Download Aspects of Singing Nazrul Sangeet

Aspects of Singing Nazrul Sangeet
Aspects of Singing Nazrul Sangeet
by Tomal Hossain
Overview
It is surprisingly difficult to characterize what a typical Nazrul sangeet shilpi1 sounds
like. Tenors have squealed away the same songs as grumbling basses with comparable gusto.
Singers, old and frail and young and bold, have echoed Nazrul’s rebellious and romantic verses
on a regular basis. Hindus and Muslims alike have embraced his pluralistic rhetoric in song and
dance since the days of his earliest writings. All of this is to say that Nazrul, during his short
writing career, was able to inspire a vast, diverse multitude of people, who in turn approached his
works highly uniquely.
This paper will attempt to highlight the remarkable variety that singers have
demonstrated while performing Nazrul sangeet with respect to melody, improvisation, tone,
range, dynamics, and enunciation. The references to follow are not meant to alienate any single
genre, composer, or musician. Allusions are made purely to provide perspective allowing for the
placement of Nazrul’s songs and their singers somewhere on the spectra of composition and
performance. Finally, this paper in no way completely represents the richness of thought and
action that goes into effectively singing Nazrul sangeet. This paper barely scratches the surface
of topics that either ought to or have been individually examined in much greater detail.
Melody
Nazrul made explicit that he did not mandate the original performers of his songs to
exactly reproduce the melodies he would set his texts to. He considered said tunes to be jumping
off points from which singers could add to as they wish, similar to how Hindustani Classical2
musicians improvise passages over a bandish3. Even more intriguing is the process by which
Nazrul finalized the melodies for his song texts. While working with record labels, Nazrul had
particular singers in mind while composing melodies for his texts. After concocting a general
melodic flow, Nazrul would engage with a dedicated singer on a one-on-one basis in order to
tweak and polish his initial melodic ideas. This collaborative process - composer and performer
interacting by doing opposed to writing or saying - is a curious aspect of Nazrul’s musical
process. This phenomenon is certainly not unique to traditional Bengali music, however. For
example, Classic Jazz band leaders4 like Duke Ellington nearly always thought of which
A vocalist who dedicates their musical career to Kazi Nazrul Islam’s songs. Otherwise, a
singer whose repertoire consists primarily of texts written by Nazrul.
2 A genre of traditional South Asian music originating in the practice of Vedic ritual chants
coupled with Middle Eastern musical influences that has been evolving since the early 12th
millennium CE. Hindustani music and its South Indian cousin Carnatic music comprise the
whole of Art Music in practice predominantly in South Asia today.
3 A fixed melodic composition in Hindustani music. Bandish are composed within the
framework of a raga and are generally performed with the rhythmic accompaniment of tabla or
pakhawaj, melodic accompaniment of sarangi and/or harmonium, and drone accompaniment of
tanpura and/or swarmandal.
4 Within the manifold genres of Jazz music, the director and/or conductor of an orchestra of
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musicians would best fulfill solo lines while arranging charts5 for large ensembles. What
emerges from this largely organic process of give and take is something definitively greater than
the individual contributions of its two halves. Just as vocalists in the olden days depended on
Nazrul’s verses and guidance, Nazrul surely depended on his dedicated vocalists to carefully
interpret his ideas so that they could fully bloom despite energetic, monetary, and temporal
constraints. Nonetheless, a sensible singer would not simply abandon general pitch contours and
formal sections especially for songs that Nazrul set himself. All remaining nuances of
spontaneous performance, however, were left to the singer’s imagination.
There were innumerable instances in which Nazrul’s verses were set by others against his
will. Faced with record deals that gave record companies ownership rights to his texts, Nazrul
had little to say regarding the fate of his creative works. Constantly straining to fend off poverty,
Nazrul had no choice but to hand over his lyrics to uncompromising record labels and succumb
to the creative impulses of some competing, contemporary composer. However unfortunate from
Nazrul’s point of view, many of his more popular songs were set by composers like Kamal
Dasgupta, Chitta Roy, and Nitai Ghatak among others. The fact that his lyrics exhibit such
stunning melodic diversity is no surprise given this reality.
