Suron ki dastaan
A tribute to
Begum Akhtar, titled ‘Akhtari’, was presented by Vidya Shah and Danish Husain
at the IHC in Delhi. Vidya Shah has already been introduced in this blog.
Danish Husain is a
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| Vidya Shah |
Begum Akhtar, born Akhtaribai Faizabadi in UP, was a
celebrated singer of ghazal, dadra and thumri. Born in 1914, she achieved great
fame as a singer and, thanks to her good looks, even had a short career in
films when the talkies were introduced in India. She was honoured with the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for vocal music, and was posthumously awarded the
Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan.
 |
| Danish Husain |
Vidya spoke
with great enthusiasm about her journey of exploring Begum Akhtar’s life. “I
have learnt under Shanti Hiranand, who is a senior disciple of Begum Akhtar, so
it was almost a sense of familiarity with her genius. I was curious and at the
same time influenced and inspired by her person, since your person reflects on
your creative approach. Since this is her centenary year, I wanted to do something
special and different, something not like a biography but that which would
bring out not only who she was but also my own perception of her. So I wanted
to weave a story around her. When I approached Danish with the idea, he readily
agreed to it. We then travelled to Lucknow and gathered whatever information we
could about her, and also read whatever was written about her. It was a
marriage of whatever we could understand of her eclectic personality and the
iconic songs that she had sung. Plus, we also wanted to bring in accompanists
who were an integral part of the performance at that time. Badloo Khan sahib,
who had worked with her, volunteered to share some of his experiences. The
repertoire of songs we chose was also a challenge since so much is etched in
peoples’ memory and there are so many poets and sub-genres that the choice was
difficult. But my purpose was to highlight her versatility. Hence, I made a
choice of film songs, light dadras, thumri with khamaj and ghazals with
raagdari and classic Urdu poetry in them. It was an effort to tell the story in
a simple yet interesting manner,” she said.
When asked
if she had to make any voice modulations to suit the songs of that era, she said,
“The more you listen to it, the more you get into the skin of the genre that
you are singing. And every song requires a different approach and the song
lends itself to that treatment. For instance, ‘Patli kamar lambe baal’ requires
a different treatment than ‘Nanadiya kahe maare bol’. So things fall into place
naturally.”
The stage
was set in accordance with the requirement to accommodate Vidya as the singer,
Danish as the dastango and the third pedestal for the accompanists. Danish began
by relating the incident when the young Akhtari was taken to a peer by
her concerned mother, Mushtari Begum. The mother was troubled by the ways of
the young Akhtari. So the peer makes her open her book of songs and
points to his chosen one. The first song sung was ‘Deewana banana hai toh deewana
bana de, warna kahin taqdeer tamasha na bana de’. The song conveyed the Sufi
message, ‘Log bazm ki har cheez ko parwana bana de’. Danish continued with the
story of her life when, in 1914, she got the first proper training in music
from Atan Khan sahib in Lucknow. He recognized her taste for semi-classical
songs when he caught her listening to a song by a passerby bhatiyarin. Vidya
sang ‘Nanadiya kahe maare bol, ek toh saiyaan moso rutho’. The song caught the
folk strains. Next, they talked about Calcutta in the 1920s, when Gauhar Jaan
was a big success there. When the young Akhtari recorded a song here, she
started crying since it was believed that the microphone could steal the voice
of the singer. She sang a song in the movie Roti by Anil Biswas – ‘Ulajh gaye
nainava, chhute nahi chhudaye’. Vidya also emphasized the mood of the time by
singing ‘Patli kamar lambe baal, chaloon jaise daminiya’. Akhtari had a sense
of humour too – one day, she was sitting on a silver chair, gifted to her by
the Nawab of Rampur, and complaining about him. When asked why she didn’t leave
him, she said she was waiting for the matching table. She would joke with her
accompanists too. Badloo Khan related an incident when she told one of her
accompanists that his kurta was looking very clean, since he had just been
married to a dhobin. The following songs captured the sense of humour – ‘Hamaar
kaha maano rajaji, rajaji sauten ke lambe lambe baal ulajh mat jaana’ and ‘Hamari
atariya pe aavo saanwariya, dekha dekhi balam hoyi jaaye’. In those times,
there was a competition between the cities of Delhi and Lucknow in mannerism of
speech and a lot of jokes were prevalent then. Akhtari always had that craving
for social status, she wanted to get rid of the stigma of being a bai. It was
then that she married Abbasi, and became Begum Akhtar. For this section Vidya
sang a Daag Dehlvi composition, ‘Uzr aane mein bhi hai, aur bulate bhi nahin,
jaan pyari bhi nahin, jaan se jaate bhi nahin’. A beautiful composition that
says there is hesitation in both the beloved coming, and calling him. Following
this turn in her life, Akhtari concentrated on becoming an ‘achhi ammi’ to her
family, for which she took a five-year hiatus from singing. After this break,
the song she recorded shows her pathos – ‘Koyaliya mat karal pukar, karajwa laagi
katar’. Now was the time of her life when there was some hustle and bustle, and
she started taking disciples. She did ganda bandhan as a guru, which was
primarily a male-dominated tradition, so it brought out the feminist in her. ‘Ulti
ho gayin sab tadbeerein, kuch na dawa ne kaam kiya’ was the following song.
She was
friends with artistes of her time – Madan Mohanji, Pandit Kumar Gandharva,
Anjani Bai, Jigar Moradabadi, among them - ‘Humko mita sake woh zamane mein dum
nahin, humse zamana khud hai, zamane se hum nahin’. She was a live performer
with a flair. Her nosepin would twinkle with her smile, and she would always
inflect her song with a classical touch, since she was trained in pakke raag. This
trait of raagdari is called ‘patti lagana’, like in the song ‘Jiya mora
leheraye hai, chha rahi kaali ghatayein, sun ri koyal baanwari, tu kyun malhaar
gaye hai’. She was the rockstar of ghazals of her time – ‘Ay mohabbat tere
anjaam pe rona aaya, aaj kuch baat hai jo shaam pe rona aaya’. The last episode
of her life Danish related was when Ustad Aamir Khan of the Indore gharana passed
away. Begum Akhtar was very attached to him and stayed in mourning, locked in a
room, for three days. ‘Hum bhi jaane wale hain, saaman toh gaya’. Her pain and
solitude was captured in the song ‘Ibn-e-mariam hue, mere dukh ki dawa kare koi’.
Accompanying Vidya were Badloo Khan on harmonium, Ghulam Ali on sarangi and
Shanti Bhushan on tabla. They complemented her well.
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