A fine music tradition in ruins.. - Page 2

Thanks a lot dada & didi for the insight and information. I did not know any of these before on the kapurthala gharana.😳

Thanks a lot Barnalidi and Bobda, a very new information for me.. Never knew anything about these Gharana and the state.. Thanks a Ton.. 👏

An important landmark in Hindustani music was the establishment of gharanas under the patronage of princely states. A gharana is more a school of thought than an institution. Each of the gharanas developed distinct facets and styles of presentation and performance.

Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936) was a dedicated musician and musicologist whose contribution to Indian classical music cannot be over emphasised. He was the Lakshanakaara of Hindustani music and was the pioneer who gave current Hindustani music a grammar where none existed. He brought most of the renowned artistes and musicologists from all over India together, to give a new significance to music by discourses and performances. His research works, Karmik Pustak Series in six volumes are still among the most authentic documents of Hindustani classical music. His significant achievement is the concept of the ten Thats or basic parent scales from which raags are derived.

Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931) took up the task of conveying the message of music to every home and convey it in the simplest way. An accident in his childhood deprived him of his eyesight. Inspite of this serious physical handicap, Paluskar took up musical training with enthusiasm and perseverance. He believed that music should not only be entertaining, it should also elevate and inspire. He realised that all great art should draw its inspiration from contemporary life and bereft of its social values it would be an empty kernel. He openly declared that his mission was to democratise the art of music. After giving public performances all over north India, in 1901, he founded the Gandharva Mahaavidyaalaya in Lahore, the first music school run by public funds. Here he trained individuals who would dedicate their lives to teaching music. In 1908, Paluskar migrated from Lahore to Bombay and opened a branch of the Gandharva Mahaavidyaalaya. Prominent among his disciples were his son D.V. Paluskar, Vinayak Rao Patwardhan, Narayan Rao Vyas and Pandit Omkarnath Thakur.

A performance of Hindustani music begins with the aalaap. This is a slow invocation of free rhythm, presenting the subtleties of the raag in an expressive and meditative style. aalaap is followed by a more rhythmic piece called jhod which has many variations. Then follows the more rapid rhythmic style called jhala, which fills out the rhythm with rapid notes. The depth of imagination and creativity of the performer is revealed in the aalaap and jhod. After the jhala comes the second part, gat that introduces the percussions for the first time. gat is based on taal or rhythm structure and is played in vilambit (slow tempo), increasing to a madhyam (medium tempo), and concluding with a drut (fast tempo). The main melody is introduced by the artiste while the tabla provides the taal. Against this taal the artiste improvises imaginative melodic patterns and introduces complex rthythmic patterns, which at times appear to diverge from the taal but must resolve on the first beat of the taal. Later the artiste may hold firm to the rhythm while the tabla may create counter-rhythms.

The two main vocal traditions in Hindustanic music are dhrupad, the purest of all, without any embellishment and completely austere in its delivery, and khayaal, with a romantic content and elaborate ornamentation. Less abstract vocal forms fall into the light-classical variety: dadra, thumri, ghazal and qawwali. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Smt. Gangubai Hangal are vocalists well known to Hindustani music fans.

Sitar, invented by Amir Khusro in the 16th Century, A.D. is the well known stringed instrument in Hindustani music. The Surbahar, Sarod, Sarangi, violin and Santoor are the other stringed instruments used by Hindustani musicians. The bansuri and shehnai (wind instruments) are equally well-known in Hindustani music. The pakhavaj is similar to the mridangam in Carnatic music and it predates the tabla.

Vijay, so glad to see you.Thanks for your contribution.

Bahadur Shah's grave evokes new passions in Myanmar

Yangon, May 18: After he died in exile in British captivity, the last moghul emperor of India was buried and forgotten as a footnote in history.

Nearly 140 years later, Bahadur Shah Zafar is stirring new passions. Since the discovery of his grave in 1991 in a quiet, leafy part of Yangon, the foreign king has been worshipped as a ''pir'', or saint, by Myanmar's Muslims as well as people of other faiths. To the caretakers of Zafar's mausoleum, he is a saint, a poet-scholar and a symbol of communal harmony.

