VIKRAM SAMPATH PAYS TRIBUTE TO GAUHAR JAAN, THE FIRST INDIAN MUSICIAN TO SING ON THE GRAMOPHONE
The Hindu
April 16 2010
India
Gramophones may have lost the battle with technology, but there
are some voices — heard and unheard — etched on them. In a world
characterised by such forgetfulness, a book on the songbird Gauhar
Jaan is staggering. Gauhar Jaan, a tawaif who was born to an Armenian
father, lived in Calcutta in the late 19th Century. She was the first
Indian musician to sing on the gramophone (1902), and, in that sense,
a pioneer.
Vikram Sampath, author of the recently released My Name Is Gauhar
Jaan! The Life And Times Of A Musician, stumbled upon this grand
songster of regal bearing, when he was researching in the Mysore
Palace Archives for his earlier book, Splendours Of Royal Mysore:
The Untold Story Of The Wodeyars.
"Her name had an interesting ring, and the fact that she was the
first musician to sing on the gramophone fascinated me," he says.
On the Gauhar trail
While on the Gauhar trail, he was shocked that there was practically
no information on this amazing singer who was patronised by the Mysore
Maharajas. She, in fact, died in Mysore in 1930.
"All I got in my first few attempts were bits and pieces of stories
that were passed off as history." People who lived in her times were
long dead and gone. Despite these impediments, Gauhar Jaan didn’t stop
haunting Vikram. "Whatever little I learnt was anecdotal in nature:
‘She threw a party when her cat littered’, ‘She had an entourage
of 111 people’ and more. The paucity of information was worrying,"
recalls Vikram, thinking of how people went into raptures about her
fair complexion, her paan-stained lips, her immaculate dressing sense
— which was for them, the sum total of Gauhar Jaan.
Vikram, an engineer with HP, travelled extensively in the North,
and managed to lay his hands on many legal documents connected to
the birth and life of Gauhaar Jaan and her mother Malka Jaan.
For instance, the birth of Gauhar registered at the Protestant Church
in Allahabad, a declaration that said she was Chagganji’s mistress
and long court proceedings with her maid’s son who was trying to
usurp her wealth.
All this spoke of a woman with enormous conviction; in fact, this
conviction gave her the status of an unparalleled star in the world
of music.
Gauhar Jaan was a phenomenal talent — she could condense the
reflective khyal into three minutes for the gramophone and could also
remarkably package the romantic thumri. "In those male-dominated times,
the number of women who sang on gramophones outnumbered men.
These remarkable women were hugely tech savvy and achieved what male
musicians had shied away from," explains Vikram.
The book cleverly walks the line of biography and period history. It
juxtaposes Gauhar Jaan’s life with the Raj, the freedom movement,
and the coming of the gramophone to India. It steers clear of an
anthropological vision and brings alive the enormous hardships of
the women of those times.
Strong and vulnerable
The manner in which Gauhar Jaan bargained for her remuneration, the
way she captured her audience, her highly adaptable musical skills and
her unflagging self-esteem say a lot about the woman’s intelligence.
But she was also vulnerable — she was moved by goodness and great
music, and her loyalty towards those she loved was unflinching.
"They were so learned and highly liberated. But, it is tragic that
they were all branded as just tawaifs.
Vikram started work on the project with many disadvantages — he was
male, not familiar with Bengal and the language, did not understand
the nuances of Hindustani music… "I have struggled to understand
the woman that she was, the life that she lived… to feel and think
like her…," says Vikram. "Sometimes, I wondered if Gauhar Jaan’s
extravagance was a mask to hide her troubled life."