How music of Punjab left its shores: Patiala gharana gayaki thrives in Bengal and Mumbai

Shailaja Khanna

A recent concert at the capital’s India International Centre by Abu Dhabi-based Bengali vocalist Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli, trained in the Patiala gharana gayaki, got one pondering about how far the gharana has travelled.
Punjab was once a centre of classical music. The oldest classical music festival in India, Harivallabh, had its origins in Jalandhar. The first school of music bringing the training in classical music out of the guru-shishya parampara model — the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya — was opened in Lahore in 1901. Sadly, today, the region doesn’t have much to boast of when it comes to its musical traditions. The artistes have drifted away and the songs have been lost.
Punjab’s most prominent khayal gharana, the Patiala gharana, today features mainly non-Punjab-based singers.

Punjabi is the only language apart from Urdu, Hindi and Brajbhasha in which khayals were composed.
The most popular face of the Patiala Kasur gharana was Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, who never lived in Punjab. His elder son, Ustad Karamatullah Khan, had two sons —Ustad Mazhar Ali Khan and Ustad Jawaad Ali Khan. They kept the singing tradition alive. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s younger son, Ustad Munawar Ali Khan, lived in Kolkata for a long time, influencing many singers, including Padma Bhushan awardee Pt Ajoy Chakraborty. Several fine singers trained by Pt Chakraborty are today keeping Patiala gharana’s light aflame. His daughter Kaushiki Chakraborty and disciples Brijeshwar Mukherjee, Shantanu Bhattacharya and Anol Chatterjee are prominent exponents. Ustad Munawar Ali Khan’s son Raza Ali Khan also sings.

Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli is a professor of computing at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and is researching AI in music. But his first love remains the Patiala gharana gayaki, in which he was trained from childhood onwards. “I was drawn to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahab’s tonal richness and gayaki,” he says.
Among Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s oldest disciples was Pt Jagdish Prasad. His son, Samrat Pandit, is one of the finest singers of the Patiala style. He divides his time between Kolkata and Paris, but says wistfully: “I wish I get opportunities to sing in Punjab.” Samrat is a third-generation singer. His father was fascinated by the singing of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and ran away from home to learn from him in Mumbai. His grandfather, Pt Badri Prasad, was a court singer in Patiala and then Raigarh in modern-day Chhattisgarh. He was convinced that the Ustad would not teach Jagdish Prasad wholeheartedly as, in those days, only members of the family were taught in full. But Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan recognised the talent and sincerity of his disciple. Later, when the Ustad moved to Kolkata, Pt Jagdish Prasad followed him.

While Bengal is the repository of Patiala gayaki talent, Maharashtra is home to some too. Ustad Kale Khan, uncle of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, taught quite a few disciples in Mumbai. The late Pt Vasantrao Deshpande used to sing some Patiala gharana bandishes. Pt Bhimsen Joshi, probably during his sojourn in Jalandhar, picked up a Punjabi composition in Raga Puriya, ‘Pyaare de gall lage’, but the language was so garbled that no one got to know it was being sung in Punjabi!
The story of Mumbai-based Ramakant Gaikwad, another fine Patiala gharana singer, is interesting. Though from Pune, he was fascinated with the thumri style of Patiala and wanted to learn. Today, his music is being honed by sitar and tabla maestro Pt Nayan Ghosh. He is teaching Gaikwad how to sing the compositions of different gharanas, including Agra and Rampur Sahaswan, but with a Patiala and Kirana gharana twist.
Kaushiki is the most popular singer of the gharana today. She says she pines to sing more ‘bandishes’ in Punjabi. “I do sing a Punjabi ‘tappa’, and a composition in Raga Sohini, but I don’t know any others,” she says. To her credit, she is keeping alive ‘ikwai’ (16 beats), a ‘taal’ popular in Punjab, and often sings it in her concerts. Ustad Jawad Ali Khan says Punjabis like difficult, off-beat ‘taals’, which are hard to grasp. “So, not many exponents bothered to master them.” Many ‘taals’ popular in Punjab once lie forgotten, including ‘firodast’ (14 beats) and ‘sulfakta’ (five beats).
Ustad Jawad Ali Khan bemoans what has become of the virile Patiala gayaki. Only Punjabi-speaking singers could sing the traditional Punjabi ‘khayals’ accurately. As a result, many compositions in
Punjabi are gone today. Older Punjabi-speaking disciples like the late Malti Gilani and Manorama Ahuja used to sing Punjabi ‘bandishes’ that they learnt from Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and later, Ustad Munawar Ali Khan. However, outside the North, no one really picked these up. The language barrier was a huge deterrent. Chandigarh-based Primila Puri also learnt several Punjabi ‘bandishes’ from Ustad Munawar Ali Khan. Somehow, Patiala gharana exponents today don’t even sing many ‘tappas’ even though ‘tappa’ is a Punjabi creation.
Music should indeed travel beyond geographical borders, but it is a pity when the homeland is not able to nurture its rich tradition.