More Mehdi Hassan - "Allah Agar Taufeeq Na De"

We are fortunate that Mehdi Hassan has left us thousands of live and studio recordings of his peerless performances. Even for devoted fans it is not unusual to come across a gem that has never been experienced before. That happened to me today as I was browsing iTunes and saw an unfamiliar live album titled "Mehdi Hassan - EP" that was released in India earlier this year. Here I share the beautiful ghazal "Allah Agar Taufeeq Na De" which is the second recording in that album. The poet is unidentified. The piece is long (34 minutes) but the patience of true fans will be amply rewarded. My appreciation goes out to the person who has posted this on youtube so I can share it in this space. The ghazal's Urdu lyrics below the video have been transcribed by me.



Allah agar taufeeq na dey insaan ke bas ka kaam nahiN
Faizan-e-mohabbat aam sahi irfan-e-mohabbat aam nahiN

Ya Rab yeh maqaam-e-ishq hai kya go deeda-o-dil ka kaam nahiN
Taskeen hai aur taskeen nahiN aaram hai aur aaram nahiN

KyuN mast-e-sharaab-e-aish-o-tarab takleef-e-tawajjoh farmaaiN
Awaz-e-shikast-e-dil hi to hai awaz-e-shikast-e-jaam nahiN

Aana hai jo bazm-e-jaanaN meiN pindaar-e-khudi ko tor ke aa
Aye hosh-o-khirad ke deewane yaN hosh-o-khirad ka kaam nahiN

Zahid ne kuch iss andaaz se pee saaqi kee nigaheN parne lageeN
Mai kash yahee ab tak samjhe thhe shaista-e-daur-e-jaam nahiN

Ishq aur gawara khud kar lay bay shart shikast-e-faash apni
Kuch dil kee bhi un kay saazish hai tanha yeh nazar ka kaam nahiN

Update - May 22nd, 2016:

1) It is always gratifying to read comments on anything I write. Often, in addition to appreciation, you learn something new. A reader corrected the third sh'er and informed me that the correct phrase here is "awaz-e-shikast-e-jaam" not "jaan". From the context "jaam" indeed seems to be the correct word.

2) I don't have confirmation of this from any other source but at least 2 commenters have mentioned that the poet is Jigar Muradabadi.

Mehdi Hassan: The "Voice of God" is no more

The legendary Pakistani singer Mehdi Hassan, universally acknowledged as "Shahenshah-e-Ghazal" (King of Ghazal), died on June 13th, 2012 after a protracted illness. The outpouring of grief and the subsequent torrent of tributes testify to the influence of Mehdi Hassan on lovers of music and Urdu ghazal all over the world. The world of music has lost an irreplaceable asset. I wrote a blog post in November 2009 on some of my favorite Mehdi Hassan pieces along with a biographical sketch (I am proud that several people have borrowed facts from that original piece for which I worked hard to dig up authentic information on the maestro's life).

With Mehdi Hassan's passing, most of the formative influences on my musical tastes since childhood have now passed into history with the notable exception of Lata Mangeshkar and Farida Khanum (may they both live long and prosper!). I can never be thankful enough to have been born in a family whose primary mode of interaction to this day are conversation, debate and argument about politics and history and discussion and enjoyment of literature, film, sports and music. This cultural environment and the economic struggles of a "sufaid-posh" middle class family are my dominant memories of growing up. Mehdi Hassan is the quintessential voice of that upbringing. His imbeccable diction, mellifluous voice and sureela-pan will always live in the hearts of those who love semi-classical Ghazal (a genre of which he is a virtual creator).

Here are a few of the obituaries and articles on Mehdi Hassan published since his death. RIP Maestro!! Your music will live forever!

The Guardian - Obituary
Ali Sethi in The Guardian
The New York Times - Obituary
BBC - Obituary
Hindustan Times - Reactions
Express Tribune - News and Initial Reactions
Public Radio International - Tribute

Let's conclude a tribute to the King in the most fitting manner with his immortal music. For the ghazal selection, here is a slightly lesser known beauty. Close your eyes, listen to the words of Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali and the masterful rendition by Khan Sahib. This is an out of the world experience.

Aage barhe na Qissa-e-Ishq-e-ButaaN se hum
Sab kuchh kaha magar na khule raazdaaN se hum

Here's a gem of a film song from the Pakistani movie "Pehchhan". Nisar Bazmi composed the music. My eight year old growing up in a very different time and place loves this song and often requests it in the car. Here is hoping that Mehdi Hassan's music will be discovered and loved by many generations yet to come.

