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A bridge of notes
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As the birth centenary year of K.L. Saigal draws to a close, some of the legendary singer's fans in Bangalore talk about why his voice still haunts them
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Saigal hasn't provided fodder for the burgeoning remix industry. You rarely ever get to hear Saigal on FM radio's nostalgia music slots that offer plenty of Kishore, Rafi and some Mukesh too.
WHAT COULD Kundan Lal Saigal, the first male superstar of Indian cinema, have to do with Gopalakrishna Adiga, the tallest peak of the Navya (Modern) Movement in Kannada literature? None, you would think. But sometimes, a few resonating notes and one evocative line can make for a solid bridge.
How else would you explain the fact that Saigal's "Babul mora... " and "Do naina matwale... " remind C.R. Simha, the well-known stage and film actor, of Adiga's "Yava mohana murali kareyitho... "? Simha was himself a boy in shorts when Saigal died, but the singer haunts him to this day. As Saigal's birth centenary year draws to a close, Simha talks of how the unique timbre of his voice has never failed to carry him to the realm of the "unheard melody". The voice was at once nasal and deep-throated, a combination Simha is yet to come across in another singer. And it is this quality that leaves an echo in the listener's heart. It speaks straight, without trying any complicated murkis. "Brevity was the soul of his singing," says Simha.
Biography
Saigal very humbly talks about this in an interview: "All I can say about my own singing is that I do not use 10 notes if I can manage to do the same with one. I have to make one note and do the work which a trained singer does with 10. This is because I know very little." Well-known musicologist Raghava R. Menon echoes these sentiments in his biography of Saigal, The Pilgrim of the Swara. He was always accompanied by nothing more than a tanpura, harmonium (which he often played himself) and a tabla. "If there was an orchestra, it always stood aside to let him pass between it," he writes.
Another equally fascinating facet of Saigal, says Simha, was the seamless flow between the speaking and singing voice and his "feeling" for every word he sang. This again, is something that Menon writes extensively about. Crediting Saigal with inventing "the musical law of speech", he says: "Saigal had a way of caressing a word. It was such a close and unselfconscious act that it is difficult to remember the voice without the world accompanying it." In an interview, Saigal himself says he would much rather be called a "phraser" than a "singer". He says: "I think of the meaning of the words and wrap the tune around the words. I have no clear understanding of the grammar of music."
Soft murmur
It is perhaps this involvement that explains what Simha calls the "soft, lapping almost silent" murmur that a note in Saigal's voice leaves behind. Like the resonating strings in a sitar. As Adiga would say, "Moleyadalegala mooka marmara." When he sings of "Do naina matwale," there's something beyond the seeing eye that beckons. Menon echoes these sentiments with an equally poetic flourish: "He would make the most daring understatements. And you believed in him because he did not say it all. He respected your intelligence, gave you credit for feeling and cautiously refrained from feeling all the way for you." It was a voice with the tenderness of a very strong man caressing a child."
His voice
There is, perhaps, something about Saigal's singing that inspires poetry in all his admirers. M. Bhaktavatsala, who has all the recorded music of Saigal, talks of how the pathos in his voice "clings to a listener's mood". For him, even the "slight bit of endearing besur" in the voice enriched the raga by several thousand leaps.
Mixing a little history with his reminiscences, Bhaktavatsala points out that in the brief period when film music was banned on All India Radio by the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Keskar, the nation switched to Radio Ceylon to listen to Saigal. "It was a half-an-hour slot every day which began with a song of Lata and ended with a song of Saigal," he recalls.
