I heard this rendition by Rashid Khan of a composition in Gaud Malhar late last night and have probably listened to it five times since. It’s part of a long interview punctuated by performances (a more accurate account of the programme would need me to phrase that the other way round) which – from the appearance of those taking part – must have been recorded by DD Bangla about 20 years ago. Like smoke, grey swirls have surfaced in the singer’s hair; over the years, they will give way to black. Rashid Khan, here, is in the first visible flowering of middle age: it gives his still-youthful face an inwardness and his music serenity. He was in very good voice that day.
Which day it was we don’t know – but, given he’s asked to sing so many Malhars (Miya; Ramdasi; Gaud) – we assume we’re in the rainy season. As the raga is a season- and time-related observance, we know this much when we hear a live recording of a khayal performance about which we have little information: that it was very likely performed in the morning if it’s a morning raga, in the spring if it’s a raga of the springtime, that it’s evening at that moment if it’s a raga like Kedar being sung, and that it was or had been raining 60 years ago if someone – say, Kishori Amonkar – was singing Miyan ki Malhar in a concert. If all we know is that the Miya Malhar was performed in 1967, then it occurred between June and September, and not in November.
The past comes back as an unfolding of the present; through the live recording of the raga, we’re introduced to the past’s longstanding transitoriness. The studio recording can be done at any time, and availability of recording space and time determine what you have to fit in and when: you might end up recording the night-time Jaijaiwanti in the afternoon. You don’t do such a thing live, unless you’re demonstrating or discussing a raga: not just because you’ll disappoint the audience but because the live performance is an opportunity to pay homage to the time of day and year.
The singer performing Shree, say, is paying homage to dusk. The live recording captures that moment of acknowledgement in a way the studio recording can’t. When we listen to the recording of a singer singing Kedar before an audience, we are brought close to the evening that day. We are also listening to that audience listening, though we may not be able to hear them. They’re all caught up in a specific moment in time. It’s a particular moment, and the world contained in it, that we encounter when we hear a live recording of a raga.
Rashid Khan was in good voice that day, and I include this recording in these “acts of retrieval” because there are no other recordings by him, at least as far as I know, of Gaud Malhar. As a performance, too, this stands alongside his four or five most captivating (all of them live): the New York recordings of Bageshri and Kedar released by Moment Records; the Chhaya Nat he sang for a DD Bharti series curated by Shujaat Khan; and the Jhinjhoti bandish he sang at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai.
This Gaud Malhar brings back to us everything we know and also what we don’t know we know, as historical beings, about the cultural lineage of the rains in this country: because we belong, as Indians, both to our particular time and to all time. What is known and recognisable brings a smile to the faces of the excellent accompanists, Samar Saha on tabla and Rajyarshee Ghosh on harmonium.
Among these are the raga, which unveils itself even as it adorns itself: we recognise it as we see more and more of it appear and, at once, change; we have long cherished certain features, like the sa re ga ma ga ma (always ending on the repose of ma, the fourth) and the dha ni (komal) pa. We behold these like the attributes of a young girl we have known and loved like we do a daughter or childhood friend. These phrases could so easily be raga-identifying proprieties: in a certain kind of performance, they will become a chance to glimpse a beloved form and set of features.
What we don’t know we know about ourselves causes Samar Saha and Rajyasree Ghosh and Rashid Khan’s interlocutor Srijan Bhattacharya to shake their heads from side to side or nod briefly; it makes the singer occasionally sink into ennui.
As Indians who have lived forever, again and again through the rain and its history, we are, like the speaker in Jibanananda Das’s Banalata Sen, exhausted by the ages we’ve traversed. Then, towards the end, the singer perks up and responds surreptitiously with his eyes to a person invisible to us, who’s telling him he has two minutes remaining. It’s over; the ending must be seamlessly and professionally managed; the recital-conversation was one among the singer’s recurring responsibilities; the programme has ended.
Amit Chaudhuri is a writer, a Hindustani classical vocalist, and a composer of crossover music.