P.S. I will mention it here to remind myself but will write some other time about my passing encounter with Mehdi Hassan when I was a young boy and he stopped his car at seeing my father and I standing by the side of the road near our VW beetle that had just broken down on us!!

Memorial Day, Alta Mesa Cemetery & Billy Collins

Alta Mesa Cemetery, very close to my home, is one of my favorite haunts (pun intended). I often walk or ride my bike through the leafy lanes lined with headstones, every now and then, stopping to read the engraved names, dates, inscriptions and images that represent the few lasting historical clues to the lives of the departed.

Life is represented in all its colors here: the joyous inscriptions of lives fully lived "Joanne Smith (1941 - 2004): she made every day feel like Saturday" and the somber laments on children's graves "Jose Antonio (1972): of such is the kingdom of God". All are equal in this final resting place. Steve Jobs and David and Lucille Packard are buried here but their burial sites (which I have not come across yet) are no different than anyone else's. Headstones have Stars of David, Crosses and Crescents, inscriptions in English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Farsi but all rest peacefully next to each other in the shadow of oak trees. They all understand each other.

Memorial Day is a good day to remember the dead. Today Alta Mesa is full of potted plants, freshly cut flowers, floral wreaths, rainbow pinwheels and little American flags.

Here are some photographs I have taken in Alta Mesa Memorial Park during my visits.

The former American Poet Laureate Billy Collins has a wonderful poem called "Cemetery Ride" in his collection "Horoscopes for the Dead". It is hard to better Collins's evocation of a ride through a similar cemetery.

Cemetery Ride

My new copper-colored bicycle
is looking pretty fine under a blue sky
as I pedal along one of the sandy paths
in the Palm Cemetery here in Florida,

wheeling past the headstones of the Lyons,
the Campbells, the Dunlaps, and the Davenports,
Arthur and Ethel who outlived him by 11 years
I slow down even more to notice,

but not so much as to fall sideways on the ground.
And here's a guy named Happy Grant
next to his wife in their endless bed.
Annie Sue Simms is right there and sounds

a lot more fun than Theodosia S. Hawley.
And good afternoon, Emily Polasek
and to you too, George and Jane Cooper,
facing each other in profile, two sides of a coin.

I wish I could take you all for a ride
in my wire basket on this glorious April day,
not a thing as simple as your name, Bill Smith,
even trickier than Clarence Augustus Coddington.

Then how about just you Enid Parker?
Would you like to gather up your voluminous skirts
and ride sidesaddle on the crossbar
and tell me what happened between 1863 and 1931?

I'll even let you ring the silver bell.
But if you are not ready, I can always ask
Mary Brennan to rise from her long sleep
beneath the swaying gray beards of Spanish moss

and ride with me along these halls of the dead
so I can listen to her strange laughter
as some crows flap in the blue overhead
and the spokes of my wheels catch the dazzling sun.

Henry David Thoreau & The "Facebook Effect"

You simply couldn't dodge facebook chatter in the Bay Area over the last couple of months. It has been everywhere: the mural painter who is worth hundreds of millions, the anticipated boom in angel investing, the frantic wealth managers chasing the pimpled millionaires and billionaires, And then there is supposedly the 'facebook effect' on the local real estate. Home owners in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Los Altos and towns surrounding Facebook's new Menlo Park headquarters are salivating in anticipation of rising property values illustrated in this "only in the Bay Area" photograph:

I would happily take some of this wealth if I knew how but instead it made me think of Thoreau and his house on Walden Pond. I picked up my copy of "Walden" (purchased eleven years ago at the Walden Pond Bookstore in Concord) to re-read Thoreau's wonderful account of his time in that modest house and how he came to build and live in it. Let's have Thoreau speak for himself as who else could do a better job:

"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.---Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?"

"I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:

Boards                                          $8.03&1/2 (mostly shanty boards)
Refuse shingles for roof and sides   $4.00
Laths                                             $1.25
Two second-hand windows
with glass                                      $2.43
One thousand old brick                 $4.00
Two casks of lime                         $2.40 (that was high, More than I needed)
Hair                                              $0.31
Mantle-tree iron                            $0.15
Nails                                             $3.90
Hinges and screws                        $0.14
Latch                                            $0.10
Chalk                                           $0.01
Transportation                              $1.40 (I carried a good part on my back)
               
                In all                             $28.12&1/2

These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one."  


