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The most celebrated exponent of the dhrupad, Ustad Zahiruddin
Dagar enthralls audiences at his concerts at the same time
maintaining the sanctity of this highly specialized from the singing.
Is there any one attitude
to describe the soul of music? Is there any one from of this art
that sums up the sweep, the sparkle, leisurely repose, unhurried
dignity untold sublimity that must arise, when music is sung or
played? The answer is truthfully in the affirmative, in one
case-alone when Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar, the famed vocalist of
the classical Indian dhrupad genre, begins to perform.
The carefully brushed
back graying heir, the eyes closed in deep concentration, the hands
uplifted in prayerful pose and the head bent ever so slightly, in an
accurate application of the reposeful and meditative stance, reflects
the character of his vocal performance.
The great Ustad or
teacher, as he is called, is one of the few exponents of the rare
Hindustani classical music from, the dhrupad.
This ancient tradition of
music is the oldest surviving from, closely akin to the chanting of
Vedic hymnal pieces. They are sung within a fixed beat cycle of
twelve counts, within which the singer can create a variety of
divisions and sub-divisions, keeping the original tempo of the
rhythm, unchanged. The mood invoked by this serene music is one of
austere grandeur, since the technique of rendition disallows all
attempts at ornamentation. The vocalist has to remain extremely
conscious of upholding the meditative stance in inviolate sanctity.
This strait laced dimension of the dhrupad has thus been a highly
specialized from of singing and not everyone can adopt this rigorous
discipline in music.
The Dagar family, of
which Ustad Zahiruddin is among the senior group of performers,
belongs to the 19 generation of dhrupad singers of his lineage. His
ancestor, Baba Gopal Naik, had migrated as a court singer to the
Mughal kingdom at Delhi. The emperor, Muhammad Shah Rangila, a great
patron of the arts, was charmed by the newly arrived dhrupad singer
at his court and acknowledged his genius by offering a paan
(rolled betel leaf) to the artiste.
This token gesture was to
have far reaching repercussions. It sealed the fate of the Naik
family forever for the court musician embraced Islam as his religion
and pursued the tradition of dhrupad singing with a single-minded
devotion, handing over his legacy to the succeeding generations with
such care that today, the Dagar manner of dhrupad singing has been
accepted as a formal school, complete with its own method of
presentation, tutoring and continuation.
Today, he Dagar vocalists
do not indulge in any other form of classical singing and it is due
to their endless striving to keep up the tradition of this form that
has been instrumental in its survival. But the pristine glory of
this inheritance cannot be maintained by a dogged obstinacy or a
tenacious clinging on to hand-me-down of dhrupad artistry. Ustad
Zahiruddin claims that the secret of his success lies in the fact
that his very lifestyle is a part and parcel in his musical oeuvre.
The day begins early for
the Ustad. A bachelor unlike his predecessors, and a committed
musician, he pursues his music amidst the hurly-burly of family life.
Nephew Wasif is his constant and equal partner in his duet dhrupad
renditions. In the pattern of his family singing, Ustad Zahiruddin
began his musical career co-partnering his brother Ustad Faiyazuddin
Dagar. It was only after his brother died that his nephew became his
partner and the pattern of rendition has continued unbroken. His
domestic routine is taken care of by his sister-in-law, and nieces,
who cope with the constant stream of visiting relative, student
learners, listeners and even friendly neighbours. In this welter of
happenings, the Ustad has his own bed-cum sitting room, where the
sleeping area lies tucked against the wall but his tanpuras,
that give the tonal aura to his singing, are given pride of place in
the opposite corner of the room. The rest of the carpeted floor is
left free for practices, which continue hour upon hour, beginning at
six o’ clock in the morning.
“The best time to
start is actually three or four in the morning.” He muses,
“When there is no disturbance and the concentration is absolute
and the sadhana posture is specially alive. But living in big
city apartments, the neighbours would find that inconvenient
perhaps,” he regrets.
The only stricture that
he imposes currently, is his visiting hours. “I don’t take
any appointment before 11 a.m. for without that, there will be no
progress or form of ananda (inner joy) for the audience, when
I perform before them.” This effusive ananda that the Ustad
wishes to transmit through his music is to reach out to the inner
soul. Like the other ancient arts, the business of feeling and
enjoyment is not left unsaid, with the hope that the practitioner
will eke out a methodology that is central to evoking the sentiments
through a plausible formulae. Instead of concentrating on mechanical
voice training therefore, the Ustad’s demanding medium can be
rehearsed verbally, in compact couplet or shloka. The singer
is expected to memorize the verse and then try to produce music,
according to his understanding of it. “The inner soul is
satisfied only with the union of the great soul and that is my art.”