Zafar's aura of holiness is due to his reputation as a scholar of Sufism, an ascetic movement within Islam.

During his time, Zafar was one of the foremost poets of the Urdu language and an accomplished calligrapher. His poems, or ghazals, are still popular in India and Pakistan.
The moghul empire, established in 1526, ended when Zafar was dethroned by the British in 1858.

He died four years later at age 87 after penning his own epitaph in the form of a ghazal: ''Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar, dafn ke liye do gaz zameen bhi na mili ku-e-yaar mein (How unlucky Bahadur Shah Zafar)

Originally posted by: charades

Wow!!!

Many thanks Dada for letting me know of this thread this evening...

Thanke to Barnali Di for opening this thread...

Let me see what I can contribute to this thread😊

Thanx VJ for the contribution. best would b if we can get some intrumentals from yu with regds. to this gharana 😃

here's another star of the same gharana.

Sufi Movement and Pir-o-Murshid of its Inner School.

Life and Family
Hidayat Inayat-Khan, son of the Indian mystic and musician Hazrat Inayat Khan and Pirani Ameena Begum Ora Ray Baker Inayat-Khan of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was born into a family of most remarkable personalities. Hidayat's great-great grandfather was Tipu Sultan, the "Tiger of Mysore", last Supreme Potentate of All India, whose palace on the fortified island of Sering Pathan was guarded by living tigers. The great Sultan's principle, in resisting the English conquerors to the death, was, "Better to live one day as a tiger than one year as a sheep". The Sultan's citadel was destroyed in a historic battle, and one of his sons was killed in the mutiny of 1857, leaving a daughter, the Princess of Mysore, who was miraculously saved and raised in secret within the precincts of what used to be the citadel. Later she became the bride of India's most famous singer and musician, Mula Bux, who was universally known as "The Morning Star of the East" and was raised to the rank of princehood by the ruling Raja.

Mula Bux founded the first Academy of Music in India, and also invented the music notation system bearing his name. He restored the fundamentals of Indian classical traditions in all fields of music, and in so doing received rewards and recognition from monarchs all over India. The first royal child to be born from his union with the Princess of Mysore was a daughter called Khatidja, who later became the mother of Inayat Khan.

Professor Inayat Khan was also the greatest singer, vina player and composer in his time, and was crowned as "Tansen" at the courts of the Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Maheboob Ali Khan, known as the "Saintly King". It was this great Nizam who granted Hidayat's father all the necessary help in breathing new life into India's most sacred music and propagating it across India. Professor Inayat Khan was also the author of several books on Indian music, in particular Minca-I-Musicar, in which several songs of the author's own composition are published in the Mula Bux notation. Another ancestor of Hidayat's was Saint Jumma Shah from Punjab, whose holy tomb near Lahore is still visited by numerous pilgrims in homage and gratitude for the inspiration which radiates from his shrine. It is from this sacred spot that Hazrat Inayat Khan started out in 1901 on his musical travels, in the course of which he was royally welcomed by Maharajas and Nawabs all over India.

Hidayat's father was also the first Indian musician to introduce Indian classical music to the Western world. He landed in America in 1910, after which he gave concerts of Indian music all over the world. His music was deeply appreciated by the Tsar of Russia, in whose palace he met Count Tolstoy and the famous Russian composer Scriabin. Later concerts were organised in Paris by Lucien Guitry, father of Sacha Guitry, and it was also in Paris that he became acquainted with Claude Debusy, to whom many of his own melodies were given, some of which were used in his scores. Hazrat Inayat Khan settled in London during the First World War, and it was here, in 1917 that Hidayat was born, the third of, ultimately, four children. In 1919, Hazrat Inayat Khan moved with his family to the continent, eventually settling in the Parisian suburb of Suresnes, in a large house which he named Fazal Manzil, "blessed home". In his early years, Hidayat's life had an extraordinary, almost fairy-tale quality, for he was surrounded by the atmosphere of his remarkable father and most loving mother, and there was a constant stream of visitors coming to their home, drawn by the twin magnets of music and the Sufi Message. Sadly, those magical days ended abruptly when Hazrat Inayat Khan passed away during a visit to India, in 1927, at the age of 45. Hidayat was 10 years old.