But has such an iconic voice crossed over to this generation? Not really, says Bhaktavatsala. Even those who do have some fascination for the "golden oldies" home in on Kishore Kumar rather than Saigal or even Mukesh, he says. Two pointers in the current trends substantiate this view: Saigal hasn't provided fodder for the bourgeoning remix industry and you will rarely ever get to hear Saigal on FM radio's nostalgia music slots that offer plenty of Kishore, Rafi and some Mukesh too. Youngsters in the city's pubs shaking a leg to "Dil hi toot gaya.." and "So ja rajkumari..." is completely unthinkable. Saigal was, in fact, long dead before heroes and heroines started shaking any leg at all on the Indian screen! One can't think of a single Saigal song that can be remixed into a dance floor number.
Young fans
But then, even if they aren't an impressive number, you do come across some admirers of Saigal among the young. For instance, M.D. Pallavi, a singer herself, describes herself as a Saigal fan. And she loves him because he "doesn't package himself". Saigal is from an era when music was recorded live on sets. Even microphones were late entrants in Saigal's career. As Menon puts it, "Saigal sang and the mike eavesdropped."
Yes, Saigal was part of a commercial industry, though commerce of those times wasn't quite defined the way it is today. But there was a rawness in Saigal's voice that seemed to defy the logic of commerce, says Pallavi. "It was commercial music, and yet, he seems to hold his innocence. One doesn't know if he was even aware of it."
After a meeting with Saigal, Menon talks of how the reticent singer "would laugh off his extraordinary achievements as though it were so much rumour". And Jamini Roy, the great Bengal School painter, who knew Saigal from his earliest days, once said: "He was like someone who stepped out of an icon, so unaffected, totally oblivious of himself like a line drawing."
Now, what has Pallavi got to do with Menon or Jamini Roy? And that takes us right back to where we started: on an unlikely bridge.
Saigal saga
KUNDAN LAL Saigal was born in Jammu on April 14, 1904. As a child, he occasionally played Sita in Ramlilas. While his father, a tahsildar, was distraught over his son's indifference to studies, his mother protected him from paternal wrath. Saigal's only formal training in music came from a reclusive Sufi peer, Salman Yussuf.
A school dropout, Saigal left home to work first as a railway timekeeper and then as a typewriter salesman. It was B.N. Sarcar who recruited him at New Theatres in Calcutta. Saigal's style there was shaped by R.C. Boral, and later by Pankaj Mallick and Timir Baran. Saigal's biographer Raghava R. Menon says that in the Bengal of the '20s teeming with musicians, it was difficult to visualise a poor Punjabi with no training in music making it to the "distinguished roster" of New Theatre. Saigal did not have the "veiled passion" that marked the romantic heroes of the time. He was bald and not conventionally good-looking. He was not a great actor, but his voice compensated in an era of actor-singers.
His hits
Saigal's first big hit was Chandidas (1934). The following year saw him in his career-defining role of Devdas, directed by P.C. Barua, where he defined the archetype of a tragic hero. His brooding looks and more brooding voice created countless fans across the country. His songs in the film, "Balam aye basson more man me... " and "Dukh ke din ab beetein nahi... " became big hits. Critics have said that in the latter, Saigal breaks the barriers between prose, recitation, and song as he interrupts the melodic progression by laughing bitterly at his predicament.
Saigal later worked for New Theatre's other productions such as President and Street Singer. In the latter, his rendition of "Babul mora... " was done live. Though playback had come into vogue by then, he convinced the director that he would do a better job live.
40's music
In the early Forties, he moved to Bombay and worked with Ranjit Movietone to make films such as Bhakta Surdas and Tansen. Saigal's rendering of "Deeya jalao... " became another big hit. The fact that even the early Mukesh sounded just like Saigal (as in "Dil jalta hai") is proof of how he ruled and defined the music of his time.
Sadly, by mid-'40s, alcohol was fast overtaking Saigal's life. It was said he could sing only when fortified by liquor. One hears endless tales about his fascination for "kali panch" (as he called a peg), just as one hears tales about his fascination for astrologers. He had a strange fascination for death too and spent a lot of time at the cremation ground on the seaside near Mahim in Bombay.
He died of cirrhosis in 1947.
BAGESHREE S.
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