“As someone who has been attending Jashn-e-Rekhta since its first edition…this year it felt very different…the core audience…conspicuously absent…audiences that were once accustomed to language, thoughtful programs and deep cultural experiences. came for… the intimacy and literary engagement that defined previous editions risks being lost with this change…”
(Quoted from a long thread on X posted by Purani Delhi Walo Ki Baatin, a Delhi-based online community)
This painful reaction, from a lover of literature, language and fine arts, is repeated while watching a show based on the forced fusion of Indian musical forms with Western. They usually begin with beautiful scenes of a group of young, West Indians, carrying guitars and drums, looking around with childlike wonder. They are said to be heading to old towns and settlements in search of Indian folk and classical music forms. Their playful clothes, which consciously affirm the aims of the West (denim, branded walking shoes and guitars) and the East (kohl-lined eyes, colorful scarves with mirrors and heavily oxidized silver jewellery).
There is much hand-shaking and back-thumping of local musicians at meetings of gharana gurus and/or dargahs. But as the strings are played and the throat produces a rapid display of aalaps and fast-paced tans, what emerges is a pale ghost of classical ragas and semi-classical nirguna songs, sufiana kalams, folk songs and moderate poems. The grandiose camera work and histrionics – arms flung, eyes closed, head shaking hard and locks swinging – “Whoah Whoah” from the sidekicks, all seem fake, despite the technical enhancements of the acoustics. You can’t expect to bring two music genres together to produce divine new fusion music if the wobbly center just doesn’t hold up.
And ah, the captives the bandits wanted to build. What are they? Poems of love and longing may be timeless and rhythmically correct, but great classical music is more than just a literary text. It is the seamless flow of notes that breathes life into everyday speech and makes much of the physical world irrelevant. It is not enough to diminish the sanctity and purity of old gharana music or perform rituals such as foot touching and earlobe commemoration of an old caliph or guru. In Hindustani classical music a clear but abstract inner logic is created by pure musical notes. They cannot be algorithm-driven in a way that undermines their inner logic. Nor is genuine classical and semi-classical music an eye-rolling conveyor belt carrying misclassified socio-political and gender baggage.
The world of musical performance today is like a bustling international airport, its perimeters filled with crowds of people eager to break through all the queues and run. But before you can run, you must learn to walk. Organic communication in music breaks down between traditional artists due to Gen Z’s lack of complete knowledge of local languages and artists’ ignorance of English. Without open and consistent communication today’s concert-goers nor young fusion enthusiasts and their marketing managers can figure out what and how they want to communicate. When the Prime Video show Bandish Dakuru opens and the two main characters exchange (ordinary) lines from an Urdu poem written by a shady shayar, both mispronounce a key word “Kha Ma Khwah”. Slippery is like grit under the teeth. The young singers and performers in the role of host seem largely ignorant of the correct musical idioms of the local languages and introduce the performers and prisoners in pidgin Hinglish, mispronounce names and play drums of embarrassingly false enthusiasm with lots of lights flashing and popping. fireworks
It doesn’t work.
Good music doesn’t look good but sounds good. Old-timers will recall the likes of Kumar Gandharva seated, in an electric-blue cashmilon pullover, and Mallikarjun Mansoor in a slip-on sherwani. Those representatives of the noble heritage refused to feed on the petty snobbery of the new patrons of Indian art.
Stories fed to the general public by uninformed members of old gharanas provide little insight into the organic structure of gharana music. They try to force-feed young filmmakers myths and non-secular mumbo jumbo about the true religious identity of the Sufi or saint-poet who blessed their Guru and Ganga-Jamuni Tehjeeb, or share some stories about the miracles performed by their maestro’s music. . But such vidyas do not lead to an understanding of music which helps in fusing tunes and creating real joda-ragas like the veterans of the Jaipur Atrauli gharana effortlessly created.
What we have here, only the ignorant will be able to heal the deep communal wounds running through the soul of India today. Have you ever wondered why so many classical music and dance artists feel the need to join and plead with government delegations who peddle “soft culture”? Why many of them choose to go to foreign lands to give tuition to NRI children?
With our great artistic traditions damaged by mindless politicization and communal violence, churning out shows about India’s syncretic culture makes no sense. Even in a music college in Kasauli, you can’t produce shiny new fusion music with the help of odd-looking teachers, while outside, in real life, groups of politically protected fanatics defy court orders to continue digging up ancient monuments in search. The monolithic culture of the Treta Yuga.
The author is the former president of Prasar Bharati
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