Replica of Thoreau's cottage at Walden Pond

In the chapter "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" Thoreau writes:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and to reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by exprience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

Modern life is infinitely distracting but "living deliberately, fronting the essential facts of life" is still all that ultimately matters whether done from lofty mansions in the most desirable zip codes or from a wooden cottage on the banks of a pond.

Ja MeiN Tose Naahin BoluN - Lata & Noor Jehan

Lata Mangeshkar is a goddess of music. She has sung a staggeringly large number of genuinely great, not just excellent, songs. One of my favorites in a long list is "Ja Tose NahiN BoluN Kanhaiyya". This beautiful duet (with Manna Dey) was composed by the great Bengali music director Salil Chowdhry for the 1956 film "Parivaar". The song (I am told) is in Raga Hamsadhwani. Lata's effortless brilliance in this number makes Manna Dey look like a rank amateur.



Noor Jehan is the only other female playback singer for whom I have the same reverence as Lata. She is the quintessential Pakistani cultural symbol. Even though she had already achieved fame by 1947, Noor Jehan was the only true mega star of the film industry to settle on the Pakistani side of the border. Enchanting romantic songs from films  "Intezaar", "Dupatta", "Haveli", "Koel" and "LaakohN meiN Aik", patriotic 'naghmas' such as "Aye Puttar HattaN Te NahiN Wikde" and lively Punjabi film numbers from "Heer Ranjha" and "Paatay Khan" all evoke cultural milestones in the country's history.  In the 50's, 60's and 70's, when she was still fortunate enough to be working with great composers like Khawaja Khurshid Anwar, Master Inayat Hussain and Rasheed Atre, Noor Jehan sang every bit as brilliantly as Lata at her peak. To experience her at her sublime best, lets listen to Noor Jehan sing very similar lyrics to Lata and Manna Dey above and enjoy her mastery of the sur. This is from the film "Mauseeqar" (1962) with music by Rasheed Atre in Raga Jaijaivanti. I have had this on repeat for the last 2 days.

Speak, Memory - Tony Judt & Wislawa Szymborska

Favorite Musical Masterpieces: Thankgiving Edition (D.V. Paluskar, Faiyyaz Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali/ Barkat Ali, Salamat Ali Khan)



Ustad Faiyyaz Khan

Here in the United States this is the week of the Thanksgiving holiday. It is one of the more relaxing times of the year and with a four day weekend, I have had plenty of time to re-listen to some great Hindustani classical music. Since its been a while that I posted the sublime Jhinjhoti thumri by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan here are a few more gems that will surely accompany me to the proverbial desert island. Some may notice that these are all by male singers but a post is brewing in my head which will focus on some favorite pieces by female classical singers (Begum Akhtar, Kajjan Begum, Roshan Ara Begum, Girija Devi).
First up is D.V. Paluskar. I have always loved the purity of D.V. Paluskar's sur and the clarity of his singing. What a tragedy that this extraordinary talent died in 1955 when he was only 34. His father, Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar was a singer and teacher of some renown and founded the premier classical music institute called "Gandharva Mahavidyalaya" in Lahore in 1901.

Here is D.V. Paluskar singing "Piyu Palan Laage More AkhiyaN" in Raga Gaud Sarang:

Next is a little nugget from the emperor of the Agra Gharana, Ustad Faiyyaz Khan. Known as Aftab-e-Mauseeqi (a title given to him by the Maharaja of Mysore), Faiyyaz Khan's mastery and his distinctive, booming voice leaves one mesmerized. Faiyyaz Khan was a towering figure of his time; a court musician for the Maharaja of Baroda for many years, a close friend of the Sarangi-maestro Ustad Bundu Khan and a much sought after "Mehfil ka Baadshah" for musical concerts and conferences. Professor Daud Rahbar (Zia Mohyeddin's first cousin) has written a charming book about music called "Kuchh BateiN Sureeli See" which is dedicated to Ustad Faiyyaz Khan ("Jinn kay gaane meiN mohabbat aur himmat kee goonj thhee").

