‘A Life in Three Octaves’: Remarkable journey of an artiste extraordinaire

Gangubai had stopped performing in public and her granddaughter Krishna’s death had thrown her musical life into a stillness. It is around this time that Deepa Ganesh first met Gangubai Hangal, the doyenne of Hindustani classical. The singer responded to set questions with set answers. These interview sessions were interspersed with lots of silences. These silences intrigued Ganesh, and these very silences set the Kirana gharana singer apart from her contemporaries.

“Unlike Begum Akhtar, who was clearly unabashed and could take the world by its horns, and Kesarbai Kerkar, who could be smug and snotty, Gangubai was acquiescent. She was stunningly simple, yet deep,” the author pretty much sums up her personality. Gangu was born in 1913 in Dharwad into a family with a rich musical tradition, yet dispossessed because of its caste status. Her life and her artistic journey truly began when she became a disciple of Sawai Gandharva at the age of 17, distancing herself from the community she was born into, and moving on to the concert stage, radio and recording studios.

‘A Life in Three Octaves’ takes one through the life of Gangubai and her family, her growing-up years and her training, while simultaneously tracing the story of India’s Independence as well as classical music.

The book is rich in anecdotes. How Gangubai didn’t join her group for lunch after a performance during an Indian National Congress session in Belgaum for the fear that she, a low caste, would be told to sit separately. How, after rain spoiled their show in Amritsar, the organisers vanished without paying her and Kumar Gandharva, only to, thankfully, send them cheques for Rs 150 each a month later! How she took in her guru and his wife after a stroke incapacitated him, and tended to him whole-heartedly.

The author, a senior journalist, critiques Gangubai’s music, often weighing it with that of her contemporaries beyond gharanas, and paints a melodious picture. Gangubai adhered to the Kirana tradition marked by slow tempo and gradual unfolding of the ragas. The asceticism of her music set her apart from her equally great colleagues such as Bhimsen Joshi and Firoze Dastur. When a tonsillitis operation forced a dramatic change upon her silken voice, she reworked it from mellifluous to manly. “Gangubai’s music was intense and introspective. It was bold: there was no place for meek moaning in it,” the author writes.

Among the greatest Hindustani classical music vocalists of India, she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, given a state funeral, memorialised on a stamp and there are concerts in her memory to this day. But Gangubai didn’t have an easy life. She didn’t just lose her mother, husband and guru before they could see her achieve heights of fame, she also lost untimely the only torchbearer of her legacy in her family — Krishna, her granddaughter.

The book was first published in December 2013, Gangubai Hangal’s birth centenary year. This reprint is worth picking up for its intimate and warm-hearted account of a remarkable human being and an extraordinary artiste. — TNS