The magic of Akhtar
JYOTI NAIR BELLIAPPA
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She would have turned 90 had she been alive. Begum Akhtar's singing made peers envious and delighted admirers.
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GHAZAL QUEEN: Begum Akhtar performing at an AIR concert. (File photo).
Had she been alive, Akhtari Begum Faizabadi would have turned 90 in October this year. The life of this `mallikai-ghazal,' as she came to be known, was an exercise in excellence. Begum Akhtar grew beyond the confines of her social class to adopt a style of music that was the envy of her peers and the delight of her admirers.
Begum Akhtar's own life reflected the truism of Ghalib's couplet, `Ishq se tabiyat ne, zeest ka mazaa paaya, dard ki dava paayi, darde-la-dava paaya.' Thus she believed that the joy of living comes from the intensity of love, which is both an anodyne for pain and a pain without redress. Trained as a classical singer by Ustad Imdad Khan, Ata Mohammad Khan of Patiala gharana and Abdul Waheed Khan of Kirana gharana and Jhande Khan Sahib, she chose to focus her voice and talent in perfecting the art of ghazal rendition. Her style embraced the earthiness and sweetness of Purabi, Avadhi and Bhojpuri angs and the sophistication of the princely courts.
She articulated the words of the composition as sounds, using the long vowels as flowing melodic arches and the hard consonants as pillars that supported them, never losing the musicality and the meaning of the poetry. She leaned heavily on the phonemes, highlighting the sharp sibilants, the harsh gutturals, the nasal throaty or breathy consonants. She used the `khayal gayaki' with astonishing effect. Her `khatkas' and `pattis' were renowned and greeted with predictable rapture. Only she could do justice to lines such as `voh jo hamme tum me karar tha tumhe yaad ho ke n yaad ho' (the love that we both cherished, you may or may not remember).
Purists feel that music is articulate only in its own language. Therefore, the poetry of Mir Momin and Ghalib was not even to be recited in `tarranum' as it could disturb the word structure and the natural flow of the line. However, Begum Akhtar sang the ghazal with such insight that both poetry and music were enhanced.
In her rendition, she leaned heavily on the thumri form, where the poetry is suggestive and offers multiple meanings. In her deft handling, even ordinary poetry was transformed. It became the desire of every aspiring poet to have his poetry sung by Akhtari Begum.
She kept track of both the meaning of the words and the flow of the music endowing the ghazal as a genre with renewed possibilities.
There was a close correspondence between the dynamics of the couplet and the ebb and flow of the music and the second line invariably brought to life the first one. The full significance of the literary form termed `ghazal' emerged from here.
The first `sher' merely registered a thought while the second couplet brought out the philosophy within it. Before she matured as a singer, she also successfully acted and sang in 10 movies.
The Padma Bhushan award which she received posthumously only endorsed what the connoisseurs had always known: her substantial contribution to both music and poetry.
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