This is Ustad Faiyyaz Khan's "Pawan Chalat" in Raga Chhayanat:



Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and his brother Ustad Barkat Ali Khan were great exponents of the Patiala Gharana. Their long association with Lahore makes me think of them even more fondly. Barkat Ali Khan (1908 - 1963) was born and died in Lahore and is buried in the Miani Sahib cemetery. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan moved to India a couple of years after partition but learned much of his music in Lahore with Akhtar Hussain Khan and Aashiq Ali Khan. All these Patiala scions practiced and performed often at "Takia MeerasiaN" near Gawalmandi bazaar.

The two pieces I have selected here are in Raga Pahari so one can contrast the singing of the two brothers side by side in similar light genre performances. Barkat Ali Khan had a gentler voice more suited to semi-classical singing but Bade Ghulam Ali Khan had greater range. His resonant voice and vocal mastery felt equally at home in Thumri/Daadra or Khayaal.

Barkat Ali Khan sings his famous maahiya,"BaaghoN MeiN Parre Jhoole"(written by Chiragh Hasan Hasrat): (unfortunately there is a bit of background crackling noise in this version)



Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sings "Qurbaan So Maariye".

When I reflect on the Hindustani classical music tradition and its evolution, there is no doubt in my mind that it is now a shadow of its former self. Pakistan inherited the likes of Salamat Ali/ Nazakat Ali, Fateh Ali/Amanat Ali, Ghulam Hassan Shaggan and Aashiq Ali Khan but the art form died quickly in the culturally hostile terrain despite the best effort of those greats. Their disciples kept up somewhat but almost entirely abandoned the more demanding, long classical forms like Khayaal. Even in India, where there is a much more robust music education infrastructure and far greater number of organized public concerts, the quality of the performers is generally mediocre. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Abdul Karim Khan, Omkarnath Thakur or D.V. Paluskar are in a different league but amongst under-50 performers one would be hard pressed to find more than a few that are of even Ustad Rashid Khan's quality. The genuinely first rate, even in India, have either passed away or are quite aged (Kishori Amonkar, Girija Devi).

Lastly, we have a heavenly performance by Ustad Salamat Ali Khan with a bandish that seems particuarly apt as one remembers all these vocalists who are no longer with us.

Salamat Ali Khan sings "Daiyya, KahaN Gaye Woh Log" in Raga Allahiya Bilawal.

A Vanished Cultural Landscape - A Reverie Inspired by Alamgir

Flipping channels this morning I stumbled on to a live phone interview with the 80's pop icon Alamgir on Pakistan's Hum TV channel. Listening to the conversation with him took me down a nostalgic spiral into the Pakistani music of my teens. He sang his signature toe-tapping and melodious numbers like "MeiN Ne Tumhari Gaagar Se" and "Dekha Na Tha". He was the bridge between the lively film music singers like Ahmed Rushdi and the future pop phenomenon of Nazia and Zoheb Hasan. Alamgir's Urdu pop songs with their western beats are justly considered the progenitors of Pakistani pop music. I have always particularly loved an enchanting Bengali song which he first sang on PTV in the mid-80's in a benefit concert raising money for typhoon victims in Bangladesh. I was watching that concert at the time and immediately fell in love with "Aamay Bhashaili Rey, Aamay Dubaili Rey".

Then surfing on YouTube I found this gem "Soona Soona Jeevan Apna":

This is Alamgir singing as a guest star on Anwar Maqsood's late 80's television drama serial "Aangan Terha". I have watched this video many times since the morning and find it unbearably sad for it represents a cultural landscape that has likely vanished forever. Surrounding Alamgir you see a group of actors, who in retrospect seem to me the last survivors of the disintegrating urbane old world of the shurafaa of U.P.