Indeed, Chitta Roy’s compositional style coupled with Jaganmoy Mitra’s lilting voice
placed Nazrul’s lyrics highly among the ranks of Adhonik6 songs at the time. Though no longer
contemporary in the face of today’s global pop genres, adhonik was unique in that its structure
did not stem from more traditional forms like Dhrupad, Khayal, Thumri, etc. Rather, adhonik
songs featured free form lyrics and melodies tailored for mass appeal. These melodies largely
lack intricate taan7, alankaar8, and taal9. Rather, they capitalize on memorable, smooth-flowing
melodic lines which sound best coming from mellower voices like that of Jaganmoy Mitra or
Talat Mahmood.
The dichotomy between Nazrul’s own compositional style and that of his contemporaries
cannot be overemphasized. Specifically, Nazrul’s melodies often feature remarkable intensity
and austerity. Simply put, they are more raw and exciting. Also, they borrow more from
characteristic phrases of certain raga10. Although not uniformly as intense as some of his
semi-classical or Ragpradhan11 compositions, many of Nazrul’s original melodies strike an
wind instruments accompanied by a rhythm section often featuring solo musicians, particularly
vocalists.
5 The musical notation for an entire Jazz Orchestra/Band conventionally consisting of 5
saxophones, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, and a rhythm section made up of piano, bass, guitar,
and drums. Additionally, an arranger may include vibraphone, clarinet, violin, flute, and/or vocal
parts in a full chart/score.
6 Literally “modern”. A genre of Bengali music conceived of during the mid-twentieth century
which diverged from the song structures of older, traditional musical genres like Khayal, Thumri,
Bhajan, Kirtan, etc.
7 An improvisational vocal technique featuring a rapid succession of musical notes ubiquitous
in Hindustani Classical music.
8 Ornaments or embellishments originating in Hindustani Classical music.
9 Rhythmic cycle in traditional South Asian musical genres similar to the conception of meter in
Western Art music.
10 The theoretical, melodic framework fundamental to various Art Music genres in South Asia
including dhrupad, khayal, thumri, etc.
11 An umbrella of musical genres which heavily stem from the Hindustani Classical music ethos
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appealing common ground between the prodigious tunes of Khayal12 and the sinuous melodies
of Adhonik.
Improvisation and Ornamentation
It is worth noting that many of the first vocalists to specialize in Nazrul sangeet were
classically trained musicians. The relative presence or absence of improvisation largely
contributes to the distinctiveness of these singers’ original recordings. This particularly rings true
with respect to Nazrul’s Ragpradhan compositions including his Thumri13, Ghazal14, and
Tappa15. For any one of these genres, vistaar and taan reign supreme in terms of sheer ubiquity.
While all professional artists utilize some ratio of these two extended improvisational techniques
in a single song, individual vocalists certainly gravitate more towards one or the other.
Additionally, Nazrul’s individual compositions may inherently lend themselves to expansion via
either vistaar or taan. For a slow, contemplative song based on raga Megh rendered by a stern
baritone voice, vistaar often finds itself at the forefront of performance. For a rapid, vivacious
tune in raga Tilak Kamod, a singer is perhaps more likely to instinctively break into aakaar
taan16 or sargam taan17.
Although five different performers of a given song would navigate the same basic pitch
contours of a song during a performance, each vocalist is likely to enhance their rendition with
characteristic Hindustani Classical ornamentations or alankaar18 including meend19 and murki20.
Compared to bouts of extended improvisation, these vocal embellishments are less explicit by
virtue of taking up considerably less time than an ex-tempo21 phrase. That is, alankaar seldom
including Thumri, Tappa, and Ghazal, which are nevertheless less intense than proper
Hindustani Classical genres like Dhrupad and Khayal.
