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Instruments that
look like the rabab or the sarod certainly existed in
India as early as the 5th century CE as they can be seen in
the Ajanta paintings. In fact, exchanges of musical scales,
techniques and instruments have been going on between
India and Greece
(with contributions from Persia in between) from the very ancient
times. The shift from the primacy of the harp like to the zither like
string instruments had taken place together in this whole region.
After the zithers had very nearly eliminated the harps, it seems that
two main families of the plucked zithers came to prevail in
North India,
the vina (also called biin) and the rabab. Both
of these were played for accompanying the singers of dhruvapada
compositions and the devotional compositions in the courts, ashrams
and temples.
The rabab
had a distinct place in the devotional music of India. For this
reason, it was also called ‘dhrupadi’ rabab and some times was
even called ‘rudra bina’ as it was closely associated with the
devotion music that was composed in dhruvapada style. The Sikh
Gurus beginning with the founder Nanak Dev specially patronized the
rabab as the accompanying instrument to the devotional
compositions. The full fretted rudra bin, the dominant string
instrument over the whole of
India,
was not taken up by them, perhaps to keep the example of Nanak and
Mardana. Even the last guru Gobind Singh was fond of the rabab.
Much later the name
rudra bina came to be used for the large fretted instrument
earlier just called ‘bin’. The rabab had gut or silk
strings, two types of bridges were used, the flat and the standing
bridge or a composite bridge having both the features. Later after the
introduction of sarod, the standing bridge was retained by
rabab and the flat bridge went out of vogue. Rabab had two
sizes, used form
Punjab to Bengal
for all kinds of kirtan in various languages. The Jodi
and pakhawaj assisted the rabab for dhruvapada,
gurubani and Vaishnava kirtan. Court or durbar rababs
had bigger resonators or chakkis.
But both bin and
rabab lost this function with the advent of khayal singing
which required a bowed string like the sarangi to keep pace
with rapid tana-work. They were thus left out to survive as
solo instruments only and a good deal of innovation was done to make
them diverse and versatile. Thus started the inventions of the new
instruments like the sarod, sitar, surbahar, sursingaar, mayur vina
and many others.
A mortal blow was inflicted on the Mughal Empire by Nadir
Shah of Persia when he invaded North India in the middle of the 18th
Century, looted Delhi, massacred most of its population and plundered
the Red Fort, the seat of the Mughal power and went back to Iran with
an immense booty of gold, precious jewels like the Kohinoor and a huge
enslaved population. He left such a terror in the minds of
Delhi inhabitants
that not only the musicians that flocked from far and wide to the
court of Muhammad Shah Rangila, a great patron of music, ceased to
come from other parts of India but also even those at the court left
to seek refuge in the smaller principalities that surrounded Delhi.
Thus the courts at Gwalior, Agra, Rampur, Jaipur, Atrauli, Lucknow and
such others that owed lip allegiance to collapsed Delhi, became the
prime locations of musical patronage. It is here that new traditions
of distinct stylistic renderings developed and which later came to be
known as ‘gharana’ (families of musicians that restricted
teaching to family members only) but named after the court that
offered patronage. Most eminent among these were the ‘Lucknow
gharana’
and ‘Rampur
gharana’
where the best of the exodus from Delhi settled. During the 19th
century, when a steep intellectual depression had set in, the vocal
repertoire of the khayal became stagnant but many innovations
were done in the area of musical instruments.
According to Somjit
Dasgupta, as heard from his teacher Radhika Mohan Moitra, in Jaipur,
the Madhavmal tradition of biin playing was taken up by Murad
Ali Khan who was given the training of biin on the
sursingaar but was forbidden to play the biin as he was not
a family member of the teacher Madhav Mal. Around 1830, Murad Ali
khan, invented the sarod by putting a metal plate on the rabab
in place of its wooden plate. As the metal strings were also now
coming to replace gut strings, the metal plate provided for greater
clarity of notes. The sursingaar it seems had been given a
metal plate earlier and the same change in rabab turned it into the ‘sarod’.
As this was not the age of microphones the gain in the volume of the
sound of the instrument was a highly welcome. Somjit thinks that now
with electronic amplification rabab can make a comeback.
The compositions of
the rabab repertoire were earlier framed to match with
Dhruvapad beat cycles or taalas and the later compositions for the
rabab were called gats just as in sitar and sarod, the two instruments
that rabab preceded. Earlier the stroke work or ‘bolkaari’ of
the rabab was close to Dhruvapada and also emphasized with big
‘gamakas’ and strokes of the right hand and then it evolved
more like the present day rhythmic patterning or ‘layakarii; By
this time that is the 18th century the rabab was not
used for accompanying singing and became an independent instrument.
The great maestros developed the new style of ‘gatkaarii’ and
bolkarii and larant. The rabab with its gut
strings and wooden base without mental plate such as in sarod,
can produce all the ornamentions that are played on sarod or sitar.
For jhala on rabab, they use four of the main strings in
place of chikari (side strings), which are used in biin
or sitar playing. As a mater of fact all the present day
techniques of sarod playing are inherited from the rabab.
