When Malwa folk tunes pitched ragas
Three quarters of a century after Kumar Gandharva discovered its identity and infused those elements into Hindustani classical, Malwai folk music continues to uphold its innate values that enjoy a unique charm among the listeners. It was while convalescing from TB, living in his house on a leafy compound of Dewas for five years from 1948, that the maestro got exposed to the tunes of local people. The throbbing lilts of the simple songs caught his immediate fancy.
The late vocalist Vasundhara Komkali, Kumar’s second wife, who also learned under him, used to reveal how the master would trace shades of ragas in the rustic ditties around. Deeper studies led Kumar to not only notate the formations, but put them on record and render them at concerts. “In any case, ancient treatises have suggested the evolution of ragas from folk tunes. But none quite sought to devise them. Kumarji pioneered it,” she would recall, listing out his unique blend of ragas such as Shree Kalyan and Kedar Nand. “These weren’t just a mix of notes with some parts sounding like one raga and the rest another. There was a grand blend that gave such melodies an identity of their own.”
Septuagenarian Satyasheel Deshpande, who trained under Kumar, puts it thus: “Panditji, to my mind, would sense three or four notes, which is all they have, in a folk song. These will be the seeds to a prospective raga. At this, he fixed a basic syllable (aadhar swar), based on which he mapped the possible movements along the entire octave.”
Chimes in cultural critic Ashok Vajpeyi, also from the region (Durg in present-day Chhattisgarh): “Kumar was not in the best of health when he was first exposed to Malwai music. Bearing various moods, some songs are melancholic too. The maestro lapped them up impulsively.” Further, Kumar went on to sometimes use the prohibited note (varjit swar), while also interrogating the prevalent perceptions around devotion, he points out.
The massive prevalence of mystic Kabir’s poems across Malwa did catalyse the post-ailment creativity in Kumar, who had by then realised the value of being dispassionate towards life at large. That set in a different kind of devotional value to Hindustani bhajans, according to scholars. “Far from praying to gods and rendering laudatory lines aimed at pleasing them, Kabir’s literature that highlighted the awesome futility of life lent freshness to classical music, courtesy Kumar,” notes writer-activist Vinay Hardikar in the 2008 documentary ‘Koi Sunta Hai’, directed by Shabnam Virmani of Srishti School of Arts, Bengaluru. Adds scholar Ram Kolhatkar: “The way in which Kumarji presented Kabir’s Nirguni to people actually added to the stature of the poet.”
Thumri singer Vidya Rao, summing up the philosophy, says the human body can be tuned perfectly like a tanpura — and yet the physique is not everything. The Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad in Bhopal, pointing out that the saint’s popularity went on to spur ‘Kabir lyrics’, has 1,750 such poems in local dialects. “Some are penned by others but carry the original spirit,” says philanthropist Kapil Tiwari.