12 A musical genre within the banner of Hindustani Classical music that features an
unprecedented amount of improvisation bounded by parameters of a given raga which rose to
prominence in eighteenth century South Asia.
13 A semi-classical genre in which a feminine character’s idealized love for Krishna serves as a
metaphor for romance and devotion on a whole.
14 A lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, typically dealing with love,
and normally also set to a melody.
15 A semi-classical music genre replete with fast, subtle ornamentations depicting a lover’s
obsession with their beloved.
16 A kind of taan pronounced using a wide “a” vowel sound approximately as in “father.”
17 A kind of taan pronounced using the seven Hindustani Classical solfeggio syllables, namely
sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni
18 The nuanced elements of music making in South Asian music which are not easily or
commonly notated on paper. These ornaments, so to speak, serve to enhance the beauty of a
performance rather than serve as a centerpiece for attention, much like how a necklace or
earrings are merely supplemental to one’s own beauty.
19 A sliding or gliding musical embellishment very much characteristic to South Asian music.
When executed in a strictly Hindustani Classical setting, a proper meend reveals the distinct
microtonal pitch positions between its starting and ending notes.
20 A relatively “light” or non-intensive musical embellishment more commonly found in “lighter”
genres characterized by a cluster of notes sung rapidly and subtly.
21 Musical passages or phrases unbounded by the rhythmic strictures of tempo and meter.
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exceeds three seconds in duration, whereas a single taan or vistaar consumes between ten and
twenty seconds on average. Even so, the collective effect of a succession of carefully executed,
independent alankaar is truly quite powerful.
Pervasive glissando or meend varies in intensity depending on which vocalist sings which
one of Nazrul’s multitudinous compositions. His songs of rebellion, for instance, are virtually
devoid of meend. His Ragpradhan songs feature full-fledged meend in which individual notes
in-between starting and goal notes are distinctly fleshed out. This kind of practice is in line with
Hindustani Classical music’s focus on relative pitch and the nuances of intonation22. On the
other hand, Nazrul’s Adhonik songs and their performers make prolific use of a subtler, lighter
meend which deemphasizes in-between notes and instead brings about a more superficial,
immediate effect.
As with this less intense meend, murki is largely exploited in Nazrul’s Adhonik songs,
several of which owe their melodies to aforementioned contemporaneous composers. Executed
rapidly, murki is the most subtle of ornamentations in practice. Surely, all kinds of vocalists have
utilized murki to some extent in all kinds of Nazrul’s sangeet, but the ornament is definitely
subjugated by heavier alankaar like khatka, authentic meend, and zamzama23 in Nazrul’s
Ragpradhan songs. Even within said songs, murki is mainly found in raga that retain strong ties
to their folk roots, opposed to raga associated more with urban centers and royal courts.
Additionally, singers of the first half of the twentieth century tended to shirk murki in favor for
more extended improvisation or clear-cut ornamentation regardless of compositional style.
Contemporary vocalists tend to depend much more on murki, which is in line with the trend of
Adhonik practice in general.
Tone
One common feature of all sorts of South Asian traditional musics is the similarity
between singers’ singing and speaking voices. Foreigners including the British and other
Europeans noticed this early on, considering that Western Art vocalists purposely sound very
different when singing opposed to speaking for a number of pertinent aesthetic, logistical, and
culturally embedded reasons24. Contrarily, most Nazrul sangeet shilpi do not very consciously
affect the quality of their voices and hence sound “natural.” In this way, there is no ideal tone of
voice or standard approach to resonance to bear in mind while singing Nazrul sangeet. Surely,
there are guidelines and best practices which can help accomplish certain musical goals.
Nevertheless, nasal, harsh, whiny, aggressive, and bright voices all indiscriminately made the cut
as recording artists in the early days of Nazrul sangeet as long as singing fundamentals were
firmly under their belts. Nowadays, however, the variety of tones of voice seems to have
diminished in favor for more generic and even-toned resonance. This loss in individualistic
expressiveness is surely regretful rather than praiseworthy.