Rabab in Colonial
Days
By the end of the
19th century the courts of Lucknow, Jaipur etc., also faced
a decline and a new patronage developed for the musicians in the
‘courts’ or rather coteries of the Bengali zamindaars around
Calcutta, the new capital of British India. Calcutta zamidars
contributed to the patronage and created an atmosphere of music
appreciation and education that lasted till 1980s. Many innovations
were done under their wings and even a gharana for pakhawaj playing
came into being. Most important was their maintenance of instrument
making workshops that provided a steady place of income to the
instrument makers. Radha Mohan Moitra not only played the sur-rabab,
sarod, sursingaar, rabab etc; Haren Krishan Sheel played
the biin, they also sustained workshops. They assisted or
themselves made innovations along with the musicians they patronized.
For instance the famous musician Ustad Alauddin Khan of Maihar put a
larger resonator (chakki) on the sarod, which amplified the
deeper notes. Radhika Mohan Moitra on the other hand made the
resonator less high to yield sharper tones.
Somjit Dasgupta
points out that Radhu Babu created 43 a new instruments, such as the
sarod with less height, another with a wooden chakki,
another with a flat bridge only which yielded a biin type sound
and hence called mohan bina played by a tar java (plectrum).
The instrument was so named by the musicologist Thakur Jai Deva Singh.
Radhu Babu performed on the mohan biina in many National programs
broadcasted by the All Indian Radio. Somjit recalls a famous
performance on the mohan bina, in which Radhika Mohan Moitra played
the raag called miyan ki malhar and Karamattulla and
Prem Ballabh played pakhawaj and tabla respectively. He could
also play the sitar as the maestro Ustad Inayat Khan trained
him for it, and that helped him create the instrument called
dilbahar, a cross between sitar and surbahar. He
also invented an israj type instrument called navadeepa,
another called Indian banjo. His disciples play all of these even now,
says Somjit. Sudeshana Baghchi gifted 57 instruments of Radhika Mohan
Moitra to Somjit Dasgupta which comprise today of a rare collection
which is not an archive but a living traditon, he says.
JORI : Percussion
Instrument
 The Jori,
developed in the medieval times is said to be brought to the fore by
the Sikh guru Sri Arjun Dev ji, by splitting the age-old instrument
pakhawaj into two. Although instrument like this pair can be seen
in ancient sculptural art, the Jori developed the repertoire of its
contemporary pakhawaj into a vigorous style. The two parts
called dhamma (left) and puda (right) are kept
vertically on the floor, the first of 14 inches and as heavy as 16
kilogram and the second a few inches smaller. The left one produced
deeper base sounds that are strong, expansive and resonating,
unequaled by any other Indian drum. The right one again being upright
allows greater modulation of strokes as well as volume. The Jori thus
catered to the temperament of vigorous music of dhruvapad as
distinct from the mannerisms of softness highlighted in the khayal
of the much later period.
Three major
sites of Indian performing arts, namely temples, courtesan houses and
theatres were nearly wiped out particularly in the North, by the
Islamic ravages and its shariat code. By the end of the
twelfth-century, ashrams and the courts (that mostly defied the
maulawis) were left as the only seats of dance and music. As the
forums of secular music especially theatre declined, performance being
ashram centric tended to concentrate on spiritual and philosophic
themes under the impact of bhakti or devotional other
worldliness. The royal courts merely patronized the music created in
religious circles like ashrams and sufi khankahs. This
narrowed but concentrated urge created a massive variety of devotional
music in medieval India of which the brijbhasha dhruvapad
patronized initially by Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior (1486-1514) was
dominant form in the North. ‘Ragdarpana’ (1662, a translation
by Fakirullah of ‘Mankutuhala’ composed by Man Singh and his
pandits, even calls him the inventor of dhruvapada). The songs
of all sects of Indian spiritual pursuits were sung in the
dhruvapada style. Guru Nanak (1469-1339) and his successors till
Guru Arjan Dev (1563-1609) who installed the Adi Granth at Amritsar at
the holy shrine of Durbar Sahib in 1604, undoubtedly must have sung
their compositions in the music of the day. The Jori, along with the
mridang or pakhavaj, thus is the primary drum of the
Gurbani kirtan which was performed according to the highest standards
of what is now called classical music.
 As a percussion
instrument the Jori incorporated all the features of the sophisticated
and complex rhythmic work that came to be developed in the course of
the centuries that unfolded. It seems to have taken many contributions
from various parts of the country to develop a comprehensive
repertoire of what came to be known as the Amritsari baaj and
which included elements like saath, jat, and the latest called
the gat taken from tabla playing.
The Gurbani
kirtan from its very outset preserved the purely devotional ambience
of dhruvapad and the pakhawaj and jori rhythms which in the royals
courts softened into excessive embellishments and heavy ornamentations
and eventually declined into the decorative and sentimental khayal
with tabla accompaniment which is the presently extant genre. The
Gurbani kirtan which had preserved till very recently the dhruvapad
style has yielded now to the demands of popularity and diluted the
tradition.
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