Dhrupad of the Dagars (Conceptual Foundations and Contemporary Questions)

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DHRUPAD OF THE DAGARS, CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS, deals with the history of the tradition of the descendants of Behram Khan, who are renowned today as the Dagars, and the conceptual foundations of their art, in the overall context of Indian music. It deals at length with the traditional system of pedagogy of the Dagars, and the changes that came about in teaching methods in the last several decades, and establishes through the documented teachings and explanations of the Dagars, and in particular of Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar - reportedly the last storehouse of knowledge of the tradition, that dhrupad is the culmination of a long process of development from the vedic chants, and differs in a fundamental sense from the forms that developed later, in the very concept of a note, of tonal relations, and of raga - that the music of the Dagars is based on the older sruti-grama-murcchana system, and the concomitant use of a system of sound, resonance, and gesture through what are called the vedic svaras - udatta, anudatta, and svarita, that got supplanted by the new thața or mela system based on twelve notes, around the seventeenth century, with the older system surviving as esoteric knowledge in a few traditions.

The author Ashish Sankrityayan is a dhrupad exponent and has trained under several elders of the Dagar family. His main teachers of the tradition were Ustad Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar, Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, and Ustad Hussain Sayeeduddin Dagar. He has also received valuable guidance from Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar.

This book aims to give a comprehensive account of the knowledge of dhrupad and insights into it that I got from my teachers of the Behram Khani Dagar tradition, from my own researches, and from the whole process of using this in performance and teaching over the last two decades. The book has several woven narratives - musicological, historical, anecdotal, as also one through pictures, which not only give faces to the names of many of the musicians whose music and lives have been dwelt upon here, but also give insights into social hierarchies and attitudes, the complex relations of people, their personalities, and the spirit of the times.

While assuming a basic acquaintance with Indian music the book does not require prior knowledge of music theory, barring a familiarity with the most elementary of concepts - of notes, scales, and melody. Each term has been briefly explained where it first occurs.

Chapters 7 to 14, and 19, being more technical than the others, could be omitted in a first reading by someone whose interest lies more in the history of the tradition and the renowned personalities discussed here, rather than in the conceptual and technical aspects of the music.