I have decided to learn Hindustani classical music at the age of 67. I know that I am old but, then, music is older. I cannot be too old for it.
From the time I learnt to hear, certain kinds of popular music played on All India Radio inspired unbearable joy in me. I came to understand why only much later. It was because those film songs were based on raagas such as Malkauns, Piloo, Bhupali and Desh.
I had a good voice, but no one put me in a musical school. So, I sang as well as I could, without instruction by a disciplining teacher or accompaniment by a musical instrument. I simply sang as if there was no world without me and I did not exist without music.
As a Bengali, I identified myself instinctively with the sonorous rhythms and patterns of Rabindra sangeet, songs written by Rabindranath Tagore which often transgress the formal boundaries of raagas; and with Nazrulgeeti, the songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam which are far more raaga-observient but are rooted in the intimate inflections of the Bengali language.
I identified my cultural existence with the songs of those two master-Bengalis.
Both Rabindra sangeet and Nazrulgeeti drove me on, towards Hindustani and Carnatic classical music. Since I understood Hindi, my ears turned more easily towards Hindustani raaga-based songs.
Then, work and life took me to other places and experiences. The erotic immediacy of the raaga-based songs played on radio receded from me.
True, I could now identify the four raagas that I have mentioned, but they became vocal memories of my past, not conversational companions of my present.
Hearing myself again
Recently, I came across an advertisement produced by Artium Academy, an Indian online music learning platform that allows people anywhere in the world to learn Hindustani classical music (among many other vocal and instrumental choices). A free trial session followed. It opened my ears to myself again.
I was asked to sing a few lines of any song that I knew. I chose a Tagore song that did not challenge my poor breath control and my inability to rise to a heavenly treble or descend to an everlasting bass.
I sang, and thought that I would be laughed away. Instructor Ravi Mishra, who vetted me, noticed that I had gasped on both ascent and descent. He added, however, that I had remained faithful to sur, or the musical notes of sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni that constitute the foundational architecture of Indian music.
I thought that he was being polite to an old man till Ravi-ji, who does not understand Bengali, took the opening lines of the Tagore song I had sung and sang the music back to me without the words.
He captured the sur perfectly. I could tell that because I, too, had sung within the ambit of sur. What a surprise to a fallen devotee of music!
A week later, I had my first session with my teacher, Chaitanya Tambe. Speaking from Mandla in Madhya Pradesh to a learner in Telok Blangah in Singapore, Pandit-ji demonstrated the metaphysical materialism of music by telling me how it is rooted in our birth and environment and yet transcends both, one properly-taken breath, one rightly-sung note, one furtive foray into eternity at a time.
I have begun by practising deep breathing and aligning my breath to the depth and reach of my voice, as best as I can.
I am absolutely certain that I shall fail to reach the standards that even three-year-olds master. Their musical wanderings lie a lifetime ahead of them.
My wandering life lies behind me increasingly. The young have time to reach perfection. Perfection no longer has time for me.
Yet, the youngest singer who succeeds and the oldest singer who fails are united by the bonds of sur and raaga.
Musical notes are immune to the passage of time; their imaginative arrangements flourish in the flowering of time.
Either way, though, sur and raaga collaborate to celebrate the presence of humanity in time – humanity that learns to sing back to the universe in which it was created.
Please wish this old learner well, even when he fails.
