In the muggy heat of Delhi in April, I took a break from a high-profile people’s tribunal that was recording the harrowing stories of uprooted Adivasis, the native forest dwellers of Chhattisgarh, affected by a state-backed onslaught on the tribespeople’s lives and sources of livelihood.
I found myself instead in the middle of a very rare exhibition about the rise and fall of a musical culture that was annihilated and deleted from our midst in the hurly-burly of India’s political independence.
‘Women on Record’, as the exhibition was called, came across as a diligently assembled narrative put together by classical singer Vidya Shah and her graphic designer husband Parthiv.
With rare photographs of quite a few more or less unheard of courtesan-singers from the previous century, and with panel discussions, live lec-dem performances and audiovisual documentaries the duo constructed what can only be described as the birth and murder of an inimitable musical tradition.
Fresh from listening to the searing narrative of Chhattisgarh’s forest dwellers, I found it difficult not to see similarities in it with the forced disappearance of singers and patrons of a unique variant of classical music.
This has been par for the course with the poorer Indians and their other marginalised cousins. The chamar, the lowest in the Hindu caste system, eked out a living by removing the carcasses of dead animals from streets and public squares and using their hide to cobble footwear. Then the international price of leather went through the roof, and it triggered a hunt for the chamar’s craft and trade. The upper castes, including Muslims and Hindus, stepped in to marginalise the poorest of poor Indians.
This is true of other caste-based commerce and, as in the case of the traditional arts such as dance and music, a similar upper crust coup of sorts was effected to usurp the space of traditional performers who were replaced by new artists from the hitherto reticent castes. Let’s see how.
Why was the exhibition called ‘Women on Record’? It referred to the gramophone era in India, which made stars of gaanewalis or courtesans who would otherwise be heard only at mehfils. How vinyl records, with their three-minute format, came to change social norms in the 20th century was a key theme of the exhibition. How technology changed social norms and removed caste taboos was a major extension of the discussion.
Vidya Shah explained that the advent of sound recording changed the listening experience of music forever. It paved the way for the making of singing sensations and stars, and redefined the world of entertainment in ways that still have an impact in the 21st century. And clearly, women were at the forefront of this phenomenon. These vocalists took on the challenge presented by this new technology — mainly, of presenting their work in approximately three minutes, this given the innately improvisatory nature of Indian classical music.
The range of music they had proficiency over was tremendous — khayal, ghazal, kajari, chaiti, thumri and tarana and bhavgeet. Zohrabai Agrewali is said to have mastered the art of presenting a khayal in this new three-minute format and inspired greats like Aftab-i-Mausiqui Faiyyaz Khan and the Patiala doyen, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Sahib. Collectors estimate that the number of records issued in India would amount to about half a million — a large corpus of which remains unheard and inaccessible to contemporary audiences.
The musicians resorted to various strategies to fit their performances to the requirement of the technology, says Shah. Those who agreed to record had to alter their music according to the demands of this new medium. Some of the earlier artists took some time to understand the constraints on their music given the limited time duration of a disc recording and while singing or playing, in addition to the rhythm.
Recorded music came to India in 1902 with a recording by Gauhar Jan, the star of her times. Gramophone companies, initially run by Americans and Europeans and not by upper-caste Indians, actively recruited baijis for their early recordings. One of the first recording engineers, Fred Gaisberg, writes in his memoirs:
“All the female singers were of course from the caste of the public women, and in those days it was practically impossible to record the voice of a respectable woman. The songs and dances were passed by word of mouth from mother to daughter. But recording expenses were heavy, since most of the artists had to be trained over long periods before they developed into acceptable gramophone singers.”
The ones who became celebrities were clearly affluent and lived posh lifestyles — Sunderabai owned an entire floor opposite VT Station in Bombay, Janki Bai Chaapanchuri is said to have had 14,000 gold coins showered on her in the Chaudah Hazari Mehfil, a musical equivalent of an obscenely rich cricket tournament.
The gramophone record revolutionised ways in which music was heard, and gradually also started to craft new social norms. For one, the commercial success of the record made this avenue an attractive option for many musicians, both performers and accompanists. The anonymity the record offered also brought forward artists from other communities.
This was also the time of the national movement — a struggle against foreign rule, but also one with a reformist agenda. But baijis faced a strident and severe attack from reformers within their own society. Their profession was condemned and they were branded as ‘loose women’. The nationalist elite objected to the shrill voices of these baijis, and ultimately, they started losing opportunities of singing on stage. Initially, many of the women singers joined the newly emerging All India Radio. But after independence, those who continued to be ganewaalis had to deal with the indignity of All India Radio insisting that its female singers be married.
Many baijis then moved to the theatre and films, given their understanding of the social stigmas faced by their community, and sensing the opportunity encoded in cinema for a potential career change. Some, like Jaddan Bai, better known as film actress Nargis’s mother, therefore moved from being successful and respected performers to becoming film producers and actresses.
There are many such stories of struggle, courage and marginalisation, as gaanewalis made history: from being mere entertainers to people who had generations of camp followers, creating the way for a new language in performing arts for women performers in India.
Not unlike the ways in which the upper-caste traders who closed in on forest areas to exploit tribal people have now morphed into a corporatised state, ‘respectable’ upper-caste Hindus closed in on the baijis and gaanewalis, appropriated their traditions, sanitised them, and marginalised those who actually did the hard, ground-clearing work that setting up a musical tradition involves. In fact ‘marginalised’ is perhaps too kind a word. They have virtually been airbrushed out of musical history.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Mohammed Abbasi 