name suggests that she might be from Karwar, a coastal town in Uttara Kannada district in western Karanataka. She was known as ‘Bablibai of Goa’, according to two senior record collectors, the late Sharadbhai Mehta of Nadiad and Rohit Desai of Ahmedabad.
Yet other sources indicate that she was called ‘Bablibai of Bhavnagar’ because she was employed in the court in that city at some point in her career. There she had a special tanpura made for her use because she was supposed to have been six-feet tall, according to one source.
Chanda Karvarkarin is the same as Bablibai Salgaonkar, says a note in Govindrao Tembe’s Marathi book on old musicians, Majha Sangeet Vyasanga (My Musical Career). Some sources say she was a disciple of the Agra gharana's Ustad Natthan Khan, and that she greatly influenced Kesarbai Kerkar, who was a teenager when Karvarkarin was singing on the concert circuit.
Her life will probably remain a mystery, but not her voice. One can estimate her musical talent through these recordings. I sent MP3 files of some of her renditions of ragas to several musicians and scholars for their views.
While they could not tell which gharana, or musical school, she was from, all of them appreciated the skill she displayed in rendering very difficult compositions in the mere three minutes available to make a recording in those days. Each song began with the announcement: “Sung by Miss Chanda Ram-a-phone Records, Bombay", as can be seen in the two recordings below.
Raga Bahar
Raga Bhairavi
Ram-a-phone disc records were put on the market in 1907 and continued to be available until 1940, competing with The Gramophone Company. It was owned by TS Ramchunder (see below) & Brothers, who were in the business of musical instruments since 1851. They ran the recording company in collaboration with a German company.
In 1908, The Gramophone Company filed a lawsuit against the Ram-a-phone trade name, claiming that it was very close to ‘Gramaphone’. The owners then changed the name to Ramagraph, and reissued discs of Karwarkarin singing with the new label pasted over original name, Ram-a-phone.
Raga Sohini
These included both male and female singers who gave concerts, but who were not well known outside the city. Ram-a-phone’s only known surviving catalogue is one from September 1907. On the cover, its star singer, Chanda Karwarkarin, poses like a seasoned virtuoso singer, leaning on a table with a gramophone. The catalogue is in Gujarati, the mother tongue of Mumbai's mercantile class, including the owner of Ram-a-phone, many of whom were patrons of music.
The catalogue contains a list of more than fifty songs that Karwarkarin sang for the company in a number of ragas, such as Todi, Multani, Bhimpalas, Sohoni, Malkauns, to name just five. Today, about 25 songs have survived with record collectors.
Raga Malkauns
Raga Shree
Gauhar Jan’s and Karim Khan’s recordings are online and they are celebrities even today. But hundreds of talented singers like Karwarkarin have gone into oblivion.
Few biographical details of Karwarkarin are known. Her name suggests that she might be from Karwar, a coastal town in Uttara Kannada district in western Karanataka. She was known as ‘Bablibai of Goa’, according to two senior record collectors, the late Sharadbhai Mehta of Nadiad and Rohit Desai of Ahmedabad.
Yet other sources indicate that she was called ‘Bablibai of Bhavnagar’ because she was employed in the court in that city at some point in her career. There she had a special tanpura made for her use because she was supposed to have been six-feet tall, according to one source.
Chanda Karvarkarin is the same as Bablibai Salgaonkar, says a note in Govindrao Tembe’s Marathi book on old musicians, Majha Sangeet Vyasanga (My Musical Career). Some sources say she was a disciple of the Agra gharana's Ustad Natthan Khan, and that she greatly influenced Kesarbai Kerkar, who was a teenager when Karvarkarin was singing on the concert circuit.
Her life will probably remain a mystery, but not her voice. One can estimate her musical talent through these recordings. I sent MP3 files of some of her renditions of ragas to several musicians and scholars for their views.
While they could not tell which gharana, or musical school, she was from, all of them appreciated the skill she displayed in rendering very difficult compositions in the mere three minutes available to make a recording in those days. Each song began with the announcement: “Sung by Miss Chanda Ram-a-phone Records, Bombay", as can be seen in the two recordings below.
Raga Bahar
Raga Bhairavi
Ram-a-phone disc records were put on the market in 1907 and continued to be available until 1940, competing with The Gramophone Company. It was owned by TS Ramchunder (see below) & Brothers, who were in the business of musical instruments since 1851. They ran the recording company in collaboration with a German company.
In 1908, The Gramophone Company filed a lawsuit against the Ram-a-phone trade name, claiming that it was very close to ‘Gramaphone’. The owners then changed the name to Ramagraph, and reissued discs of Karwarkarin singing with the new label pasted over original name, Ram-a-phone.
Raga Sohini
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