Transplanted to their new abode in Karachi after partition, the migrants couldn't help but bring a slice of U.P. (and Delhi, Hyderabad, Bihar and Bhopal) to this alien commercial city far from their ancestral imaginations. (Na woh saawan, na woh hariyaali, na woh jhoola, na woh sakhiyaan, na woh maanjhe ka jora, na woh thumri, na woh kabootar-bazi, na woh mushaira, na woh soz-khwani!). As they settled down, they naturally kept the flame of old traditions alive and enriched their adopted home. If you want to experience some sublime echoes of the Karachi phase of these traditions of the Urdu heartland, here are some personal favorites:
- Album of wedding songs called "Yeh Hari Hari Chooriyan" released in 1978
- Zehra Nigah's tarannum renditions of Faiz ("Jis Roz Qaza Aayegi") and Nasir Kazmi ("Gaye DinoN Ka Suragh Le Kar Kidhar Se Aaya Kidhar Gaya Woh"),
- Kajjan Begum's divine thumris "Sanwari Sooratiya Pe MeiN JaaooN Waari" and "Meherwa Ras Boondan Barse" and a Moharram Noha ("Run MeiN Jab Bano-e-Bekas Ki Sawaari Aayee")
- Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi's uncategorizable masterpiece "Aab-e-Gum". (Yusufi Sahib is Urdu's greatest living writer in my opinion. How I wish he would publish something more. It has been almost 22 years.) "Haveli", the first essay in the book is one of the best pieces of writing chronicling the manners and mores of that old Muslim U.P.(in this instance Kanpur) which in 1947 was already being upended by the steady march of time but whose demise was virtually assured by the consequences of partition. The phrase "Yeh chhorr kar aaye haiN" at the end so poignantly illustrates the grand tragedy of human existence on a miniature scale that it is hard to choke back tears whenever I read it.

But this long-winded reverie orginated with Alamgir's song and the actors in the video. It is because several of the actors in this clip like Shakeel, Mahmood Ali and Salim Nasir along with playrights like Anwar Maqsood were amongst those who familiarized the rest of Pakistan to that old country Urdu-speaking culture. To a child like me sitting in Lahore, turning the television set on and watching the Karachi dramas of Haseena Moin, Fatima Surayya Bajia, Anwar Maqsood, Khawaja Moinuddin and Athar Shah Khan opened the window to another world of refined culture, proper diction and humor steeped in an almost impossible command of spoken literary idiom. Even the street patois of the less literate characters seemed somehow more sweet. Today, when I picture Qurban Jilani, Jamshed Ansari or Azra Sherwani in Uncle Urfi, Salim Nasir in Aangan Terha, Mahmood Ali in Taleem-e-BaalighaN and Shakeel and Neelofer Aleem in Shehzori I imagine them as the last unknowing flag-bearers of the Muslim Urdu culture of Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Aligarh and countless smaller U.P. cities that produced their own leading lights. Both Salim Nasir and Mahmood Ali have passed away. So have Subhani BaYounas, Jamshed Ansari, Azra Sherwani, Ishrat Hashmi, Arsh-e-Munir, Qurban Jilani and Begum Khurshid Mirza. Shakeel, Talat Hussain and Qazi Wajid continue to work along with some of the writers like Anwar Maqsood and occasionally Haseena Moin. But in Karachi too, once the original generation of Urdu-speaking migrants passes from the scene we will increasingly look back at the golden period of PTV dramas from the late 60's to the late 80's as the dying flicker of a culture that has long ceased to exist in the Indian cities of its birth but was not able to take root in its new home either.

Perhaps that was never a realistic expectation but many children and grandchildren of the U.P. migrants are barely aware of what has been lost and the state's general deterioration will ensure that the original legacy will almost completely peter out in another generation. Even though as an ethnic Punjabi I am not a direct cultural descendant of the Urdu-speaking Muslims, no one interested in the cultural history of Urdu and of Muslims in India can be indifferent to this tragic loss.

The Magic of Qawwali

For the last few weeks I have been immersed in listening to traditional Qawwali music and what a transporting experience it has been! The initial impetus was a couple of divine Coke Studio Pakistan performances this season by the scions of the "Qawwal Bachhay" gharana: Farid Ayaz and Abu Muhammad's "Kangna" (Raga Malkauns) in episode 2 and Ustad Naseeruddin Saami's "Mundari" (Raga Adana) in episode 3. Additionally, I have drawn endless inspiration from Musab's blog "Tangled up in Blue" which has become my home destination when I want to learn about qawwali and its traditions and savor the offerings of the great qawwals. (Musab is someone I have gotten to know only in the blogosphere but this 24 year old in Pakistan genuinely makes me optimistic that our rich cultural heritage will survive and maybe even thrive for many more generations!)

For me, a large part of the pleasure in the arts comes from sharing treasures with others who also love the diversity and ingenuity of human creativity. So here are a few qawwalis I have been enjoying by some of the masters of this genre.

