<The Malice of Repetition: Towards an Attentive Understanding of Hindustani Music>

Music has a complicated relationship with the idea of repetition. On the one hand it is considered a virtue to repeat what you have learnt day after day because practice makes perfect. Repetition forms a major part of the formative years of any student trying to master an art. On the other, it is the mechanicity of empty repetition that a true artist must avoid.  In Hindustani music, it is believed that after many years of emulating the teacher, there comes a stage when the circle of imitative repetition breaks, and makes way for the creation of an individual style. In other words, while the formative years are constitutive of learning the technique by rote, what follows is a phase of reflection and creation and this seems to mark the transition of the musician from his training phase to having an individual style. In this paper, we will closely examine this relation, between repetition and creation, to ask whether these two phases are part of a continuous process or does creation interrupt repetition?

In other words, in the context of Hindustani music, does repetition logically and inevitably culminate into creation, or does the act of creation disrupt the continuous mechanical flow of repetition? This paper seeks to argue that the relationship between repetition and creativity cannot simply be posed as causal—of a creative gesture emanating from years spent in repeating what one learns. Moreover, it is our attempt to examine how creation not only disrupts repetition but perhaps even makes it possible in the first place. In this regard, this paper will investigate how repetition can break from a logic of representation and pave the idea for something new. We will try to understand this relationship between repetition and creativity in the thought and practice of Kumar Gandharva. However, before we begin our examination, we will make a short detour to understand how the concept of repetition is articulated by Peter Brook in his collection of essays on music. This will not only allow us to problematise the question of repetition but understand a certain set of responses that are posed in the context of music and creativity.

1. ‘Listen!’

This expression is the epigraph of Peter Brook’s book, Playing by Ear: Reflections on Music and Sound. It encapsulates the urgency of the plea he makes against repetition. He calls repetition a process that “chokes off everything that can bring new life to music and drama” (Brook 23) and cautions us to be vigilant of its  dangers.  He draws attention to the English word ‘rehearsal’ that denotes repetition and points towards the word ‘hearse’ that lies within it: “Crouched in the middle, between the ‘re’ and the ‘l’, is the hearse, the wagon that carries the lifeless body to the grave… It is the end product of ‘repeating’” (ibid). So figuratively, endless repetition carries within it the seed of death that can replace the flow of life and render any living tradition rigid and lifeless. It is then the task of every musician to not only discover the crisis of repetition in music but also think about ways to overcome it. This can be achieved through two principles that run across this incisive collection of essays ‘Pay attention!’ and ‘true listening’, two simple ideas that stand in the way of dry and endless repetition:

Practice is raking and watering the soil; the burgeoning will only appear if we hear in ourselves another phrase that carries all we need to know—‘Pay attention!’ …true attention is what enables the acrobat spinning into space unerringly to place his foot on that tiny patch of security offered by the hand or shoulder of his partner. (Brook 24)

Attentiveness to what one is learning and what one is listening to, is Brook’s way of understanding what breathes life into art. It  does not simply imply a careful assimilation of the rules and conventions of any artistic tradition but it also carries within it the crucial aspect of self-awareness—an ability to perceive, respond and think the material you are working with. Attentiveness is accompanied by “true listening” that encapsulates an alertness or readiness to act and the embodiment of a sense of wonder, a sensitivity to sound.

To this extent, an indifferent repetition leads to a product that can be produced indefinitely but might not lead to any evolution, as whatever is produced immediately gets dissolved, passes by and is forgotten. Nothing remains. Nadia Boulanger, a deeply loved and admired French teacher and conductor, uses the image of running water passing through the sieve where there is no residue, no retention. On the other hand, concentration, an attentive practice urges one to think, to dwell on one’s practice. And dwelling is always a matter of time, of taking time to understand and thinking about the conventions and contours of what one is learning. In music, for instance, it is only such a thoughtful obedience (and not an indifferent obedience) to repetition that can produce an attentiveness towards the rules and limits of musical structures that further paves way for that beautiful and crucial combination in any art of obedience and freedom. This is to say that attentiveness redeems the death knell of repetition by foregrounding a practice of rigorous thinking that an artist undertakes in order to know the boundaries of her art which she can further constantly extend.