Contrarily, top-grade Rabindra sangeet shilpi25 of the past century have all harbored a
22
The accuracy of pitch in playing or singing music.
A rapid succession of khatka prevalent in tappa music.
24 The reasoning behind this dichotomy between the Western vocalists’ singing and speaking
voices is beyond the scope of this paper. For more information on this topic, look into the
scientific basis of Western vocal pedagogy.
25 Professional singers specializing in songs written and set by Rabindranath Tagore’s.
23
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similar approach to rendering Tagore’s poetry. The remarkably legato26 yet stable voices of
Suchitra Mitra, Kanika Bandopadhyay, Debabrata Biswas, and Rezwana Choudhury Bannya
among others strike a common chord in our hearts that our minds register as being optimal
representations of what Tagore may have wished for his songs to sound like in practice. This is
not to say that Tagore’s songs do not have as varyingly wide of an appeal as Nazrul’s. Rather,
the musical approaches of different Rabindra sangeet shilpi are more similar than those of Nazrul
sangeet shilpi.
Professional Dhrupad27 vocalists spend the better part of their lives working towards
realizing the elusive nuances of pitch. To them, it is of utmost importance for a performer to
serve the micro-tonal demands of a given raga with great care and precision. Additionally, a
Dhrupad singer’s tone ought to be extraordinarily stable, rich in timbre28, and well-rounded.
Thus, this genre’s beauty takes shape with the fulfillment of its uncompromising rules and
regulations.
Interestingly, vocalists of various Western European Art29 genres share a similar
relationship with their repertoire. Fundamental to a performance’s success is a singer’s ability to
actualize the explicit melodic, rhythmic, dynamic, and expressive demands of a given
composition, e.g. stand-alone aria, cantata, or oratorio30. Western Art vocalists dedicate a huge
chunk of their time to optimizing their resonance throughout various vocal registers, allowing
them to sing fluidly and effortlessly across multiple octaves.
Range & Choice of Key
Unlike Western Art voice students and, to a lesser extent, Pop vocalists who strictly
identify with a particular voice type31, there is no formal theory or systematic, practical
observance of voice types in South Asian musical genres altogether. Even more, South Asian
music does not feature absolute pitches, i.e. Nazrul’s songs do not mandate a specific key32 (as
26
A quality of playing/singing a melodic line characterized by interconnectedness of adjacent
notes explicitly used in Western Art music. Notes are slurred rather than being distinct, resulting
in smooth flowing melodic production.
27 A highly exacting genre of Hindustani music which served as the predecessor to khayal.
28 The character or quality of musical sound or voice distinct from its pitch and volume, which is
determined by the sound’s specific composition of harmonics or overtones. Look into the
musical perspective on the harmonic series for more information.
29 Art music, also known as formal, erudite, or legitimate music, is an umbrella terms used to
refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations. The
umbrella of Western European Art music subsumes various genres prevalent at different points
in time including Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, Modern,
and twentieth and twenty-first century Western music.
30 Specific musical forms prevalent within the Baroque and Classical periods of Western vocal
music.
31 A particular human singing voice identified as having certain qualities or characteristics of
vocal range (pitch range), vocal weight, optimized vocal timbre (tessitura), and vocal transition
points (passaggio.) The four fundamental voice types in Western music are bass and tenor for
men and alto and soprano for women.
32 In Western Art music theory, the tonic note and chord which gives a subjective sense of
centrality, arrival, and rest that is explicitly ascribed to a piece of music.
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do post-Medieval Western Art pieces) nor were his songs written with a key in mind that
happened to complement an original recording artist’s voice (as with Pop music.) Indeed,
Nazrul’s compositions are simply key-neutral.
