THIS is an unusual book. It shows a lifetime of intimacy with not only the tone and timbre of music, its pitch and resonance, its inner depths and outer ramifications; it also shows an unusual mastery of related disciplines and areas: literature, art, cinema, the radio... It's really a sociological treatise, an indepth study of the Oral Tradition, the keertana philosophy, its sound and sweetness, how it holds people together and causes an spiritual upliftment... a popularization of music so that it becomes an integral part of the life of the community.
Divided into two parts-the first dealing with theoretical, historical, conceptual issues, the second, a practical commentary on the major exponents of prominent khayal gharanas, the book is really more than a mere analysis of music and musicians. It's a classic... a thought structure of high relevance by a vocalist whose intimacy with the performing tradition matches his depth of scholastic insight.
Classical music is and has been the author's life breath: in this volume, he has sought out its origins and worked on its techniques, instruments and implications in a manner that appears at once so natural and at the same time so deep... readers are made to feel at home as if music is or should be a normal ingredient of life: that is an unusual achievement.
...it's a treat to see the author's familiarity with the empire of music: his selection of six major vocalists of Hindustani music. Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze through Abdul Karim Khan, Faiyaz Hussain Khan, Kesarbai Kerkar, Omkarnath Thakur, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan: their various gharanas... This is done with extraordinary finesse and sophistication; and they come alive.
It's more than a book on music. Its potential with regard to developing the radio and the cinema and the connected areas, its unfoldment of the potentiality of the oral tradition with regard to, for example, the liquidation of illiteracy, social reform, family planning, show what an inter-disciplinary approach can achieve.
The book is elevating in the sense that the country censured for centuries for mass illiteracy can feel a sense of relief and upliftment that a people who can produce a whole galaxy of saint-poets, singing their way through life and suffusing the community with music at the ground level: how can such a community be called illiterate? Professor Ranade has really given us a fascinating study in cultural dynamics.
Sangeetacharya Ashok Da. Ranade (1937-2011) was an internationally renowned vocalist (Hindustani Classical), composer, musicologist, ethnomusicologist, voice-culturist and a teacher with degrees in literature, law and music. He was the author of a number of authoritative books on Hindustani music and ethnomusicology.
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