Vocalist Zila Khan, in her debut play, Gauhar, portrayed the character of famous artiste Gauhar Jaan. In a conversation with Arjita Mishra, Khan shared that it was a matter of pride for her to bring alive that era through her act
We know the vocalist Zila Khan. We know her pedigree and gharana. But when she played Gauhar Jaan, the first recording artiste of the Gramophone Company of India, on stage, a true performer was born. Having tasted blood, she owned the role of the mercurial, conflicted but independent and fiery courtesan of 1900 Kolkata and let the actor in her dominate the songstress.
Here are the excerpts from the interview of Khan:
How was your experience of working as a theatre artisteIJ What was the response that you received from the audienceIJ
The show was beautifully drafted and executed. The audience was great and we enjoyed a lot with them. It’s been a wonderful journey. As a solo performer, when I sing, the space is all mine, everything depends upon me but in a play or theater, you have to support your co- actors. Your performance depends upon your dialogue delivery and on the actors whom you are working with. From scripts to direction to lighting everything is co dependent. So it is quite different from what I usually do. But nonetheless, it was interesting and exciting. I also did it to push my boundaries. As an artiste, I need to expand my work so I agreed to do this play. And everyday spent in rehearsal has been fun.
As far as the story is concerned, it is an emotional one and, therefore, difficult. It has a layering of human emotions and not restricted to a particular one. The emotions of an artiste keeps changing and it is tricky to understand it, leave alone enact it on stage. But I am glad that I could do it and am grateful for director lillete Dubey for believing that I could portray the emotions. She helped me throughout and helped me hone my acting skills. As for the singing I am grateful to my father for training me and God for bestowing me with a good voice. My vocals enabled me to take the play to a whole new level and I credit my ancestors and Indian classical music which helped me to generate the colours of emotion in the play.
Will you continue doing theatreIJ
I will be doing other plays as well but it will depend upon the time. Whenever I get time from my very tight schedule of concerts, I will try to do some good piece of theatre. The reason behind doing this is to stimulate my mind.
Gauhar Jaan was the first artiste to be recorded by the gramophone company yet she was never feted in our archival studies. Why soIJ
Gauhar Jaan is celebrated in the archival studies. In music college, one gets to read about Gauhar Jaan and about my great grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan, grandfather Ustad Enayat Khan and my father, too. Ustad Imdad Khan was also one of the first vocalists to be recorded by a recording company in 1902 and even today you can listen to them on the Internet. So I come from five generations of recorded music. There are very few legendary artistes with five generations of recording. They might come from generations but only celebrated vocalists were used to be recorded during those days. Today, anyone can record their music no matter how good or bad it is. My great grand father belongs to that era. So for me it’s a matter of pride that I was able to bring thatzamana through my act.
What are the resources we have on herIJ
The sources which I had grown up on were there before the book was written. Her bandish’s were the only source we had. Yeh jo jiya mein lagi aan baan hai we had learnt this when when we were kids. So the sources that we had were her composition.