Gauhar Jaan (1873-1930) had a career unique in the annals of Hindustani classical music. Her indigo planter father, Robert William Yeoward, was of Armenian Christian descent and her mother Victoria Hemmings, was part Muslim and part English Protestant Christian, thus giving the lie to the idea that one had to be of ‘pure’ Indian blood in order to enter the soul of Indian Culture (whatever that may mean) and therefore its music. Victoria was forced by circumstances to become the well-known tawaif (singing courtesan) Malka Jaan.
Vikram Sampath, a trained Carnatic classical vocalist, an electronic engineer with a Master’s in Mathematics and an MBA in Finance, has produced a finely researched book on a forgotten artiste of huge talent, and in the process, given a lucid idea about the socio-cultural hence political values of the time, with its baggage of cant and hypocrisy that helped reinforce the class-system.
Gauhar Jaan was an exceptionally well-trained singer, the foundation of whose training lay in Dhrupad, the most rigorous form of raga music. In this respect she was not an exception; many tawaifs of those times were similarly trained. Although known as a Thumri and Khayal singer, in that order, her matchless popularity, in her time, may be attributed to her ability to please both the connoisseur and the layman alike. Sampath writes about her ability to gauge the mood of her audience before having sung a single note. She could establish a rapport with the listener quite easily. While this made her the most prolific recording artiste in the first phase of gramophone disc recording in India, indeed in the annals of recorded Hindustani classical music — she is said to have cut some 600 discs — it also, ironically, rendered her vulnerable to criticism from the rasikas, some of whom found her technique to be superb but her adayagi or exposition of a composition in a given raga no better or worse than most tawaifs. In short, they thought she sang beautifully but her knowledge of the intricacies of raga badhat or the development of an idea in a composition just average.
This brings out another aspect of musical teaching amongst the Ustads, who passed on the gems from their repertoire only to their male family members and taught the tawaifs, who were women, enough to earn a decent, and sometimes a handsome living. There has hardly been an Ustad in late 19th and 20th century music — certainly up to the 1950s — who had not been financially supported by a tawaif! That quite a few tawaifs, including Gauhar Jaan, left their mark is a feat in itself. Zohra Bai of Agra could do systematic raga elaboration, reportedly for hours. For the record, Gauhar Jaan’s chota khayal composition in raga Lachmi (Lakshmi) Todi, ‘Tum hazrat khwaja, sab rajan ke raja; hoon aayi tero darwaza / Gauhar pyari ki araz yahi hai, jag mein raakho mer laaja’ is sung even today by singers who don’t even know the composer’s name.
Gauhar Jaan’s personal life was marked by heartbreak and high drama. She desperately sought emotional security in the arms of a man despite all the wealth and adulation she received from maharajas, nawabs and wealthy merchants. The very popular and talented Amrit Keshav Nayak from Marathi Natya Sangeet was her lover and just when she thought that she had found the love of her life she lost him to a heart attack, possibly caused by alcohol addiction. He was only thirty. She turned for solace to her employee Abbas, who at first was flattered and soon became proprietorial. Earlier, there was a costly lawsuit with another former employee who claimed to be her husband. She was even humiliated in court and an attempt to prove her paternity came to nought when her long absconding father whom she managed to trace refused to help without being financially compensated.
Almost all her wealth drained away, fighting off parasites. In the twilight of her relatively short life, she sought employment in the court of Maharaja Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadeyar of Mysore. An obituary appeared in The Statesman, Calcutta, dated 28 January 1930, announcing her death in Mysore. It was a life rich in music and desperately impoverished of nurturing love.
Sampath’s book is scholarly, strong on musical, sociological and historical detail: It is written with respect and love. By the time one puts down the book, the heart is wrenched while the mind is rewarded. He has taken the trouble to re-master a hundred of her three-and-a-half minute recordings, and an additional pleasure is the CD which comes with the book. There are twenty five tracks from various points in her recording career that bear testimony to her immortal art, this despite the rudimentary recording available then. Sampath’s digital transfers are pretty good and the listener is rewarded.
The biography opens with the following couplet:
Lutf hai kaun si kahani mein/ Aap beeti kahun ke jag Beeti ? (“Which story would you find more pleasing? Should I narrate the tale of the world or the one of my life?”)
Gauhar Jaan, an Urdu poetess like her mother Malka Jaan, lived a subtle, even exquisite life of the mind, though the circumstances of her physical existence could hardly be called happy.
— The writer is an art and literary critic.
pathafm@gmail.com