It goes without saying that there have been basses, tenors, altos, and sopranos performing
Nazrul’s songs. All voice types have conquered the same songs written by Nazrul, offering a
different perspective with each unique rendering. To the Western Classical voice student, this
may come as a surprise, because said musician realizes early on that Classical melodies are
heavily dependent upon vocal range to have an effect on the listener. That is, range is much more
lucrative from Luciano Pavarotti’s or Mariah Carey’s perspectives than from any single Nazrul
sangeet shilpi’s perspective. Indeed, a Western audience is much more likely to be aware of and
influenced by a performer’s vocal range.
Nazrul sangeet, along with other South Asian musical genres, simply do not operate on
the same melodic principles regarding pitch range to have this sort of effect on an audience
member. Delving into the theoretical details of said operating principles is beyond the scope of
this paper. Suffice it to say that due to a melodic formulation that utilizes up to two octaves in a
finely balanced and unfolding manner, Nazrul’s songs sound equally fantastic on low basses and
high sopranos.
Dynamics
The active calibration of loudness and softness of voice is not the most deliberately
manipulated aspect of Nazrul sangeet performance. This is not to say that all singers have always
sung at monotonous dynamic levels for their entire careers. Essentially, dynamics in Nazrul
sangeet is highly dependent upon a song’s form. For example, the structure for a great number of
Nazrul’s songs are derived from a modified form of Dhrupad’s standard four stanza form,
namely consisting of a sthayi, antaraa, sanchari, and abhog33. These denominations in Nazrul
sangeet do not function exactly as they do in Dhrupad, yet they manage to uphold a highly
recognizable, formulaic song structure. From a bird’s-eye view, a vocalist is moderately loud
during the sthayi, louder in the antaraa, quieter during the sanchari, and once again louder in the
abhog. It may or may not come as a surprise that this relative rise and fall in volume corresponds
with a general rise and fall in pitch across these four stanzas. That is, a vocalist often sings louder
for stanzas relatively higher in pitch and quieter for stanzas relatively lower in pitch.
Of course, the myriad uses of dynamics cannot be reduced to a single function of
wholesale loudness and softness between stanzas. Volume control is often instinctively carried
out by a vocalist out of habit. Internal rise and fall of pitches within stanzas are duly reflected by
subtle increases and decreases in volume. On a word to word basis or micro level, however,
singers begin to operate even more on their own intuitive terms. Many of Nazrul sangeet’s
original singers simply did not factor in dynamics as a constant choice for affecting lyrics on a
micro level. Angurbala Devi, for one, usually sang with as much force as her voice would allow
on a sustained basis. Similarly, Kaseem Mallik (K. Mallik) generally sang at a constant volume,
louder than speech level but softer than shouting. More recent singers like Firoza Begum and
Manabendra Mukhopadhyay, on the other hand, commonly utilized dynamics on a micro level.
In relation to the older singers, Manabendra’s singing clearly displays an additional, highly
engaging dimension of sound. However, this is far from suggesting that older singers’ recordings
33
Originally, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stanzas respectively of a Dhrupad composition.
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pale in comparison with that of contemporary singers. Rather, the older singers simply focused
their efforts on other pertinent aspects of performance like improvisational techniques.
Enunciation
Although enunciation or uccharan is a highly important aspect of singing in Nazrul
sangeet, contemporary singers do not differ drastically in performance. Rather, there exists a
divide between the uccharan of older and more recent singers. These differences are so apparent
to the average listener that one wonders what drove the evolutionary process that led to the
current state of singers’ uccharan in songs.
