Bangalore Mirror , India
April 17 2010
Who is Gauhar Jaan?
India’s first recording artist with an illustrious career and a
tumultuous personal life, resurfaces after 80 years. Ipsita Basu
Dasgupta traces her life and times
Ipsita Basu Dasgupta
Posted On Saturday, April 17, 2010 at 07:49:09 PM
Author Vikram Sampath confesses to being besotted with Gauhar Jaan, a
high-brow Hindustani classical singer and courtesan who spent her last
years at the Mysore Palace. There are however, no reasons to her
death, only piles of hospital bills, a death certificate and
miscellaneous memories, capsuled in time at the Palace’s archives.
Sampath stumbled upon the existence of Gauhar by chance, during his
research on another book. His curiosity about her soon turned into an
obsession which led him through the by lanes of Kolkata, where she
attained fame, the alleys of Azamgarh, her birthplace, and the ruins
of the Rampur Palace, where she spent some years, among other
destinations. In his recent book, My Name is Gauhar Jaan, Sampath
documents the life, love and tragedy of Gauhar’s life.
The inimitable Gauhar Jaan; (inset) her records
She was born in 1873, in Azamgarh as Angelina Yeoward to an Armenian
Christian couple. Her father, William was an engineer and her mother
Victoria a musician. The marriage ended as a result of varied
interests and Victoria moved to Banaras with her daughter in tow.
There she converted to Islam and changed her name to Malka Jaan and
Angelina’s to Gauhar Jan.
She grew up in Kolkata, where her mother Badi Malka Jaan was a famous
courtesan. Gauhar soaked in the music, dance and charm around her,
slowly making a name in Hindustani classical music. At one point she
became so wealthy, that she would drive around the city in a
horse-driven buggy, a luxury allowed only to the Viceroy of India at
that time. Gauhar paid a fine of Rs 1,000 rupees for flouting
government laws, but never gave up on her evening rides.
She is great because she was the first Indian and a woman at that, to
embrace recording technology when it came to India. The entire process
of recording was primitive, with singers having to scream into a horn
fixed on the wall. A needle on the other end would oscillate and etch
the music on the disc. All this, while two agents held the musicians’
hands down, so that they would not move them in air, an action
synonymous with Indian classical music.
She didn’t give a damn to superstitions of recording that went around
during her time. Instead she sang into the horn confidently, managing
to encompass the extremely complex Hindustani music structure into
just 2 mins 45 secs of recording and then announcing her name after
the performance. Each record of Gauhar, which ran for around 3 mins in
that era, would have a bit of every nuance without compensating on
aesthetic element of her music.
She fell in love more than once. Her time with Amrut Nayak, a Gujarati
theatre actor, was probably her happiest. But Nayak died very young,
leaving Gauhar emotionally unstable. She also lost her mother in the
same year, adding to her grief. Her personal secretary Saiyyad Abbas,
who was much younger than her, was her source of strength during this
difficult period. She later ended in a contractual wedlock with him
termed as Muta in Islam. Others like Nimai Sen, the zamindar of
Behrampore, Nawab Hamid of Rampur also found fleeting love from
Gauhar.
She died an unknown death at the Mysore Palace. She was 57, lonely and
without any apparent heirs. Palace records talk about two people, a
maid, Sharifan and a steward, Abdul Rehman, who travelled with her.
After her death, there were plenty of claimants who wrote to the
Maharaja and the government saying that they
were related to Gauhar, hoping that she had left a lot of wealth behind.
In reality, she was almost a pauper, when she passed away. Her burial
place, till today, remains unknown.
Musing over music’s fate
The journey of music to today’s technology of ipods and mp3 has
comprised amazing anecdotes, struggle and undocumented facts, points
out Bangalore-based author Vikram Sampath. `The bane of Indian music
history is that it’s anecdotal memory and word of mouth. There is very
little documentation,’ he says.
Vikram Sampath with his book, My Name is Gauhar Jaan
Though he found it tough to collect the needed information while
working on the book, he credits the Mysore Palace archives for being
very methodical about conserving documents on history. Other archives
and libraries, he says are in a pile of mess. He gives the example of
finding the book titled Makhzan-e-ulfat-e-mallika, written by Badi
Malka Jaan, whose only copy in the world is now preserved in the
British Museum.
`I looked for this book all over India, in place like the Ali Baksh
library in Patna, Raza in Rampur, Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim
University and the Lucknow state archives,’ he remembers.
Sampath was lucky to get his hands on a copy through one of the
librarians of the British Museum who was traveling to Bangalore on a
conference. It took Sampath, who works in a leading software company
for his day job, three years of rigorous travel and research to
complete this book. It also meant loss of pay days, when he went
digging for details on the forgotten star. `I hope I have made life
easier for Gauhar Jaan enthusiasts,’ Sampath hopefully smiles.
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