Book on music icon to be released at Harivallabh event

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 23

The 143-year-old writings on classical music of a saint, representing one of the oldest lineage of the Hindustani classical music, will be released in the form of a book, ‘Harivallabh’, on the 143rd Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan. It will be released by noted vocalist Sulochana Brahaspati on December 29.

The book is an attempt to document the history of the sammelan. It will showcase pages of rare books “Raag Darpan” and “Sangeet Darpan”, copies of which have been procured from the British Library and the Punjab Digital Archives — written by Baba Harivallbah, the founder of the sammelan. Born in 1800, he is documented to have died in 1885.

Written in Gurmukhi, the book will feature rare photographs of artists who frequented the festival in 1976, stamps of Harivallabh released by the Government of India, signatures of various classical music artists and letters by mahants and dated never-before-released pictures of congregation of artists visiting the sammelan in the early 1900s.

The book also details various rare “bandishes” sung at the festival by artists over the years, detailing the personalities frequenting the festival since 1875.

The author of the book, Rakesh Dada, also the treasurer of the sammelan, said, “Baba Harivallabh’s writings lay in obscurity for years, with people unaware that they talked about one of the most prominent saints of the Indian classical music. The manuscript of ‘Sangeet Darpan’ is at least 150 years old. While Harivallabh was a Hindu saint, the writings have been penned in Gurmukhi script with the cover page reading ‘Ik Omkar Shri Ganeshaay Namah’. This throws light on the secularity and an all-encompassing values system of the time. Although the script is Gurmukhi, we are still working on decoding the content of the book and are in consultation with experts on it. Both the books are clearly about music with ‘Raag Darpan’ also bearing references to various ragas.”

“Raag Darpan was acquired from the British Library by an acquaintance and music collector Sr. Balbir Singh Kanwal who managed to get a copy of the document or the Harivallabh archives,” Dada added.

He said, “Penned over the course of five years, the work on the book began in 2005. While the book features a total of 700 photographs of artists featured in the festival since 1876, it contains many rare pictures of patriarchs of many Indian classical music gharanas.”