The man & his music
Author: Ed. Ina Puri
Publisher: Niyogi Books , Rs 1250
This book describes Shiv Kumar Sharma’s reconfiguration of the santoor to supreme musical eminence, says Utpal K Banerjee
Once upon a time, there lived a little boy in Jammu’s rugged terrain beside the Tawi River. Often, at dusk, the strains of melodies sung by the Dogri shepherds would waft across to him. The lilting tunes stirred a strange yearning in his heart; the romance of the distant village folks gripped his imagination. He listened to the symphonies broadcast on the radio and grew his interest in different genres of music. Born to a musician father, he almost naturally began practising as a vocalist. Alongside, he was happy playing the tabla and soon achieved such a prowess that, since the age of eight, he started accompanying well-known artistes at the local radio-station that included musicians of the calibre of Ustad Nisar Hussain Khan, Ustad Abdul Halid Jaffer Khan, Begum Akhtar and so on, apart from playing the tabla in a jugalbandi between Pt. Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
His father brought a complex instrument one day for his bemused son. Called santoor and containing exactly a hundred strings (and, therefore, linked with the shata-tantri veena mentioned in the scriptures), the instrument had been handed down the generations of folk singers of sufiana kalam from the Kashmir valley as an accompaniment, although occasionally it was also played solo. The instrument was to be mounted on a wooden platform that created a lot of resonance. The santoor had no ancient peers. It was neither tata (string instruments), plucked by fingers like the sarod or sitar; nor susira (wind instruments) like the flute or shehnai; nor avanaddha (percussion instruments) covered with skin like the tabla or mridangam; nor ghana (brass instruments) like cymbals. It was played with kalam (mallets) striking the strings, untouched by fingers and its only counterpart was jal-tarang. The musician-father had dreamt of extracting classical sap from the folksy santoor and now ordained his 13 year old offspring to switch from tabla-playing (and vocal singing) to the santoor.
But, for Shiv Kumar Sharma, to attain the stature of a maestro—bringing the santoor as a whole-heartedly accepted solo instrument into the classical music arena —needed enormous toil. First of all, Shivji, as he is universally called, got rid of the frontal wooden-seat of the santoor and thereby eliminated the disturbing resonance. Instead, he placed the instrument on his lap. Second, he reduced the total number of strings from 100 to 91 and used 31 bridges instead of the traditional 25. Thus, the modified santoor was able to get three clear octaves and chromatic tuning. Third, he developed a convention of holding the two mallets between the trigger and the middle fingers, as any other way of holding the kalam would interfere with the instrument’s desired tonal quality. Fourth, since the mallet-strokes were not suitable to producing meend (glissando or glides) and gamak (staccato combination of notes), he slid mallets delicately on the strings so that meend or gamak could be created without touching the strings with his fingers. Finally, since the santoor had no history of classical music, he composed gats (fixed compositions) of extraordinary beauty: with a melodic and rhythmic blend.
In this book, the details from Shivji’s checkered career come out as a fascinating revelation. Out of its three segments, the editor’s own long-drawn interview of the master is quite penetrating. The second piece by Vijay Kichlu, the main force behind the ITC’s redoubtable Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata, with his brother Ravi Kichlu, is knowledgeable for a professional assessment of Shivji, although its tone of occasional defence of the limitations of either the musician or of his chosen instrument seems avoidable. Similarly, in this well-edited and lavishly-illustrated book, the string of adulatory certificates from the cognoscente—both from the music and the celluloid world—would appear to be an unnecessary addition.
Among two significant sidelights, the comment that Shivji’s ragdari (classical composition) is immaculate and authentic is particularly interesting. Keeping in view the santoor’s inherent limitation in meend and gamak, Shivji’s repertoire of ragas in public has been 25 to 30. Even the choice of ragas of Bhimsen Joshi has been just 20 or so in public performance. Also, while all the other string, wind, percussion and brass instruments are known in concert platforms and Bollywood, this hasn’t been the case for the santoor. As the lone crusader, he has been carrying his cross in both these worlds as a valiant knight-errant and, in this regard, Manek Premchand’s account, ‘Parallel Journey: Composing for Cinema’, makes for the most illuminating reading, offering valuable insight on Shivji’s pioneering work in the filmdom.