Ram Narayan and the sarangi’s many moods

India lost one of its last sarangi giants with the passing of Pandit Ram Narayan at the age of 96. He was the most passionate advocate of this string instrument that has gone through challenging cultural topographies in the historical landscape of Indian classical music. He was blessed with gifted hands on the sarangi and an articulate tongue in telling its story and those of the crosses its previous messiahs had to bear. Ram Narayan often used to recollect how giants like Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Ustad Amir Khan had to give up playing the instrument to pursue the greener pastures of vocal music. He, too, learnt vocal music but decided to continue on his sarangi odyssey.
The sarangi was an accompanying instrument in tawaif music, Rajasthani and Punjabi folk music, and, of course, Hindustani classical vocal traditions. Ram Narayan had an appreciation for the systems in Carnatic music for many reasons — one, for its deep-rooted rhythmic patterns and, another, the organic space given to the violin artiste in a vocal concert. He stopped accompanying vocalists and switched to solo concerts as sufficient creative room was not given to the accompanying sarangi artistes in Hindustani music. Vintage recordings of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan or Gaan Maharishi Krishnarao Shankar Pandit validate his argument showcasing some of the best sarangi accompaniments but sans the deserved time or space. He had accompanied legends including Amir Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur, Hirabai Barodekar, and Gangubai Hangal as a staff artiste of the All India Radio (AIR) in 1947.
In 1943, Ram Narayan joined the Lahore station of AIR. Partition robbed India of an all-time sarangi great, Ustad Bundu Khan, who left for Pakistan, but gained another as Ram Narayan migrated from Lahore to Delhi. Ram Narayan considered two people the greatest in sarangi: Bundu Khan, and Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, whom he considered the real founder of the Kirana gharana. He always lamented the fact that we don’t have enough recordings of Bundu Khan, Sabri Khan and Abdul Wahid Khan, and also that most sarangi talents couldn’t express themselves innovatively due to the innate positioning of accompanying artistes in a vocal concert. Among Carnatic violinists, Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu became an established soloist, and, fortunately, his music was recorded extensively by the public service broadcaster and private studios.
Ram Narayan was blessed with intelligent humour, and his stories about the place of the harmonium in North Indian music had plenty. Of course, he had a justified grief about the way the harmonium replaced the sarangi on stage, but he logically challenged the harmonium’s inability to express Indian music. He said, “Harmonium is an out-of-tune instrument and it will remain the same in future too. Whosoever sings with it, will suffer for it.” He asked if even the sarangi couldn’t match Pandit Kumar Gandharva on stage, then what can a harmonium do? Ram Narayan had a stint in Hindi film music, which he particularly didn’t relish. However, he will always be remembered for making the sarangi popular in Bollywood. He knew that a western musician such as Yehudi Menuhin or Pablo Casals would understand the value of the bowing, four base strings and 35 sympathetic strings in a sarangi better than his Indian counterparts.
Today, as we mourn his passing, I remember his response on being asked why the sarangi was chosen as the music of mourning by the national broadcaster. He replied, “The sarangi encompasses all human moods. It is due to mere illiteracy that the sarangi is understood as music for mourning. The government must think about better ways to deal with ministers’ passing.”
S Gopalakrishnan is a writer, broadcaster, and founder of the podcast, Dilli Dali. The views expressed are personal