Because of his family, Hidayat was cradled in the atmosphere of Eastern music. However, his musical schooling in the West helped orient him toward the symphonic form. His Western musical education started at L'Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, in the violin class of Mr Sinsheimer and the composition courses of Nadia Boulanger, as well as training in orchestra conducting given by the great Diran Alexanian. He later joined the string quartet courses given by the world-famous Lener Quartet, which was followed by instruction in orchestra conducting under Toon Verheij in Holland.

During his early years, Hidayat was a professor in the Music School of Dieulefit, Drome, France, and later conducted an orchestra in Haarlem, Holland. Hidayat has written numerous compositions, among them La Monotonia Op. 13 for strings - Ghandi Symphony Op. 25 - Zikar Symphony with organ Op. 26 - Message Symphony with organ Op. 30 - Virginia Symphonic Poem Op. 44 - Concerto for strings Op 38 - Quartet for Strings Op. 45 - and a number of choral pieces including Chanson Exotique , Awake for Morning, and a collection of Sufi hymns. He is a founding member of the European Composers' Union, and his music has frequently been broadcast internationally, as well as being released commercially by Panta Rhei of Holland.

In 1988, Hidayat Inayat-Khan assumed the role of Representative-General of the International Sufi Movement and Pir-o-Murshid of its Inner School. He divides his time between Holland and the family home in Suresnes, but travels extensively, giving classes and lectures on Sufism.

Daughter of Sufism
Noor Inayat Khan

Pir Inayat Khan

From: Great Masters of Hindustani Music
- Sufi Inayat Khan - by:

Susheela Misra
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many years ago, Mrs H. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, an ardent Dutch lover of Indian classical music wrote to me from the Hague, requesting me to give her all the information I could gather about the great Sufi-mystic-musician-Pir Inayat Khan who had earned great popularity and fame in the West during his travels (from 1910 to 1926) in the U.S.A., U.K. and Europe.

She wrote:- "I am a pupil of the late musician and philosopher Professor Inayat Khan of Baroda, the grandson and pupil of Professor Moula Baksh of Baroda . We people of the west are getting more and more interested in the grandeur and beauty of Indian music."

It was while he was giving a Veena recital at the RAMAKRISHNA ASHRAM in San Francisco that he met, and fell in love with, Miss Ora Ray Baker - "a sensitive, fragile, feylike American girl" who was the *niece of Mrs. Mary Eddy Baker, the founder of the Christian Science Movement. They got married in Paris, and Inayat Khan rechristened her as "Sharada Ameena Begum".

In one of the later photographs, Inayat Khan in a long loose robe, and with a flowing white beard, looks a bit like Poet Tagore. His wife, clad in a sari in the Parsi style looks serene, gentle, and charming. Her head is covered with the "Pallu" in true Indian style.

Their elder son Vilayat Khan married an English lady, the second son Hidayat Khan married a Dutch lady, and Inayat Khan's brother and cousin also married Dutch girls, and all of them have become citizens of Holland.

The greatest tragedy in the family was the brutal political assassination of Inayat Khan's beloved daughter Noor, a highly sensitive, talented, and clairvoyant girl, who had later become a secret agent working for the French Resistance Movement against the Nazis. She was captured by the Gestapo, tortured and brutally killed in the Dachau Concentration Camp on 13-9-1944.

One of the witnesses of this sadistic torture- chamber wrote later:- "What happened was terrible. The girl was a bloody mass. The only word she uttered before they shot her through her head was- "Liberte"-".

Thus tragically ended the young life of the vivacious Noor Inayat Khan (1914 to 1944) at the age of 29. In the words of Ravi bala Shenoy, "Noor was the only woman to win a posthumous George Cross and the CROIX de Guerre". Inayat Khan was lucky that he died many years before this terrible tragedy.