In this regard, repetition of convention is a decision to correspond to the rules, to obey the rules. But as far as it is a decision, it is always an act of freedom. In this obeying, the artist is free. In repeating the rules attentively, she is also carefully extending them. Therefore, as long as the artist is free, she savours and produces that almost unstated relationship between what is already given and constantly repeated, and what can be extended. Hence attentiveness, we can say, is not to submit oneself to repetition but to choose it in order to produce that quintessential artistic emotion of freedom and thought. In the next section, we will observe how this idea of an attentive understanding of music responds to tradition in the example of Kumar Gandharva.

1. ‘बुद्धीवर तर सर्व गोष्ट आहेत’ (Everything happens on the basis of thought)^[1]

A recurring response of Kumar Gandharva in his interviews to questions about his interpretation of tradition or the way he developed his voice is that ‘मी ते बुद्धिपुरस्सर केलंय’ (I have done it consciously). This consciousness permeates his entire practice whether it is the way he shapes his own singing, his thoughts on musical concepts or his defiance of gharanas in Hindustani music. These ideas are foregrounded through a range of thematic concerts that he organises and is also marked in the choice of a programme title like Mala Umajlele Bal Gandharva (As I understand Bal Gandharva). In Kumar Gandharva, we observe a conscious and attentive repetition of tradition that pushes the boundaries of tradition to its limit. This is to say that through his music he destabilises the process by which tradition homogenises itself, thereby opening it up to difference. We will consider some examples where, driven by the force of his conscious singing, Gandharva presented even the most widely sung repertoire of traditional compositions in a way that seemed completely new. He pushes Hindustani music to a threshold where the existing knowledge becomes not quite sufficient to make sense of his music. We shall argue that this is not simply his call against repetition in search of liberty, rather he announces a decision to think tradition critically.

In an extensive seminar transcribed as Mukkam Vashi (1999) on his thoughts on music where we see Gandharva in conversation with musicians, friends and students over six days, he says ‘​आपण मान्यता देऊन गाणं ऐकतो’ (Gandharva 3), that we listen to music on the basis of certain values. We give value to musical skils like the singing of ‘taan’ at a high speed, or the sudden striking of notes in the lower octave, or the singing of ‘boltaan’ and ‘laykari’ in performance. He says that these skills have been repeated endlessly and over emphasised by musicians for the sake of impressing audiences and have become devoid of any thought and “if people are impressed by the singing of ‘taan’, then I won’t sing it at all. Let’s see what happens.” In a decision to not sing what is widely accepted and appreciated, the real question for Gandharva is not simply a challenge that is posed to the audience to listen to not, rather the challenge that is equally posed to the musician, for it now becomes imperative for her to think what her music should be. He says that such a decision comes with immense responsibility, for a musician is pushed to think what she will sing instead, and that thought opens multiple possibilities to create – अशा गोष्टींच्या मागे लागलं कि (नवीन गोष्टी) जन्माला येतात’ (Gandharva 9) (It is only when we keep pursuing things in such a way that new things come into being.)

He also calls into question the very model of pedagogy in Hindustani music which is imitative in nature. He says that students copy their teacher to the end of seeming like their ‘carbon copy’ and immense value is placed on the endless reproduction of the knowledge that they have amassed over years of training. Instead, what he seems to call for is an attentive practice where learning is an intellectual exercise and enables the student to think for herself. For instance, he rejects the existing model of ‘kharaj sadhna’ or ‘mandra riyaz’ to say that one should be able to produce each and every note in the octave with clarity. And this clarity, according to him, is not a consequence of endless repetition that leads to the formation of a habit. Instead of habit, it has to be an act of thinking. What must be produced as a consequence of training is not the same knowledge, but the possibility of knowledge. Training must prepare the ground for thinking freely about music. 

He extends the same gesture to his interpretation of ‘raag’ and ‘bandish’. A raag is commonly understood as a pre-given melodic framework that follows a set of rules and conventions, and on which compositions called ‘bandish’ are based. While there could be numerous bandish in a single raag, every bandish serves to preserve the structure and identity of the raag. In Gandharva’s music however, the bandish is pursued with such an intensity that it brings the very identity of the raag into question. He says that the raag comes into being because of the bandish. With every bandish, the raag acquires a different form and comes forth with a different force – ‘आघात’. To explain this, he uses the metaphor of looking at an elephant from different directions or entering a palace from one of its many doors. 

