The Rediff Special/Mohan Nadkarni

His music was powerful and dramatic, ornamental and virile, live and sprightly -- all at the same time

It is significant that for Bhimsen, who had gone almost crazy after listening to the recorded music of Abdul Karim Khan, he should have found his mentor in the Ustad's chief disciple. His apprenticeship under Sawai Gandharva for five years was arduous but rewarding, too. It struck the keynote of Bhimsen's career. For the master encouraged his pupil to accompany him on his concert tours and hear the recitals of several contemporary masters of the time from all over the country.

This exposure helped Bhimsen in two ways. It helped him widen his musical understanding and aesthetic appreciation. Side by side, the impressionable youngster developed, unconsciously though, a keen insight into the psychology of the audiences -- their moods, whims and preferences.

On his return home from his guru, Bhimsen continued his riyaz for one year. Overcome by wanderlust, he left Gadag for Bombay, from where he moved to Rampur and Lucknow. His sojourns at these musical citadels helped him enrich his knowledge of khayal and thumri. His travels finally ended in late 1942, when he rushed back home in the wake of the developments after the Japanese invasion of Burma during World War II.

The post-freedom years ushered in a new era of change and resurgence in several fields of human endeavour. But the kind of changes in the performance and appreciation of Hindustani music would seem to be almost cataclysmic -- the likes of which were never in evidence in its long chequered history.

That was the time when many a traditional artists might well have been at a loss to know the patron from whom he was supposed to perform. He might also have found himself on the horns of a dilemma: should be undergo the ordeal of keeping his tradition alive with no compromises, or realign his practices to the varied tastes of his new class of audience, with its own moods and caprices?

A traditionalist by temperament and training, Bhimsen Joshi, it would appear, gradually evolved a new approach that was designed to strike a balance between what may be termed traditional values and new mass-culture tastes. To popularise what is classical is inevitably to vulgarise it a little, and therefore, opinions will always differ on the relative merits of such an approach. Be that as it may, a gradual change in the content and character of Bhimsen's music began to reveal itself in the late fifties.

For example, his khayal compositions in slow tempo always had an excellent start. The raga unfolding that followed also often held out the promise of a perfectly integrated form -- broad in conception, with a judicious amalgam of alap and gamak, boltaan and taan. But the serene, reposeful mood, created earlier, would get steadily vitiated, if not totally lost, in the later stages, when the artiste would startle his listeners with a profusion of vigorous, cascading taans -- at times even before the formal enunciation of the antara!

Particularly disturbing was the degree of force and animation that went with their execution. While they were ingenious and complex in design, they also sounded erratic in effect. It was, as though, he was hell-bent to prove that he had a voice that he could mould to do anything he wished. To me, as to those who were used to hear him sing much better in the past, the new elements were totally incompatible with the caressive character of the Kirana gayaki. If anything, they only seemed to have been designed to please his mixed audiences.

After I took to writing for The Times of India as its columnist and then as its music critic in the mid-fifties, I became a regular Bhimsen listener. I have attended and reviewed his Bombay concerts so many times that it is difficult for me to recount them. Till late 1979, my reaction to my performances was either one of agony of ecstasy, depending on their quality or, rather, the condition or mood in which he came to perform on the stage.

During this period, covering almost two decades, Bhimsenji had also taken to drinking which varied from moderate to excessive. His performances on such occasions were lacklustre. His monumental voice, with its amazing volume, depth and range, which would otherwise grip his listeners with the very opening shadja, was devoid of clarity and sharpness.

If his raga depiction showed massive form, it lacked a sense of design. Yet there was no diminution in his popularity. He had built up a permanent audience of his own. To such an audience, nothing else mattered once the maestro came on the platform!

Fortuitously, even amid the plethora of concerts of uneven quality, there were occasions, though few, when Bhimsenji showed himself in the best of his moods. Those were probably the occasions when he was either completely sober or moderately inebriated. He would sing passionately and expansively and take his listeners to ecstatic heights to share his pure, sensuous joy with them.

In late 1979, Bhimsenji appeared to have decided to abstain completely from drinking and to generally tidy up his daily routine in the interest of his health and professional career. Only from then on were we able to see, once again, the magnificent dimensions of his singing. Strands from the styles of great masters, whom he met and heard, and also those from whom he tried to learn in the course of his relentless rambling, were now found woven imperceptibly into his gayaki.

As a result, his music came to embody a rare fusion of talent, intelligence and passion -- and something more. It was powerful and dramatic, ornamental and virile, live and sprightly -- all at the same time.

Paradoxical but true, Bhimsenji's repertoire of ragas looks not only limited, but he is also found singing certain ragas all too often. While he readily concedes that his repertoire is limited, he avers that the ragas he presents at concerts are all his forte, and that they suit his temperament and the character of his music. True enough, those who are au fait with his music would know how each of his favourite ragas sounds so differently every time he presents it.

Besides, he says he has no use for intricate and queer-sounding ragas for his concert fare. One cannot fail to notice, though, that his melodies like Chhaya-Malhar, Lalit-Bhatiyar and Marwa-Shree are available in their commercial recordings. It is a different matter, too, that in recent years, the maestro has chosen to include them in his concert performances -- presumably in response to popular demand.

By the way, the sustained popularity of his commercially recorded music and, more especially, the frequency with which new releases kept coming into the market till about five years ago, provide unimpeachable proof of the tremendous vogue he continues to enjoy outside the concert hall as well. He is the only Hindustani vocalist to have won the coveted Platinum Disc from His Master's Voice in the eighties, making history of sorts in the music market. Generally speaking, his recorded classical repertoire has come to maintain an all-time high.

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