Vowels form the backbone of enunciation in Bengali. On a whole, older singers
pronounced their vowels much more intensely and distinctly than contemporary singers. In the
olden days, producing an “aa” vowel meant opening one’s mouth very wide and sustaining
sound for the full rhythmic duration of a given syllable. This seems a bit exaggerated and
antiquated to the present day listener, who is probably more accustomed to vowels being more
blended and slurred. Indeed, the common thread between Sudhir Dutta, K. Mallick, Angurbala
Devi, and Indubala Devi’s enunciation is their persistent usage of intense vowel sounds. More
recent vocalists like Sabiha Mahboob and Sujit Mustafa tend to moderate the intensity of their
vowel sounds. This does not mean that said singers have bad enunciation. The intensity with
which a vowel or consonant is attacked and sustained has nothing to do with the integrity of the
vowel itself. In this way, recent Nazrul sangeet vocalists may have excellent uccharan, without
sounding overbearing to today’s audiences.
On the other hand, there is something to be said regarding the generally sub-par
enunciation of older Nazrul sangeet vocalists whose backgrounds were largely Khayal and
Ragpradhan. Indomitable singers like Gyanendraprasad Goswami and Dipali Talukdar (Nag)
have relatively sloppy enunciation when pitted against modern standards of vowel integrity, even
attack, sustain, and release, and general clarity. These singers carried their performances through
intricate improvisational techniques, dynamics, and intense emotional expression. On the other
hand, more recent singers like Anup Ghoshal and Leena Taposhi display an impressive
command over their enunciation, allowing for Nazrul’s lyrics to be more easily communicated to
an audience. In turn, these singers sound more tame while older vocalists with a heavy
background in Khayal were often more raw in their expression, effectively downplaying the
thematic relevance of the texts they sung.
Conclusion
The leeway that dedicated singers of Nazrul sangeet possess while performing Nazrul’s
songs is astounding. Even more fascinating is the warm acceptance of this massive variety over
the past century by music critics and music lovers. After all is said and done, however, it remains
up to the listener’s tastes and preferences in order to assign value to any particular combinational
habit of these aspects of singing Nazrul sangeet. Unlike many other traditional South Asian
musical genres including but not limited to the ones briefly mentioned in this paper, Nazrul’s
songs are pleasant when the original melody has been slightly altered to fit a singer’s individual
desires. His songs sound great when a singer engages in all kinds of extended improvisational
techniques and ornamentations derived from Hindustani Classical music. His songs have
continued to inspire whether vocalists have sounded bright or dull, high or low, quiet or loud,
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clear or sloppy, or expressive or monotonous. In addition to the intrinsic beauty of Nazrul
sangeet, the freedom that singers exercise during performance is equally appealing. Of course, it
would be silly to conclude that anything goes within the vast realm of Nazrul sangeet. There
certainly are lines that have been drawn which, opposed to being enforced by the poet and
composer himself, have up till the present day been left to vocalists and listeners to formulate in
their own hearts and minds.
References
1. Hirlekar, Hema. Nuances of Hindustani Classical Music: [raags, Taals, Moods, Rasas,
Genres and Gharanas]. New Delhi: Unicorn Book : Distributors, Pustak Mahal, 2010.
2. Courtney, David R. & Courtney, Chandrakantha N. The Music of South Asia: An
Institutionally Appropriate Approach to Classical Music of India, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan. Houston, TX: Sur Sangeet Services, 2015
3. Talukdar, Rezaul Karim, and Nazrul Islam. Nazrul, the Gift of the Century. Dhaka:
Manan, 1994.
4. Huda, Muhammad Nurul, ed. Nazrul: An Evaluation. Dhaka: Nazrul Institute, 1997.
5. Huda, Muhammad Nurul. Nazrul’s Aesthetics and Other Aspects. Dhaka, Bangladesh:
Nazrul Institute, 2001.
6. Gosvāmī, Karuṇāmaẏa. Kazi Nazrul Islam: A Biography. Dhaka, Bangladesh: Nazrul
Institute, 1996.
7. Goswami, Karunamaya. Aspects of Nazrul’s Songs. Nazrul Institute, 1990.
8. The following YouTube Channels – pikeyenL7, Saroj Sanyal, Siraj Shnai, Alamsafiqul1,
mbssayed10, basuuddin, Atique671
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