हाथी को हम सामने से ही तो नहीं देखते न हमेशा? इस बाज़ू से, उस बाज़ू से, पीछे से भी देखते हैं ना? वैसा ही नज़रिया क्यों नहीं रखते आप रागों के प्रति ? एक महल है, उसमें क्या सिर्फ दर्शनी द्वार ही है ? और भी तो दरवाज़े हैं। खिड़कियाँ भी हैं बहुत सारी। फिर मुख्य दरवाज़े से ही प्रवेश करने का आग्रह क्यों? (Potdar 81) ^[2]

Gandharva understands the raag not as a given musical object, rather something that gets constituted through different entry points. These entry points correspond to the bandish. Each bandish, as a different perspective or point of view, leads to an actualisation of the raag. And this actualisation remains unique, it is not as if different bandish add up or synthesise into a concrete form which is the raag. Every bandish stands in itself as an imagination of the totality of the raag. Every bandish is a possibility towards imagining the raag anew and each imagination in its singularity encapsulates the raag as a totality.

In my interactions with Meera Rao^[3], a disciple of Kumar Gandharva, she would often mention how he used the word ‘character’ to describe different kinds of bandish. She called this impulse as the ‘personification of the raag’ where in the process of imagining the raag as a person, certain qualities of personality such as dominant, shy, submissive or confident are attached to the bandish and expressed through it. For instance, he would explain how the ‘character’ of  raag Bhairav comes through his composition ‘shobhe jata’ in which he imagines it in the image of a fierce local deity ‘Bhairu’. He would say: ‘शोभे जटा में भैरव का character दिखता है ^[4] In the context of another set of bandish ‘phulawan sej sawaro’ and ‘jabse tumi san’ in raag Bhoop, he would say:  ‘फुलवन सेज संवारो’- ये जैसे मैं बैठा हूँ ना सहारा लेके आराम से, ऐसे ये बंदिश बैठी हुई है। ‘जबसे तुमी सन’ ऐसा नहीं है। वो तन के बैठा है”^[5]  For him the raag Bhoop of the bandish ‘phulawan sej sawaro’ was different from the Bhoop of another bandish ‘jab se tumi san’ which would be different from another and so on, and yet there was much capacity for Bhoop to be further expressed and take more forms. In other words, none of these compositions could exhaust the raag and existed as singular expressions of Bhoop.

However, it is in this very respect that in Gandharva’s music, the bandish acquires a radical potential for in presenting the raag from different points of view, the raag often becomes unidentifiable. The word he uses to describe such a gaze that estranges the raag from its identifiable principle is ‘profile’. We will try to understand this idea through a program ‘Gaud Malhar Darshan’ that he conceptualised in 1976. In this program, he sang 16 compositions in raag Gaud Malhar, each presenting a different interpretation of the raag. In his interviews he mentions that he went back to books by Mirashi Buwa, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande in search of traditional Gaud Malhar compositions for this program. He chose compositions consciously from these books of notations to firstly show how a raag could be sung in many different ways rather than repeating a fixed representative structure, and where each of these ways of singing was correct in their respective place. This was also accompanied by his assertion that these were not his inventions, but something that already existed in tradition. In the recording of this program, while performing the bandish ‘jhuki aayi badariya’ from Bhatkhande’s Kramik Pustak Malika, we hear him announce that this was an old tune and a very popular bandish that went out of circulation because it was excessively sung and made dull. He adds: “ये जो मैं गा रहा हूँ, ये ग्वालियर घराने में सौ साल पहले जैसे गाते थे, वैसे मैं गा रहा हूँ। ये जगह मेरे नहीं हैं। आपको सौंदर्य समझ में आए, इसलिए मैं बता रहा हूँ”^[6]

There are two points that we can infer from this: one is his comment on a mechanical nature of repetition that makes a composition lifeless. It points towards the function of repetition as simply representative. The second is that in highlighting certain nuances of the bandish, the traditional bandish acquires a new life that has the scope of making the raag unidentifiable. In presenting the raag from different viewpoints, the raag is exposed to its otherness. It is this otherness that Gandharva highlights in his performances which becomes the very condition for his art. He refutes the conventional idea of raag as a pre-given principle and makes it a function of its actualisation through the bandish. In this process, on the one hand he destabilises this pre-given principle of the raag and on the other, frees the bandish from this principle which opens up the possibility of creatively exploring new contours within the bandish.