Let me start with the most famous practitioner of all: Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He recorded so much and experimented with so many things during his final few years that some of his music started to lose its sufi / qawwali essence. Poorly done fusion tracks, thumping incongruous beats and amateurish videos of the Ustad singing "Afreen, Afreen" can only be described as regrettable. For, he was indeed a great qawwal! You have to listen to his traditional qawwalis to remember his magic and to recall the great tradition of qawwali in Punjab to which he was an heir. (We are fortunate that with his father Fateh Ali Khan, uncle Mubarak Ali Khan, cousin Badar Miandad and nephew Rahat Fateh Ali we have access to three generations of this family's qawwali music.) Here's Amir Khusrau's famous kalaam, "Mun Kunto Maula" in a wonderful live rendition in London in 1989.

(Update: The London video is no longer on YouTube so here's another excellent version by NFAK - November 2019)

The next piece is by the lesser known Javed Taufiq Niazi and party from the Khurji Noharbani gharana of Bulundshehr, U.P. Along with Punjab, Delhi and U.P. are the other great centers of qawwali tradition in the sub-continent. Niazi sahib and party are based in Karachi. I hope that they gain more public prominence as their style of singing still feels beautifully rooted in the soil of U.P. and retains a great charm. (Zak, maybe you folks can invite them to T2F!). I have listened to the qawwali "Aaya bana aaya, haryala bana aaya" below at least a couple of dozen times in the last few days. The imagery of Hazrat Imam Hussain (visualized as a bridegroom) transformed to the U.P. landscape mixes the spiritual and the local in a manner unique to the syncretistic culture of the region.

Haider ka poot aaya, Zainab ka jaaya aaya
Haider ka poot aaya, Zehra ka jaaya aaya
Hoor-o-malak nay gaaya
Haryala bana aaya, dulara bana aaya

(Update: It is sad that almost all great qawwali videos by Javed Taufiq Niazi and party seem to have disappeared from YouTube. Here's a version of this qawwali by Farid Ayaz & Abu Muhammad but sadly the audio quality is poor - November 2019)

The last piece is a well-known qawwali (among the afficionado) but what makes it quite unusual is that it is a bhajan with lyrics by Nawab Hilm of Hyderabad. This version below is by Farid Ayaz and Abu Muhammad Qawwal, the worthy current flag bearers (along with Naseeruddin Saami) of the longest line of qawwali singers originating in Delhi at the time of Amir Khusrau. Just the "Qawwal Bachhay" generation ahead of them boasted the great Munshi Raziuddin, Manzoor Niazi and Bahauddin/Qutbuddin Qawwals. I understand that recently the sons of Farid Ayaz and Abu Muhammad had their initiation and gave their first public performance in Karachi inaugurating the next generation of the 750 year old tradition. I wish them the very best in keeping alive the illustrious family tradition. Here is "Kanhaiya yaad hai kuch bhi hamari".

Favorite Musical Masterpieces: #1 - Abdul Karim Khan ("Piya Bin NaahiN Aavat Chain")

I heard music in my house for as long as I can remember. There was my father's record collection and his spools of taped recordings from which he would sometimes play his favorite pieces for us (K.L Saigal, Mehdi Hassan, Begum Akhtar). There too was my mother's ubiquitous transistor radio, with a brown leather covering, on which over the years I listened to untold hours of music broadcasts from Radio Pakistan Lahore and All India Radio's (AIR) Urdu service. There was the twice weekly doses of 'Chitrahaar" on Doordarshan. My love of old film songs owes much to AIR's program "Aawaz de kahaN hai".
This may just be a personal peculiarity but I have always felt an urge to share with others whatever music, art and literature moves me. More often than not it has been my wife on the firing line but many others have received my enthusiastic "gifts". I now intend to use this 'safe' space to introduce some of the pieces that have deeply moved me over the years. (No chance here of holding people forcibly hostage). I have listened to many of these recordings dozens of times and the few people who periodically hit this page may chance upon something that they otherwise may not have experienced.

My first selection is Ustad Abdul Karim Khan's famous 1925/26 thumri "Piya bin naahiN aavat chain" in Raga Jhinjhoti. Abdul Karim Khan was the doyen of the Kirana Gharana and fittingly its is his bust that sits in the main entrance of the All India Radio headquarters. This thumri is revered by many fans of Hindustani semi-classical music. This is marvellously effortless singing and Abdul Karim Khan's mastery of 'sur' is breathtaking. Virtually all Kirana musicians (including Malika-e-Mauseeqi Roshan Ara Begum) at one time or the other have performed this thumri but Abdul Karim Khan's original recording remains in a league of its own.