| Told by | Sri Debabrata Mukhapadhyay |
| Obtained by | Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee |
| Date | 28th September, 2016 |
| Place | Tarashankar Sarani, Tala, Kolkata |
| About the speaker | Associated to All India Radio, Kolkata. He presented several eye-opening discussions on Indian classical music. A poet, writer, and music connoisseur. |
| Tags | Mahajati Sadan ,1955-60, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Mian Ki Todi, Gurjari Todi, Taan, Bandish, Tarapada Chakraborty, Halak Taan, Dhaibat, Meer, Gandhar, meend |
| Language | Bengali |
Sri Debabrata Mukhapadhyay Speaks :
Verbatim:
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Verbatim: Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee
Translation:
In classical music circle a commonly used word is mood or mijaj. In Bengali, we use this word negatively, as someone having a bad mood but in music world it is connotative of his aesthetic sense and beauty of rendering his music. They have a humour of their own which cannot be perceived by common people but when they convert it into their music it became tangible and we can see their world a little.
I will tell you one such story. I cannot confirm the year, but we can say, 1955-60. Ustad Bade Ghulam ali Khan was performing in Mahajati Sadan. It was almost dawn and he was singing Gurjari Todi and he was a master in that raga. I can still hear his voice “bhor bhai tori bat kataka piya”. It was such a difficult Bandish. There is perhaps no one tossing the Bandish itself, except one. Pt. Tarapada Chakrabarty once sang us the difficult Bandish of “Mahmod Shah durbare Niyamat Khan diyat taan”. This song had a Halaak taan which creates waves of ocean in our heart. Now this song I was referring, Bade Ghulam Ali saab was creating the taana as a mountain stream in rain, coming down upon us in full force. He was creating magic through Gurjari Todi, he went to dhaibat from madhyam, suddenly a cow mooed out of nowhere and the whole magical mood was shattered. But here we are talking about a master and he suddenly changed his tone and through a meer he went from Dhaibat to Gandhar and somehow, he manages to mix his tone with that mooing sound. And the magic was recreated. Everyone cheered because the beauty remained unchanged.
Now I want to discuss something, in our classical musical texts it was said that every note was formed from some animal sound. But I believe it is a tendency in our culture to mark everything through a metaphor. I have recorded personally the different animal sounds to prove that. But it is not true. I have the recordings of cuckoo’s song; it goes from one note to another. Now in this case, gandhar was supposed to be the sound of a goat. Goat and cow are both herbivores, that much we can conclude but only a single sound cannot be identified as a note. You have to have a reference point to denote or identify a note. But anyway, Ghulam Ali Saab had that aesthetical knowledge and training to combine his voice that with the mooing and it was a delight to hear that ethereal music on that pre-dawn moment.
Translation By: Arundhati Banerjee
Edited & Designed: Ms. Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee
Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University.