The importance of being Bhimsen
LAKSHMI VISWANATHAN
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Connoisseurs as well as lay listeners have come under the spell of the doyen of the Kirana Gharana, Bhimsen Joshi. What makes the master so special?
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Mesmerising range: Bhimsen Joshi is a treasure-trove of histrionics and music.
A Bharat Ratna title entitles a great artist to just one day of media adulation. In Pune, Bhimsen Joshi was visited by officials and conferred the title. He spoke a few words of gratitude to the nation, but we couldn’t hear them because of poor sound recording. Never mind.... a few days later Doordarshan, in its quiet inimitable way, chose a Sunday afternoon to telecast an extensive interview of Bhimsen recorded a few years ago. The documentary had commendable video clips of the great man singing. Thank God for old fashioned DD !
Introduction to the maestro
I was introduced to the music of Bhimsen Joshi by my mother in the late 1960s. Half-way through a concert I whispered to my mother that the maestro’s mannerisms were distracting me. She merely said, “wait”. By the end of the evening I, as did the entire audience, became addicted to the musical persona of Bhimsen, including his phenomenal bodily illustration of his search for every divine note! I was struck by his mesmerising vocal range. As a dancer I was fascinated by the high drama of his singing style. It seemed to be a torrential flow of changing moods... a veritable treasure-trove of histrionics. And nothing was contrived! The great man, and his music, we realised, were a unique phenomenon of our times.
Bhimsen’s life in music straddles the best part of the 20th century. His adventure with music began when he ran away from home as a boy, searching for a Guru. He reached the inimitable crescendo of success 50 years later when he touched the hearts of the whole nation on TV with his plaintive patriotic ditty Miley Sur.
The human voice, when it produces perfect musical notes, is the truest form of art. It is virtually the baring of the soul. Bhimsen’s voice has been his message. It has been the clarion call of classical Hindustani music. Through his music Bhimsen has served the cause of the age old Guru-Sishya paramapara, which is the foundation of our music. He put the Khayal on a pedestal, and did justice to this essential core of the Hindustani tradition as only a few had done before him. Like a high priest, he treated his goddess, Music, to the most elaborate rituals which were at once mystic, full of passion, and spiritually transcendental. A grand master of his time, he reigned supreme with the power of pure technical virtuosity of music mingled with the beauty of imagination. Choosing ragas best suited to his Gharana — the Kirana Gharana — Bhimsen never lost an opportunity to explore them with a courage and a conviction born out of a lifetime of practice, rather sadhana. How did he do it? Did he not face the vagaries of life common to others? Was he alone in his quest? Was his personal life a bed of roses? As a professional musician in a country which had lost a long heritage of royal patronage, was the path of such a musician an easy one? Did the courage of his father, willing to spend Rs. 25 out of his salary of Rs.125 to give Bhimsen formal music training impel him to aim for the sky and shoot at the star?
As a young lad who had fled from home, Bhimsen, wandered all over North India, until he returned to his own village, Gadag, not far from Kundgol, the native place of Sawai Gandharva. Two years away from home had changed him; he had even lost touch with his mother tongue Kannada. His life had no certainties except his passion for music. He learnt that it takes years to master one raga! Three ragas — Todi, Multani and Puriya — were taught by the guru from day-break to midnight.
Inspirations
The practice led to perfection. But the music kept growing, for, Bhimsen never stopped learning, even after he moved on from the Guru. Listening to various stalwarts enriched his style, and his explorative approach to singing rare ragas. He has acknowledged his indebtedness to legends like Amir Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar. His formative years also saw him draw inspiration from other stalwarts as diverse as Begum Akhtar who recommended him for a stint with All India Radio, Lucknow, Siddheshwari Devi, and Rasoolan Bai.
His early patrons were the Chitrapur Saraswat community of south Kanara. They organised his concerts in Bangalore, Mangalore, Udipi and other nearby towns. They themselves are proud claimants of stalwarts in Hindustani music, like Vishnudas Shirali, Dinkar Kaikini, Chidanand Nagarkar... to name a few.
A man of moods, the young Bhimsen was a romantic at heart. An arranged marriage to Sunanda at a young age did not deter him from marrying his first love, Vatsala, with whom he had shared the stage as an actor in Marathi theatre. Even before he made Pune his home, it was the Marathi-speaking audience of old Bombay state that patronised Bhimsen’s music. One of their favourite genres was natya sangeet, theatrical music. Vatsala and Bhimsen became a favourite duo, and this experience was useful later in Bhimsen’s career when he reached out to the masses with his devotional songs, both in Marathi and Kannada. Who can ever forget the thundering applause his Purandaradasa songs elicited as also his abhangs and other great compositions? He alone could re-invent the songs to make them sound different each time he sang them.
Personal life
The ups and downs of a complex personal life eventually took a toll on him. For more than a decade during the 1970s, he suffered the effects of addiction to alcohol. His music soared, his concerts earned him more, his fame was widespread, and his friends became legion. But his psyche needed repair. Vatsala, the determined friend, wife and philosopher, somehow reigned him in and eventually won her battle. She also turned his musical gaze to bhakti. Bhimsen began to think freely like an un-chained giant. He became a veritable Bhima of song. The stirrings of his musical notes reached great depths and greater heights to connect many worlds. His music was now for everybody... the giant had not only the connoisseur but also the ordinary rasika under his spell. Nobody could resist him or his music; nobody wanted to resist this delicious entrapment. We went home after each concert trying to recall those great classical turns and twists in his Khayals. We ended up humming “Jo Bhaje Hari” and “Theertha Vittala”. That is all we could do to acknowledge the greatest Hindustani musician of our times.
Says his biographer and critic Mohan Nadkarni with feeling: “Here is a man who loved his life with all its romance and intensity, and one who seeks to reflect it so eloquently through his music. Intelligence and passion are so subtly fused into his personality-bound vocalism that it gives his music continuous life and excitement. And that is what makes it intense in all its anguish and ecstasy. It has the power to command and obtain the spontaneous surrender of his audiences and send them home with ennobled hearts”. We bow to Bharat Rathna Pandit Bhimsen Joshi!
The writer is a dancer and choreographer and author of, among other books, a biography of M.S. Subbulakshmi Kunjamma and Women of Pride: The Devadasi Heritage
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