DEEWAANA (the mad one): the lover of music

ABSTRACT

The notion of deewaanapan or madness (as in being crazy about something) is deployed in this essay to make sense of musicophiliac behaviour in twentieth century Mumbai. I argue that new insights into the formation of ‘publics’ in the non-western metropolis can be gained through a focus on phenomena that embody ‘social subjectivity’. A major phenomenon of this kind is the devotion to Hindustani or North Indian classical music which spread through Mumbai starting from the late nineteenth century. The affective response of musicophiliacs is forged not in solitude but in a space of sociality. This idea also encompasses the actual performance of the khayal genre which became prominent in the twentieth century. The khayal represented a sense of intimacy and interiority which also needs to be understood as ‘social’ and ‘public’.

KEYWORDS:

• Musicophilia
• Mumbai
• Hindustani music
• interiority
• sociality
• subjectivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tejaswini Niranjana is currently Professor and Head, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She is the author of Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context (Berkeley, 1992), Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and Trinidad (Durham, 2006), and a forthcoming monograph on musicophilia in Mumbai. Her most recent edited volume, with Wang Xiaoming, is Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Delhi, 2015).

ORCID

Tejaswini Niranjana http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5052-3000

Notes

1 See my essay “Musicophilia and the Lingua Musica in Mumbai”, Cultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2017.1328518.

2 A kotha in Hindi/Urdu literally refers to an upper storey or a chamber, but in effect was where a courtesan performed in front of an audience.

3 An influential account of rasa theory in relation to Hindustani music is presented by Deepak Raja, The Raga-ness of Ragas: Ragas Beyond the Grammar (New Delhi: DK Printworld, 2016).

4 See Raja (2016, pp. 56–57) for an elaboration of the nine sthayi bhavas and corresponding rasas as outlined by Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016 AD), including love, anger, disgust, wonder, fear, etc.

5 In my 2017 essay cited above, I have made a distinction between public ideological positions taken by musicians and their actual vocal practice: Cultural Studies, DOI:10.1080/09502386.2017.1328518.

6 Marathi original, Mee Durga Khote, available in an English translation by Shanta Gokhale (Delhi: OUP, 2006).

7 Deshpande says he “practised hard day and night for years”. (Between Two Tanpuras, 14) He actually changed gurus, all of them famous singers, three times in search of the perfect taalim or training that suited his musical sensibility. But when Natthan Khan, the third guru, suggested that he undergo gandabandhan [tie the black thread that would make him an official disciple], he claimed he could not afford it: “I never intended to develop into a professional singer. I had taken up music as a hobby”. (19)

8 This google map prepared by me pinpoints the spaces of music in the Girgaum neighbourhood: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1U8MedN7BujG3Vkvui2KVr_m7gEo&hl=en_US&ll=18.95361976049098%2C72.82069150000007&z=15. Accessed on February 28, 2018.

9 Dargah is the tomb of a Sufi saint, venerated by both Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.

10 Drut refers to the faster-paced composition with which a singer usually ends the exposition of a particular raga.

11 Quoted by Janaki Bakhle, in Two Men and Music (2006), op. cit., from the Marathi text by Rajaram Humne, Dhanya Janma Jaahla: Shrimati Hirabai Barodekar yaanche jeevan gane (Poona, 1980), p. 28.

12 Note by S.V.Gokhale, in the English translation of Govindrao Tembe, My Pursuit of Music, trans. C.R.Kuddyady (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2014), 115.

13 S.V.Gokhale, in Tembe, op. cit., 139. Tarabai (1857–1918) and her sister Saraswatibai had migrated to Mumbai from Weling in Goa. They were singers and dancers patronized by prominent businessmen. Gokhale says they lived in a large bungalow surrounded by chawls, and this area in Girgaum was known as Tara Bapu’s wadi.

14 Bakhle (2006) points out that in the incoming GMV class of 1912, of the 68 women students, 35 were Parsi, with the rest being Hindu (15 Brahmin, 10 Prabhus and 8 Kshatriya by caste). She suggests that the visibility of Parsis in the GMV can be attributed to the mutually shared communal sentiment of Hindus and Parsis against Muslims. The near-invisibility of Muslims in the school, says Bakhle, is because Paluskar presented his institution as a quintessentially Hindu one, thus re-making raga music as a ‘Hindu’ cultural practice. (137–179).

15 Bakhle draws attention to a 16-page pamphlet Paluskar wrote, titled Mahila Sangeet (Women’s Music), which was intended to teach women to use their musical training ‘for devotional purposes and for such purposes alone’ (171).

16 Personal email communication, dated April 10, 2017. Bhatkal says that the syllabus was based on Deodhar’s own book, Raaga Bodh.

17 An advertisement in the Times of India, dated December 12, 1925, announces that the Bombay Municipality by arrangement with the Bombay Presidency Radio Club will do an open-air wireless broadcast of a ‘select programme of Indian music’ from 6 to 8 pm, in the Victoria Garden.

18 Simin Patel, historian of Bombay, tells me that the ‘Parsi ease with shoes’ has to do with their wearing ‘sapaats’ or traditional footwear at all times, unlike other communities in India who would not wear them inside the house, at least in the time frame of the Dastur story. Email communication, June 21, 2017.

19 Although the first music textbook intended for women was published in Marathi as early as 1864 for the vernacular schools of the reformist Students’ Scientific and Literary Society, it was not – just like similar publications with the same intended audience – meant to help women become performers. Instead, as Bakhle perceptively suggests, music was being used “as an instrument of educational reform”. (Bakhle 2006, pp. 64–65).

20 Personal conversation, January 12, 2017.

21 Nayan Ghosh added that his father “was deeply spiritual at that time, associated with Ramakrishna Mission. So he discussed this with the chief swamiji [spiritual leader] here in Khar Ramakrishna Mission. He was young, so he said, ‘My ustad has taken me to this area. It is troubling me very much. What do I do?’ The swamiji said, ‘You have nothing to worry about. If your mind is clean and pure and you’re going for this [the music]. Your ustad lives there, and he’s such a great soul.’ Amir Husain was a godly person. ‘He himself is staying there. You should have full faith in your guru and just be with him like a shadow. Forget about anything else. It doesn’t matter where you’re going, you know. The real vidya is there. You try to bring it out from there’, he said. That’s when he got some confidence.”

22 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0148375/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl. Accessed February 28, 2018.

23 Nilima Kilachand talked about the membership fees for Sajan Milap: “Our experience with Sajan Milap was that even though we were in existence for 30 years, membership, as Lalith and all may have told you, was earlier 20 rupees and then it became 30 rupees. Willy-nilly we increased it to 50 rupees. 50 rupees and everybody was saying ‘baap re, 50 rupees!’ 50 rupees in a year!” This was in the 1970s and 80s.