Singing doesn’t need a good voice, after all

We seek teachers, who will impart the subtlety of ragas, not a mere voice instructor

‘‘Your voice is good!” is a left handed compliment to serve a Carnatic or Hindustani vocalist. Sheila Dhar, in her hugely entertaining book Raga and Josh, recounts her attempt to get a master of Kirana Gharana to accept her as his disciple. On hearing her sing he makes an astonishing remark: “The problem is you have a good voice,” and goes on to say its like a beautiful woman who can make her presence felt even without saying or doing anything. A singer with a good voice would make an impact even without any learnt skills and is that much less open to receiving those skills from a guru.

Mastery over ragas

The crux of performing Indian music is the internalisation of a knowledge system of ragas and their innumerable nuances, to express which performing skills are developed. We accord centrality to mastery over ragas, not just an analytic understanding, but to have internalised them so that ‘raga devataas’ dance when one performs.

Ananda Coomaraswamy observed that it is not important how the Indian musician sings, but what she sings. According to T.K. Govinda Rao, it is not the voice that sings, but your jnanam (musicianship). Begum Akhtar, on a horrified look from an admirer when he sees her smoking and drinking a cold beverage before a concert, is said to have asked, “gaanaa kyaa gale se gaayaa jaatha hai?” — Does one sing with the voice?

This dismissal of the voice does fit in well with the absence of an extensive treatment of ‘voice culture’ as in the West. We seek teachers who will primarily impart us the knowledge of ragas, not a voice instructor as a student of the West would!

What we have by way of voice training is akaara sadhakaam — wake up before dawn, and sing the

varisai or patterns with an a-kaara or the ‘aa’ sound, and, in an earlier generation, standing in chest deep water. The questionable idea is perhaps that the cold will send your teeth and other organs chattering, including the voice thereby loosening it, rendering it flexible. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer reportedly practised this on the advice of Gottuvadyam Sakharam Rao. He also confessed that this did take its toll on his body in later years. But, it does pay dividends in giving a sound grip on madhyamakalam, the basic texture of Carnatic music.

Hindustani singers practise Kharaj sadhana, which also involves waking up well before dawn; but instead of fast varisai or patterns traversing two octaves, they delve step by step into the lower ranges, a practice that steadies and strengthens the voice. Getting back to this mild disdain for the voice — certainly a peculiarity of our vocal music — what is prized is, for lack of a better word, the ‘spiritual’ dimension of the music — not in terms of the lyrics, but the quality of immersion one can achieve in the music, in the raga.

We value the music of seniors despite their physical infirmity because they bring in perspectives of raga that are simply not available to younger, more agile singers. The subtlety of raga can only be grasped after many years of engagement. And if the voice, a mere physical entity, becomes the primary concern, this could be a casualty.

The writer practises both streams of music