How Amjad Ali Khan thinks of classical music in the pop-digital-social-media age

Over the years, I have seen a change in the attitude of disciples. While some are epitomes of dedication and grace, others want to become superstars overnight and, in the process, shift their focus away from their path to the extent of disagreeing with and questioning what the guru has to say. Classical music is not for someone who is in search of glamour and overnight fame. Hours and years of practice and dedication go into the making of a classical musician.

Today, electronic and social media are largely encouraging the kind of music which is not classical. But true classical musicians are not created by the media. The listeners of our country are fairly selective. Nobody can impose an artist on them. The only way for a young musician to succeed is to work hard, practise rigorously and maintain strict discipline. This is not restricted to music alone, but extends to Indian rules of etiquette (tehzeeb and tameez) as well.

I disagree with those who say that Indian classical music is a dying art form.

We must understand a few things here. It was never for the masses to begin with. It was originally performed only in private mehfils, with concert hall performances being a recent phenomenon. Today, classical musicians perform at venues like Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House to packed auditoriums. You are talking about an audience fighting against the countless television channels at home!

Likewise, in India, when I see huge venues filling up, I don’t think we can really complain. It is the responsibility of the artist to make the youth relate to their music. The kind of attention that Bollywood and the fashion industry are receiving today from mainstream media, Indian classical music got three decades ago! In the 1960s and ’70s, musicians would play ragas for two to three hours. Frankly, after maybe an hour, it was all repetition.

However, due to this attitude of artists who perhaps wanted to prove a point, a section of listeners drifted away to easy listening. One must keep in mind that no books or shastras ever mentioned how classical music should be presented. By bringing it in sync with the times, one cannot be faulted for diluting it at all.

I believe in being traditional, not conventional. In the early 1980s, I had recorded an album of short pieces around ragas. At the time, I was criticised for not going into too much detail of the ragas, but I am happy that today this has become a trend. I see the great legacy of Indian classical music being carried forward by brilliant young musicians who have a ready-made repository – painstakingly put together by my contemporaries and me through years of hard work and research – to build on.

Thanks to the internet, websites like YouTube, gadgets like iPods, and DVDs and CDs, we can be in every home in the world. It makes me happy to see dedicated young musicians who are also committed performers. I wish them a bright and successful future and I am sure that our classical music and legacy will flourish not only in India but all over the world. I am also heartened by the response of the rest of the world to our country and its musical tradition.

I have often observed that many Indian musicians, both vocalists and instrumentalists, look down upon lighter music, like popular songs.

I feel that playing songs on a classical instrument is a challenge and doing so without changing the interpretation of the songs is a great responsibility. Back in the day, many renowned vocalists often recorded songs, both devotional and nationalistic, on 78 RPMs and EPs. We can never forget the divine rendition of DV Paluskar’s Payoji mainay or Omkarnath Thakur’s rousing Vande mataram. Contemporary classical vocalists too have contributed to popularising devotional songs and bhajans.

The story of the instrumental world is a little different. The closest an instrumentalist came to playing songs would be lines of popular thumri songs. However, to play a song exactly as it was composed, note for note, was not the mandate of instrumentalists, and even if it was, the version would keep changing, almost like a game of Chinese whispers!

South Indian instrumental music, however, has a unique tradition encompassing the use of the veena, violin and nadaswaram, and the instrumental interpretations of vocal forms. The universal character of music is that every song is always based on the same twelve notes. Despite all the amazing discoveries happening today, no one has as yet created a thirteenth note!

I have always been keen to bridge the gap between a classical listener and an uninitiated listener and therefore became one of the earlier instrumentalists to convey the message of playing and recording songs like Vaishnav jana to, Ram dhun and Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekla cholo re for the past many decades. In fact, I recorded whole albums with such songs, like Tribute to Tagore, a project with Suchitra Mitra in which I played eight songs on the sarod. I also recorded an album for children in 1984, in which I played the popular nursery rhyme, Old MacDonald Had a Farm! A child’s excitement upon listening to these songs was a treat. The initiation was done.

I feel thrilled to see the technical industry taking the music world by storm.

It seems that today an artist is incomplete if he or she is not well versed in technology, particularly sound technology and its intricacies. An artist has to be able to do everything these days, from handling a laptop on stage to playing a raga created in the fifteenth century! I have rarely been concerned about the technical aspects of recording music, which seem to consume the present generation of musicians as well as music lovers. It is the substance of music that matters. However well or uniquely the music is recorded, it is the music that makes it worthwhile and not the recording technique.

We listen with enchantment to three-minute records of musicians like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan or DV Paluskar on shellac, a technique that is now outdated and obsolete, from four or five decades ago. These three-minute recordings possess three lifetimes of pure bliss. That is because the art was greater than the recording technique.

Though I have many studio recordings, I am personally a supporter of live recordings. They capture the immediacy and surprise of public concerts. There is an old saying: “Aspects of music, cooking and a turban never come out the same way twice.” These recordings have a particular magic. They will never be repeated. Next time round, they might be better, or not, but they will never be exactly the same.

Those who listen to a live recording will feel the electricity that accompanies concerts, which is its principle thrill and pleasure. That it can happen in this fashion again and again, in the lives of so many musicians, is what has kept this art alive and dynamic through the centuries. A live recording, which has no retakes, is indeed a tribute to art. It is time to realise that we must learn to balance technology with tradition.

I am often questioned about the contradiction between being a purist and being a successful musician.

The outcome of such a discussion generally depends on who a purist is, or who a popular musician is. The truth of the matter is that every creative person in the world would like to be famous and popular. For a musician, the most important thing is that the music should be appealing and soothing. When I am playing, I feel a constant presence of a higher power, one that brings us to this world and takes us away as well. For someone like me, who grew up in an atmosphere of classical music, with strong values of tradition and humanity, every moment has been possible because of the guidance and protection of this power in a world that is full of hope and, at the same time, disappointment.

All great musicians became famous with their three-minute recordings of 78 RPM for HMV (now Saregama) and Hindustan records. Later, 45 RPM came in, followed by LPs then CDs/DVDs and now iTunes. According to all the “greats”, including my father, music is best characterised by quality, not quantity. Very few musicians are trendsetters. Today, 95 per cent of musicians are following a conventional way of presentation but if we look deeper, we realise that tradition itself allows innovations.

Often a three-minute film song by any playback singer seems more appealing than a long rendition of a raga. Of course, any song, classical or popular, is based on the age-old seven musical notes – Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. What matters eventually is the music, its effect and the realisation of the twelve notes of music.

There is an old story about a young musician who sang for the first time on stage.

Seeing so many people in the audience, the young musician was deeply inspired and lost track of time. After two hours, when he opened his eyes, he was disappointed to see that only two people remained. The musician thanked them and said, “You are the most knowledgeable members of the audience; the non-musical people have left the auditorium.”

Of the two, one said, “I am sorry I am waiting to wind up the stage and the PA system.” The musician thanked the other person, who replied, “I am waiting for my turn to perform.” The musician was shocked and disappointed. The message of this story is the importance of a sense of proportion and brevity in any profession.

Excerpted with permission from the “Introduction” to Master on Masters, Amjad Ali Khan, Penguin Viking.