Ustad Zahiruddin continues, “My music is devotional. It is the
truth experienced through its character. It is the truth in you that
must reflect in your art. Allah will only be pleased with that. It
is a tamsik, mansik and krasik life that I lead. There
is no place for cigarettes or alcoholic drinks so that the art is
expressed without a problem or hindrance.”
The musical sound that he
is referring to is to be extracted from deep within. This tremulous
awakening of sound is not to rush unthinkingly out of the throat
there and then. The vocal awakenings are to find a place in the
heart of the singer and then alone should it be released into the
surroundings. This handy yardstick of musical efficacy is
maintained as a familial treasure, gleaned from the fountain-head of
their style, Baba Naik Baiju. “Being misled in our methodology
does not arise,” beams the veteran Ustad, “as it has been
formalized through the generations.”
Born into a family of
musicians, the Ustad learnt the art of dhrupad rendition from his
father and his elder brother, Ustad Aminuddin Dagar. He also
benefited from the tutelage of his uncles Ustad Riazuddin K. Dagar
and Ustad Rahimuddin K. Dagar.
With this little life and
growth cycle the Ustad was able to delve deep into the very psyche of
his form. The audiences abroad are no strangers to his serene and
mystic appeal. A crucial component of this universal charm is the
flawless pronunciation. “There are 52 basic principles in the
dhrupad and the use of all the vowel sounds with pristine fidelity is
needed. Then there are 15 forms of ghamak and the Khand
veru which has 540 combinations and seconds, using all the seven
notes of the scale and practicing even a small portion of it takes
hours of work,” he explains,
“In a way this
education is akin to learning Sanskrit,” he adds. In Sanskrit,
every initiate is made to memorize the lexicon and by the time he
comes on stage as a discourser or orator, he is walking dictionary.
In dhrupad too, without a bedrock there is no music. The
responsibility of the guru towards the disciple is this drilling in
of the basics. Take a word or syllable. The pupil is taught to
concentrate on Him, like a mantra and thus it be ideology and
mechanics of the music cases to be obscure or anti-progressive but
gets couched in the music of the sublime, not through a vague sort
of mystifying aura but the all too human drill of correct diction,
proper enunciation and correct sound reproduction.
Yet the Ustad and his
pupil have not deteriorated into slick technically sophisticated per
formers at the end of all this instruction. They are still soulful
singers and this the Ustad attributes to the words of his lyrics. He
lifts the portly tanpura and begins to sing. I use my soul
to explain the feelings to supplication and appeal in the words. The
voice inflexions serve as instruments of feeling so that even a
hard-hitting realist, sitting in the audience, finds a subtle
personal discourse transpiring between the listener and the
performer.
What about the foreign
listener unacquainted with the language and the cultural association
with his theme and the social code? “There are nine types of
bhakti (devotion). A true performer expresses it all in his
music. A listener too, must commit himself to this sensitive
exercise to enjoy the evening. Even a single form of devotion brings
obvious joy to the listener.”
Foreign listeners are
attentive participants and the thus involved in it. They Indianize
themselves in mind.”
The rigorous training,
the austere lifestyle and the external curtailments can prove sore
tribulations or even the staunchest non-consumerist. How did the
Ustad circumvent these tendencies in life? Again an answer is
provided through a playing of the strings. As the plucks a single
string of the highly resonant tanpura in the deadly silence of his
work place, the sound waves travel through a gamut of musical notes
before dying out.
“A beginner is
trained to listen to the sound with sensitive attention. Then the
voice is made to track the sound arc, through all its inflexions.
This exercise is repeatedly practiced till one comes to realize a
rare enjoyment in that microcosm of musical notes, born of a single
pluck. Once one has been lured into the charm of that serenity,
turinign away to glitzy music or even the khayal from the
classicism is impossible.”
Today the Ustad has built
his reputation on musical power that is integrated in tone technique
and beat. It is the internationalization of speed combinations and
variations in a fixed beat. This works like an inner clock so that an
external drummer is a decorative signing aid to his practiced ears.
All this spiritual and
technical interpretation has won him umpteen laurels as teacher,
promoter and performer. He is ranked among the highest grade of
artistes. His daily life is preserved in a documentary and he has
given his voice to films as well. The live concerts have been given
before august audiences. Scores of commemorative music festivals
would have rung hollow were it not for the presence of the Dagars. A
whole generation of university students have heard of this ancient
form not as a theoretical episode o chance heresy but as a concrete
lecture demonstration from the greatest one himself.
He stands on the
classical firmament as a superb representation of Indian classical
music. His emotional technical range, coloured by personal ethos,
have made music an inner repose instead of a restless search of a
contemporary and elaborate contrasts.
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