Shimla (earlier spelt as Simla) was declared the ‘Summer Capital’ of the British Empire in India in 1864 under the Viceroyalty of John Lawrence and retained this status till 1947 when India became independent. The capital moved to Shimla in early April and moved back to the plains – earlier to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and later to New Delhi – only in early November. As the British Empire in India had its jurisdiction from Aden to the west, to Myanmar in the east, nearly one-fifth of the human race was ruled from Shimla.
This year, the government of Himachal Pradesh is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Shimla becoming the summer capital of India. Its Department of Tourism and Civil Aviation and Department of Language, Art and Culture collaborated with the Delhi government’s Punjabi Academy to organise a five-day Shimla Classical Music Festival, the first of its kind in the history of the hill city, from September 17 to September 21 at the historic Gaiety Theatre where K. L. Saigal had sung publicly for the first time.
While Shimla was not a stranger to programmes of Hindustani classical music, this was the first time that its residents were offered a full-fledged ‘festival’ of five days. Judging from the way Gaiety Theatre was overflowing on all the three days that this writer attended the Fest; the event was a roaring success. It must also be mentioned that chief minister Virbhadra Singh sat through the entire programme on the first day and his example was followed by his ministerial colleague Col. Dhani Ram Shandil and other chief guests on subsequent days. This showed the government’s commitment to promoting classical music in the state and the festival looked poised to become an annual affair.
While the performances cast a spell on the audiences that eagerly lapped up everything and stayed till the very end, they left discerning listeners a little disappointed. The festival opened with a vocal performance by the well-known artiste, Begum Parveen Sultana, who chose the serene raga Puriya Dhanashree to begin her recital. She sang a vilambit ektaal khayal composition ‘Laagi Mori Lagan’ and struggled for some time with her voice that did not sound in the best of shape. While she eventually gained her form, her notes continued to slip and one was somewhat disconcerted to have an occasional glimpse of shuddha dhaivat in mandra saptak.
After rendering bol-alaps for a few minutes, she went straight for the sargams and used them for elaborating the raga. Instead of bol-taans, she preferred sargam-laced taans and after displaying her usual vocal acrobatics, concluded the bada khayal in a matter of ten minutes. The chhota khayal in madhyalaya teentaal ‘Payaliya Jhankar Mori’ too was given a fleeting treatment with undue emphasis on sargam and hitting upper register notes. Even her tarana in Hansadhvani had a profusion of sargams rather than the usual tarana bols. It was rather unusual to listen to an artiste singing a Hindi film song after rendering a Meera bhajan, but Parween Sultana was in a mood to play to the gallery and regaled the audiences with her famous song from film “Kudrat”, “Hamen Tumse Pyar Kitna”. She concluded her recital with the trademark Bhairavi composition ‘Bhavani Dayani’. Despite her Kirana training, it is difficult to find the kirana-type sur-lagav in her taiyyari-based singing. She was accompanied by Girish Nalawade on tabla and Srinivas Acharya on harmonium.
The second day’s programme featured an ill-conceived jugalbandi between the vocalist duo Jawad Ali Khan and Mazhar Ali Khan of Patiala gharana and Banaras’ shehnai exponent Daya Shankar. A jugalbandi is not simply playing together but a musical dialogue between artistes of equal calibre. For a jugalbandi to succeed, the artists must be on the same musical wavelength and must understand each other. However, this jugalbandi lacked these basic characteristics and produced a lot of cacophony instead of music. As the vocalists, grandsons of the one and only Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, were bent upon singing their gharana repertoire and invoking the name of the legendary forefather at every step, Daya Shankar was reduced to playing second fiddle by reproducing their vocalisms.
Moreover, Jawad and Mazhar were not in a mood to offer him much space for playing despite being off-key. They began with Yaman, went on to Kedar, Punjabi Mand, Kafi in Pahadi, and bhajan ‘Hari Om Tatsat’. At this point, Daya Shankar got a chance to play solo and render a Banarasi thumri along with his son Ashwani Shankar. The jugalbandi concluded with all of them rendering Meera bhajan ‘Pag Gunghroo Bandh’. It was a duel rather than a duet. Mithilesh Jha on tabla, Vinay Mishra on harmonium, Anand Shankar on tabla/dukkal and Yogesh Shankar on sur shehnai provided adequate accompaniment.
Chhannulal Mishra, accompanied by his son Ramkumar Mishra on tabla, was his usual kathavachak self on the third day. He mesmerised the audience by his versatile rendering of khayal, thumri, dadra, chaiti, jhoola and Kevat episode from “Ramcharit Manas”. Mohan veena exponent Vishwamohan Bhatt and famous vocalists Rajan Mishra-Sajan Mishra were the other artists who performed on the fourth and the fifth day of the festival respectively.
