Literature and music share a complex relationship although both deal with sounds and turn them into meaningful expression. However, their treatment is very dissimilar as literature deals with ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions while music deals with only feelings and emotions. When they interact with each other, the interaction often results in the expansion and enrichment of both the art forms. Many tomes have been written on Hindustani music dealing with various forms like classical, semi-classical, folk and film music but there is hardly any book that focuses on the complexity of the relationship between literature and music.
Cover of Mukesh Garg’s book
This gap was filled when Mukesh Garg, who retired from Delhi University’s Hindi Department as Associate Professor, selected and edited articles that dealt with the literature-music tango and produced two volumes of “Sahitya aur Sangeet” (Literature and Music). It speaks volumes about the state of intellectual curiosity in the worlds of both Hindi and Hindustani music that, although Vani Prakashan brought them out more than five years ago in 2014, they have not received adequate attention.
Mukesh Garg and his family are living examples of the way literature can gainfully combine with music. He trained in violin and one of his gurus happened to be N. Rajam, the foremost exponent of violin in Hindustani classical music who honed her musical skills under the guidance of the legendary Omkar Nath Thakur. He also edited the monthly magazine “Sangeet” for more than twenty years. And, herein lies a tale that many may not be familiar with.
Sharp message
The wider world of Hindi literature has not forgotten Kaka Hathrasi (September 18, 1906 - September 18, 1995) who was the uncrowned king of Kavi Sammelans because of his extraordinary wit and a rare ability to compose funny poems on the spot. Although his poetry was satirical and comic in nature, it also contained sharp social and political messages. His real name was Prabhulal Garg and he was Mukesh Garg’s uncle. While the world knew him as hasya-kavi Kaka, he had another persona that was as much, if not more, important as his public one. He was an expert in Hindustani classical music and his services to the cause of its promotion remain unsung.
In 1932, Prabhulal Garg established Sangeet Karyalaya in his home town Hathras in western Uttar Pradesh and collected, edited and published old treatises on classical and other forms of music. He himself wrote many books and launched a monthly Hindi magazine titled “Sangeet” in 1935. It was the only magazine of its kind and there was a time when musicians such as Ravi Shankar wrote for it. It carried informative articles on gharanas, history of music, forms of vocal and instrumental music and introductory books about various musical instruments and the technique of their playing. Later, Kaka’s nephews Lakshmi Narayan Garg and Mukesh Garg helped him in editing the magazine which, though past its prime, survives to this day.
Little wonder that Mukesh Garg emerged as a highly regarded musicologist in addition to being an authority on that period of medieval Brajbhasha poetry that is known as Reetikaal in Hindi academic circles. He also established a pan-Indian organisation Sangeet Sankalp towards the end of 1980 to provide platform for struggling young musicians and to promote and propagate Hindustani music. Now, it has nearly 125 chapters in various cities and towns all over India.
The two-volume “Sahitya aur Sangeet” is a veritable treasure trove and contains 71 articles penned by the likes of Acharya Brihaspati and Prabhudayal Meetal. They cover the entire history of the evolution of Hindustani music, right from the Vedic age to the present day and offer informative as well as analytical articles that tell us about the way music has shaped up the country’s cultural life. One finds articles on music in Buddhist Pali literature and orchestra in Buddhist art, music in our epics, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, Kalidasa’s works as well as Shudrak’s plays, music in the Sikh tradition as well as in the Vaishnavite Haveli sangeet, the relationship between music and the works of Surdas and other Ashtachhaap poets, Sufi music and the evolution of qawwali and other forms.
They also discuss the contribution of Panditraj Jagannath – the last great aesthetic theorist in the long tradition of Sanskrit poetics– to Brajbhasha poetry and the region’s music, musical compositions of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah ‘Rangeela’, musicality in Hindi poets like Prasad and Nirala, the element of thumri in Rajasthani folk songs, and indifference to the words of the bandish in khayal singing.
Mukesh Garg has written an introduction that raises many questions – some of them methodological – about the complex nature of the relationship between literature and music. Only scholarship based on rigorous research can find answers to them.
