Circ a 1981. R D Burman decides on Begum Parveen Sultana, that delightful empress of Hindustani raagas, as the female voice for ‘Humein Tumse Pyaar Kitna...’ in Chetan Anand’s ‘Kudrat.’ Sultana’s rich, soothingly seductive rendition was the perfect classical foil to Kishore Kumar’s more flamboyant, popular version of the Majrooh Sultanpuri song.
Amusingly, it was the Begum who strode away with the 1982 Filmfare Award for best female playback singer, although Kishore too was nominated for best male playback singer for the same song. He was pipped by his son Amit that year! Burman, the story goes, was hesitant to approach Sultana directly with the song. He first asked Ustad Dilshad Khan, her husband and guru. Burman and Khan were classmates at St Xavier’s Collegiate School, Kolkata.
‘‘He was a little doubtful whether I would sing it. But I said OK.
I couldn’t refuse anyway, and I’d great respect for his songs. I learned the song in an hour, and sang it in a single take,’’ Sultana remembers.
In the capital city for the annual Nishagandhi Festival, Dilshad Khan and Parveen Sultana spent some time with Express at their comfy suite at Hotel Mascot as dusk fell outside. The couple were hard-pressed for time, with reporters from three newspapers clamouring for interviews. ‘‘Fifteen minutes. I can give you fifteen minutes,’’ Sultana tells us somewhat brusquely. ‘‘And no photographs, please. We’re not ready. You can take all you want during our performance,’’ she adds, as Khan extends a faded Malayalam daily. Twenty years old, it has a front-page report and photograph of a concert of his in this city.
The past is a fine place to start.
And despite the old-world charm about her - it’s the nostalgic way she reels off the names of Hindustani greats, even that wave of her arm - Sultana is snugly in sync with the transformed times.
‘‘Music has not changed, it has become a little commercialised,’’ muses the singer, who gave her first stage performance at the age of 12. ‘‘The atmosphere which we used to have has changed. Earlier, there used to be respect for a raaga. There was respect among singers. You had audiences who would spend three hours at a concert. Now a singer has to give it all in ten minutes or one hour.’’ But ‘miniaturisation,’ she adds, is an old trick. Remember those three-minute, six-minute RPM records by maestros such as Bade Gulam Ali Khan? ‘‘The audience come to listen to us. We have to give them something. We should not disrespect the times.
But the important thing is that we give pure music.’’ But this musical couple draws the line at the big-time televised circuses that are reality shows.
‘‘Show us one good musician produced by reality shows. It is very unfortunate. They destroy good talent,’’ says Sultana as Khan chips in wryly with; ‘‘Music is to be heard, not seen.’’ The tall man in the dove-white kurta and pyjama remembers how, in his student days, his Guru would make him practise for seven hours straight. ‘‘I lived with my Guru.
I served him up to his death. He died on my lap. Such a thing would be unheard of nowadays.’’ Born in Nowgong, Assam, Parveen Sultana had her initial training in music under her father Ikramul Mazid and later with Pundit Chinmoy Lahiri in Kolkata. Ustad Dilshad Khan of the Patiala Gharana, who belongs to Kolkata, started training on the tabla when he was just four, but later switched to vocal inspired by the inimitable Bade Gulam Ali Khan. A recipient of numerous awards including ‘Sangeeth Marthand,’ he has incorporated over a 100 Carnatic raagas into Hindustani. Khan has composed several khayals, tumris, bhajans and ghazals.
Sultana began training with Khan in 1973. They were married shortly afterwards. Sultana started recording in 1965. Deeply entrenched in the classical traditions, she has also sung for films like ‘Gadar,’ ‘Kudrat’ and ‘Pakeezah’ and, lately, in Vikram Bhatt’s ‘1920.’ Among other accolades, she was conferred with the Padma Shree in 1976, at the age of 26, and the Miyan Tanzen Prize.
Recent years have seen a welcome resurgence of interest in Indian classical music, the couple says. ‘‘The new generation, they are coming back. Nowadays we love to see young faces in our audience,’’ says Sultana. She has a word of advice for aspiring singers. The secret, she says, is not in copying the legends such as Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhosle, but finding a good teacher and developing one’s own style through regular training. ‘‘There is no short cut to glory. Our music is very divine. We sing for the Lord. It has to touch and appeal to the audience.’’
tikirajwi@expressbuzz.com