In ‘50s and ‘60s almost all the All India Radio stations would reverberate with an extremely rich and deeply soulful voice of a Khayal singer: Pandit A Kanan (1922-2004). Later almost every young melodious voice claimed to have been initiated or trained by this legendary vocalist! Many of them are very well-known musicians and gurus now, settled all over the globe. In fact, when the ITC Sangeet Research Academy was established in 1978, it was Kanan Saheb (as he was popularly known), who joined the Academy as one of its gurus along with his and his wife Malabika Kanan’s students and admirers and continued to serve the cause of music till their last breath.
A clutch of Kanan Saheb’s Kolkata-based disciples, led by Pandit Jyoti Goho, renowned vocalists Arnab Chatterjee and Aniruddha Bhattacharya (a junior guru with the ITC SRA) decided to observe the birthday (18 June) of their beloved Guruji as a musical baithak (sit in). Following their mentor’s footsteps, who would organise such baithaks to promote young aspirants, the students plan to shape it as an annual get-together of all their guru-bhais and guru-behens. The first such warm, informal event saw Aniruddha as the main artiste of the evening along with Sumitra Chakraborty, one of the senior disciples of the master.
Kanan Saheb, is remembered as a liberal guru who never interfered in the personal lives of his disciples and gave them a long rope to choose their arena of interest after the initial grooming. As a result many of his disciples like Vidushi Purnima Chaudhuri and Dalia Rahut chose Thumri as their forte and learnt the art from other masters. Jyoti Goho chose to play harmonium. Among others Sandip Ghosh is a well-known exponent and guru of Khayal while Anjan Majumdar has emerged as an impressive trainer of Khayal, Thumri and composer of modern Bengali songs. Arnab Chatterjee was allowed by his guru to hone his skills under Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.
All this was possible because Kanan Saheb had a heart of gold with strong faith in one’s individuality. His life is an example of this. Born in Madras (Chennai), the haven of Carnatic music, it is intriguing how young Arkut Kannabhiram, a railway employee who aspired to play cricket and sing, got interested in Khayals, learnt the art at Hyderabad under the guidance of Pandit Lahanu Babu Rao, got posted to Kolkata and continued to learn from Sangeetacharya Girija Shankar Chakraborty. He made Kolkata his home after tasting the grand success as a debutant at the famed All Bengal Music Conference.
It was here that he met Ustad Amir Khan and became his gandabandh disciple. It was Bengal that hankered to listen to his rendering of ‘Laagi lagan sakhi pati sana’ a Khayal bandish attributed to Lord Shiva and made famous by his ustad in raga Hansadhwani. But after Kanan’s resounding success as a playback singer in Ritwik Ghatak’s immortal ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ the ustad refrained from singing it and let it have the stamp of Kanan as ‘Laagi lagan ‘sakhi’ pati sana.’
Least affected by the success, Kanan Saheb remained easily accessible. Like his individualistic singing style which was a mix of Kirana, Gwalior and Agra, his language was a sweet mix of Hindi, Bengali and English laced with heavy southern accent. He would accept any invitation, enter the stage dressed in shirt and trousers with a jacket carelessly thrown on his shoulders, tune his tanpuras immaculately, sing, and walk out to fulfil one of his several other commitments like teaching students from all walks of life, learning a new composition even from a youngster, helping needy veteran musicians, promoting young talent, tuning up his own precious tanpuras for other musicians’ recital or recordings, even pulling the rickshaw to take his beautiful wife to her destination (as seen by their peer Vidushi Meera Banerjee at Siliguri once)!
It was he who played a vital role in forming the Calcutta Music Circle to further the cause of music. During one of such baithaks Ajit Haksar, the then Chairman of ITC, heard Malabika Kanan’s scintillating rendition and wondered aloud whether musicians of such calibre could be the pillars of Hindustani classical music’s dream institution. The rest is history.
Quite plausibly, the birthday celebration had a heavy undertone of nostalgia.
