The sarangi player is the particle physicist or the long-distance runner of the music world. The similarities are not in what they do as much as in how they are — almost always inward people in everyday life as well as in the performance space. Their ‘performance space’ itself takes on a very different quality for them from that of others in their respective fields. They are part of the larger performing music community, and yet they stand apart. Now what came first — their inward personalities or the atmosphere surrounding their stream of music — is a matter of surmise and speculation.
Difficult choice
First, the instrument has not been vastly popular for some decades now. People do not ‘throng’ to a sarangi concert. The cognoscenti and the connoisseur will struggle upstream like salmon to attend a sarangi recital, but not a whole lot of classical music lovers will. Few people push and cajole their kids to learn the sarangi — partly because it is difficult and complex, even to hold and produce a sound from. And the sarangi is not a definite fixture on the concert and music festival, utsav , samaroha and sammelan circuit, not even in accompanying roles.
Second, for several decades, the sarangi was the instrument of choice for All India Radio and Doordarshan whenever state mourning was announced and programmes cancelled. For three days, there would be only protracted sarangi alaaps . It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to understand what happens to people and instruments officially relegated to a ‘call in the mourners’ tick box. They change. If they were introspective and introverted to start with, they became more so once tagged in this way. In most homes, the sarangi notes would be switched off in frustration until programming resumed. Fortunately, we had a grandfather who would wryly say, ‘come’, while everyone was pretending to be sad, ‘let’s enjoy this divine outpouring of sound’.
His only frustration was that there was no announcement or text identifying the performer. But then this was a grandfather who had in disgust dubbed our highly popular Hindi and Marathi singer of the time kinchaal kumari, which loosely translates as ‘screechy girl’. So his love and understanding of the sarangi was already a minority thing even then.
And yet, the elegiac quality of this instrument affects people even when they haven’t come solely to listen to it. Some years ago, at the finale of a concert dedicated to Kishori Amonkar, a line-up of percussion instruments was being readied and mic tests were going on. The sarangi was there just to hold the lehera or recurring tune that would hold the taal cycle in place.
Blown away
However, when the young sarangiya Sabir Khan played just a trial phrase, a shivering sigh or hai , as Begum Akhtar would have called it, ran through the audience. Which led tabla maestro Zakir Hussain to look up in happy surprise and exclaim: “We’re all playing something to test the mics, but you guys are blown away by just one movement of the bow of his sarangi?” Yet, the player kept his head firmly down. Perhaps it is the physical form of the instrument that dictates the performer look down, sarangi tucked under his chin. He holds it close, like you would a child. Is this too why flamboyance and playing to the galleries is rare in the sarangi player?
Sheila Dhar’s piece on Bundu Khan ‘Playing for the Flowers’ in her book Here’s Someone I’d Like You to Meet says it all. The instrument almost melded with the man, and the complete absence of worldliness... and how he simply vanished into the ether after Partition has all the dard and mithaas of the instrument and its players.
Hindi film music and the ghazal singer have given the sarangi a space of its own, mainly to provide understated pathos and poignancy. This may be a good place to start from, for anyone who wants to tune in.
A year or so ago, another quiet, inward sarangi player, Dhruba Ghosh, passed away suddenly, having performed just the previous day. As some of us trawled the internet for pieces by him, typically, there was little by way of recordings and videos out there.
We are fortunate to have now a small set of young players in our midst again. Some of them are goaded into ‘audience-connect’ during the performance. No need, I would say. The sarangi speaks, weeps, laughs, rumbles and trills on its own, and the performer can remain true to his reticent self.
The novelist is a counsellor and music lover who will take readers on a ramble through the Alladin’s cave of Indian music.
