Vikram Sampath’s book My name is Gauhar Jaan recounts the dramatic life-story of celebrated courtesan Gauhar Jaan, who was also India’s first singer to record on the gramophone. It was during the research for this book that Vikram’s penchant and passion for gramophone recordings was stirred.
“Gauhar had cut close to 600 records in her lifetime and I ended up collecting over 150 records of hers alone from the grey markets in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai,” he says. “In the process, I also stumbled upon priceless recordings of several of her contemporaries in the north and south of India, all tucked away in unknown quarters of the country.”
In 2010, after the book was published, Vikram went to Berlin on a visiting fellowship and came upon a treasure of recordings by Indian artistes at sound archives across Europe. “The constant refrain everywhere was, ‘Why doesn’t India have a national sound archive?’” says Vikram, the BITS Pilani alumni, who is a banker.
In the course of a conversation with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who invited him for a tete a tete, after reading the book, Vikram brought to her attention a need for an archive. “It was a revelation to see her speak so knowledgeably and passionately about classical music,” says Vikram. “I brought up the archive idea with her and she was excited about it and immediately made connections with several government agencies.”
With a recommendation from such a high level, one would have thought the project was a done deal. But Vikram sighs, and says, “The proposal just kept moving across departments and academies, which gave empty promises.”
But the archive project survived. Help came from T V Mohandas Pai, who was then with Infosys and is now chairman of the Manipal Global Education. “He readily and generously funded the project with seed capital that helped to import state-of-the-art equipment that meets international standards,” he says.
The Manipal University also came forward to host the archive at their premises in Bangalore. A grant from the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) has also helped Vikram to put together important research material around this era. “The Archive of Indian Music (AIM), which I have set up, has several trustees from across the country,” he says.
A not-for-profit trust, AIM will seek to digitise, preserve and disseminate an important slice of the musical and cultural history of our land. “The range of recordings to be covered would not be restricted to Hindustani and Carnatic classical music alone, but also theatre, early cinema, folk music recordings in all languages as also voices and speeches of great personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and others,” he says.
AIM now has 10,000 records—both 78 RPM shellacs and vinyls—already collected from several places; a few donations, and others purchased from the kabadiwalas! “The trustees would help us source these records from their region and send them to Bangalore where my technician Chethan Kumar digitises these records and catalogues them on a daily basis,” says Vikram. “But the archive is going to be a virtual one.”
The website, www.archiveofindianmusic.org, is in its final stage of development in association with Vikram’s partners, Gaurav Vaz, and his company ‘The Random Lines’. It is expected to go live by end October 2012 with about 1,000 clips in the first round. “All these clips will be uploaded there and made available to people on free registration, for listening through streaming audio alone and not for download,” he informs.
Vikram says it is a shame that in a nation where music is so ubiquitous there is no central repository for all kinds of music of our country. “What better way than the arts to achieve a sense of national integration in these troubled times?” he says. “But it’s an endemic problem because as a country we have very little regard for our history and for documentation. Just see the kind of preservation done for even houses of musicians like Beethoven or Mozart, while a Thyagaraja’s house in Tiruvayyaru is broken down to have a garish renovation! ”
Of course there are government bodies, academies and archives. “But they need to make a reality check about whether their holdings are reaching out to anyone, especially in today’s day of technology and the internet with everything being so accessible,” he says.