Let us consider another example that takes this point even further. This is an instance from a concert where Gandharva was performing raag Bhoop. About forty minutes or so into the performance, suddenly and very briefly he touched the note ‘shudh madhyam’ that is otherwise not a part of Bhoop’s musical structure. This instantly garnered praise from the audience but they took a moment to realise that he had in fact sung a forbidden note in Bhoop. He said:   

क्या करूं यार! भूप शुरू हुआ तबसे ये मध्यम बाहर खड़ा होकर लगातार याचना किए जा रहा था – मुझे अंदर लीजिए ना! भूप के दरबार में तो वो अस्पृश्य। उसे प्रवेश करने की मनाही। बेचारा जब बहुत ही काकुति – मिन्नति करने लगा तो मैंने कह दिया – चल आ जा, मगर फ़ौरन वापस जा, हाँ। आखिर वह भी अपना दोस्त ही है यार!  (Potdar 80)^[7]

Here we see that driven by the sheer desire to experience the beauty of the note ‘madhyam’ in a raag where it is forbidden, he breaks the principle of Bhoop. What is important for him is not the repetition of the law of Bhoop, but this gaze at a note that exists as a pure virtuality. Had he exercised control and not sung it, he would be abiding by the law of Bhoop, but he would be betraying the massive force of his desire. As a creative artist, this transgression is important for Gandharva to take the music beyond that which guarantees it. It is only by sacrificing Bhoop for the sake of the transient ‘madhyam’ that Gandharva can break through its repetition and open up the raag to a new possibility. It is only in this act that the music can go beyond itself. This is to say that this gaze is essentially the event of freedom through which he frees himself as well as the raag. He frees himself of the obedience of repetition and frees the raag of its sacredness, and gives it to its essence which is freedom.

This is seen as an unforgivable deviation by his critics. Kumar Prasad Mukherji quotes the musician Dilip Chandra Vedi on Gandharva’s music:

All the adulation the boy received at that tender age did nothing except give him a swollen head. There is no doubt he had a touch of genius. He had ended up as a spoilt misguided genius unheard of liberty with established ragas as if they are his grandfather’s property. His style is folk based. We all know that folk tunes have evolved into a number of raagas but if you have to sing them you should sing them in their accepted sophisticated form. Anyway, his admirers think he is a pathfinder, one who has opened up a new vista in classical music. (Mukherji 327)

However, for Gandharva, this unidentifiability and otherness constitute the very essence of the raag which un-establishes or un-recognises every ‘established’ and repetitive idea of the raag. Moreover, this ‘liberty’ to see the raag as a set of infinite variations is what makes art possible in the context of Gandharva. What it presents then is an opportunity to imagine the raag as nothing but ‘difference’. Every performance of the bandish becomes a possibility of infinitely enveloping the raag in its difference.

Moreover, tradition for Gandharva is not a passive archive that a musician draws from and repeats, rather it is something that gets created and reconstructed by the musician in every performance. And in his performances, what is created and recreated in every performance is tradition in its very otherness. Between the tradition and Gandharva is an idea of careful thinking which we can also call attentiveness that Gandharva brings into play in order to both resist and transform tradition. And it is in making his practice a search and an articulation of those very moments that capture the raag in their otherness that Gandharva frees himself from the debt of tradition, claiming for himself autonomy over everything that poses a limitation on artistic freedom.

