Jyoti Goho speaks:

Text version

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Verbatim by: Dr. Suranjita Paul

 Translation:

The next day he went to play a cricket match and played all day. In the evening all the colleagues who had gone to play were on their way back together in a bus. When the bus was crossing AkashvaniBhavan, he noticed that Akashvani Bombay was written in large letters. The moment he noticed that, he asked his colleagues to stop the bus and accompany him inside where he wanted to do a voice test. His colleagues were astonished and said “What! You! Gurujiwas very calm. He asked his friends “Yes, I want to do. Why don’t you come with me? I want to do a voice test.”

However his friends were little bit puzzled. They anxiously said “We didn’t know that you sing. And if you go inside you’ll get beaten up, and you’ll get us beaten up too. We can’t go.” So Guruji said, “Okay, let me off the bus.” Guruji had always been a brave man, he was a sportsman. He was brave, but he was also curious to find out how his voice would sound. They let him off the bus and drove off.

He went straight inside. In those days, there wouldn’t be many recordings, so it used to be empty in the evening. AllaRakha Khan sahib, who was a staff of Akashvani Bombay, along with the sarengi player Hamid Hussaid, and the Station Director were sitting together in a room and drinking tea. When he appeared at the doorway, the Station Director asked, “What do you want?” And Guruji gave him the same answer. He said, “I want to do a voice test.” AllaRakha Khan sahib and Hamid Hussain laughed, because it was an unusual occurrence. But the Station Director was very enthusiastic about it and he said, “Okay, Okay, I’ll see what can be done.” He went to the next room and asked the technicians to set everything up. In those days microphones were needed to be fixed before the recording, it couldn’t be used straightaway as it can be now. The technicians came and set everything up. Then he asked Guruji to sit in front of the microphone and sing. The sarengi player asked for his scale. Guruji replied, “I don’t know.” So he said, “Then how will I play? I have to choose the right scale.” Then Guruji said, “I’ll sing the tune, you can figure it out from that.” At that time, Abdul Karim Khan used to sing in F#. If he sang without any accompaniments in F#, the pitch wouldn’t be correct. But when he sang, it sounded like he was singing in F#. So Hamid Hussain Khan sahib said, “Oh! You will sing in such a high pitch? But this is the pitch that Abdul Karim Khan sings in.” To this, Guruji said, “Yes, this is me.” That is all he said.

When AllaRakha Khan was about to start playing the tabla, Guruji said, “No, no, I won’t be able to sing with that.” He had no sense of rhythm. But Khan sahib said in Hindi, “No, no, you sing. I’ll keep pace with you.” That is, he would adjust. Anyway, Maalkosh was the first song he had heard, so he sang as much of the bandish as he could remember. He sang for one and a half minutes or so. He was never been in a classical music before the first concert that he had heard with his father. He said, “I won’t be able to sing any more. I’m done.” They didn’t say anything either.

The Station Director said, “You sit here, I’ll be back.” When he returned, he had a contract form with him. He said, “Take this contract form home. After three months, you’ll have to sing three times for the radio in one day.” In those days there would be live broadcast of three ragas, each for half an hour.” Guruji was frightened. He said, “No no, I didn’t come here to sing, I don’t want to sing, I don’t want to sing, it was just my voice….” And they were saying, “No, you must sing.” AllaRakha sahib and Hamid Hussain sahib said, “You go home and tell your father that we have said that you have to sing.” They thought that since he had such a great voice, he would sing. Guruji couldn’t understand anything, and they were very insistent.

He came and told his father about the contract form and his father was very surprised because he wasn’t aware of the fact that his son could sing. So he said, “Is that so? Did you sing for them?” And he said, “Yes, a little bit.” So he took him to the music room and said, “Sing me what you sang for them.” So he repeated the performance. That was the first time his father felt that he had music in him. But in three months’ time he would have to sing three ragas for half an hour each. He needed to prepare. It would be very difficult. He would have to sing three ragas for morning, noon, and night. Then his father had a brainwave. He appointed three teachers for the three different ragas so that the student wouldn’t confuse one raga with the other, because he had shortage of time to manage all the three ragas. Then he did sing for the radio after three months.

So this is something we have heard from him, we had asked him, “Guruji, how did you feel during your first recording?” He had replied, “Twenty minutes after I sang, I felt like I had nothing left. Like everything was over. Then it felt like e repetition, because how much could one do in so little time.” Anyway, he did sing, that is how he began to learn, or maybe it was the beginning of his desire to learn, and then he recorded his first song for the radio.

 Translated by:Sarbajaya Bhattacharya

Picture Courtesy: Google

http://elvispelvis.com/ustadallarakha.htm

https://www.discogs.com/artist/3767817-Ustad-Hamid-Hussain-Khan

Edited & Designed: Dr.Suranjita Paul

Place tag has been kept ‘Kolkata-South’ as Pt. A. Kanan spent most part of his life in southern part of Kolkata – Editor

Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University