It is in light of this freedom that we must also understand Gandharva’s denial to belong to any gharana or form a new gharana for his students. One of his most striking existential declarations is where he calls himself a practitioner of a ‘mortal art’:

“मैं तो नश्वर कला का साधक हूँ, गाते गाते रोज़ मरता हूँ। जिस कुमार गंधर्व ने जो तिलक कामोद गाया, वो दोनों मर चुके। कल फिर तिलक कामोद गाया जाएगा और कुमार गंधर्व ही गाएंगे पर वे नही। ” (Komkali and Sane 14).^[8] 

Mortality is precisely an instance of anti-systematicity. To build a gharana is to master death and make it into something which can be invested and reproduced in history. It is to utilise death to produce something for the future. Hence, we must not misunderstand mortality in Gandharva’s schema as the tragic end of art. It is rather the condition of change, the possibility to create. It is rather the condition of difference, the possibility to create. The playful death of art is a possibility, an opportunity of becoming something else, a completely new being, a singularity. Hence while gharanas as systems are essentially stamps of monumentality of the master and therefore commemorative, mortality suggests that art as an individuation is marked by its contingency. But that does not mean that it is closed, rather, mortality is the moment of opening of the system. Therefore when Gandharva says he dies, the next time he sings, he creates both Tilak Kamod and himself anew. In other words, every performance is like a constant variation on the new and what gets repeated by Gandharva is essentially the very impossibility of repeating Tilak Kamod. It is a repetition, but novel and singular in every way. This is to say that freedom does not exist as a natural condition, rather it is produced in history. It is this invention of the concept of freedom that we observe in Gandharva’s practice, which highlights a careful creation of a language of the new. It manifests itself in an attentive deliberation on the musical material that resists any imitative repetition which simply reproduces or represents an already established musical system. Hence Kumar Gandharva’s critical and creative approach to tradition embodies a careful understanding of Hindustani music. It carries with it the quintessential gesture of thinking with care, an unflinching concentration that pierces through tradition.

***

Works cited:

Brook, Peter. Playing by Ear: Reflections on Music and Sound, Nick Hern Books, London, 2019.

Komkali, Kalapini and Rekha Sane. Kaljayee Kumar Gandharva. New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2014.

Mukherji, Kumar Prasad. The Lost World of Hindustani Music. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006.

Potdar, Vasant. Kumar Gandharv, Medha Books, Delhi, 2006.

Gandharva, Kumar. Bhatwadekar, M. V. (ed.) Kumar Gandharva: Mukkam Vashi, Mauj Prakashan Grih, Mumbai, 1999.

[1] (Gandharva 22)

[2] We do not always see an elephant from the front, do we? From this direction, that direction, we see it from the back also, right? Why don’t you keep the same perspective with respect to raag? There is a palace, does it only have a front entrance? It has other doors too. It has a lot of windows also. Then why the insistence to enter only from the main door?

[3] I must mention that many of the insights in this paper come from my training with Meera Rao, one of Gandharva’s lesser-known disciples. She opened my universe to the many subtleties of bandish by a constant demand to be minutely attentive to it, and also listen carefully to how Gandharva would highlight these subtleties. With each bandish, she would explain its unique style, how the composer must have imagined the raag while composing it, why it was so important to let certain phrases breathe with the strokes of the rhythm and other phrases fall effortlessly while singing them, and so on. Such a microscopic lens of looking at music not on the surface, but in its infinite depth such that every composition would appear as a universe in itself – this was new to me. It is in memory of the special sensitivity that she brought to every minute detail, nourished by her life in music that I write this paper.

[4] The character of Bhairav(raag) is expressed through ‘shobhe jata’ (bandish).

[5] ‘Phulawan sej sawaro’…The way I am sitting right now comfortably is how this bandish is sitting. ‘Jabse tumi san’ is not like this. He sits  attentively.

[6] This composition that I am singing, this was sung in Gwalior gharana hundred years back, that’s how I am singing it. These spaces/phrases  are not mine. I am telling you so that you can understand its  aesthetic.

[7] What to do! Ever since this Bhoop began, this madhyam has been standing outside and soliciting – please take me in! But in Bhoop’s court this note cannot be touched. It is not allowed to enter. When it kept pleading helplessly, I said – okay come, but then immediately go back, okay. After all, it is also our friend.

[8] “I am seeker of a mortal art, I die everytime I sing. The Kumar Gandharva who sang the Tilak Kamod, they both have died. Tomorrow again Tilak Kamod will be sung and Kumar Gandharva will sing but not him.”