The tradition of Jugalbandi in the Carnatic and Hindustani styles of music is an age old one, where two skilled musicians, perform together. This duet could be instrumental or vocal.
Partnership in vocal or instrumental music has been in vogue since the day of Dhrupad. Khayal is usually sung as a solo, but there have also been numerous cases of male duo singers, usually family members who learned music together. Even when two soloists perform together, they divide the improvisation between them so that there is still only one vocal part. Their music making is co-operative, not competitive and it takes considerable skill and intimacy to create a performance to which each contributes equally. What defines Jugalbandi is that the two soloists be on an equal footing. While any Indian music performance may feature two musicians, whether vocalists or instrumentalists, a performance can only be deemed a Jugalbandi if neither is clearly the soloist and neither clearly an accompanist. In Jugalbandi, both musicians act as lead players, and a playful competition often ensues between the two performers.
It is common knowledge that the popularity of Jugalbandi concerts owes much to virtuosos Pandit Ravi Shankar and the late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Indian concert stages, which had been dominated by only soloists, assumed a new dimension around the sixties when the great musical pairs started playing Jugalbandi. However, this form was very much in existence in the decades preceding the sixties, though perhaps not as popular, thanks to Dhrupad maestros like the Senior Dagar Brothers. |
 It is said of Ustad Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan, one of the great vocalists and teachers of Hindustani classical music, that he marched into a Delhi audition for All India Radio when he was 9 or 10 years old, only to be told to come back in a few years. However, he proceeded to perform with such aplomb and grandeur that within three weeks, his first recital was being broadcast nationally.
Born in Jaipur on May 11, 1924 into a great musical lineage, Padmashri Ustad Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan along with his talented younger brother, Ustad Niaz Ahmed Khan, received musical training from their father, Ustad Bashir Ahmed Khan. The brothers became incredibly adept at the heady jugalbandi style of singing and came to be regarded as the most important Kirana gharana vocalist duo of the 20th century. They performed and recorded together frequently and with great success.
The performance mode of the two brothers was quite different from the teaching one. As performers they achieved more in partnership than they would have as individuals. They used their separate strengths as an advantage to extend the reach of their music. Each in turn securely held the frame of the structure they built up, leaving the other free to explore the furthest limits of his imagination. Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan skillfully and delicately filled in the colors of the raga, while Niaz Ahmed Khan animated it with brilliant embellishments and taan patterns. One of their duet recordings of Raag Yaman, has not only been listed as one of the best-selling recordings of Indian vocal music in history, but is a feat of musicianship in itself, which is universally acknowledged as a definitive interpretation of the raga.
The compositions of Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan, or Gunarang, are very special and bear his unmistakable stamp. They have the aroma of the graceful khayals of a bygone age and carry within them all the sensitivity and depth required for a complete grasp of the intention of a raga. For many listeners, these khayals used to be an added attraction at any concert of the two brothers. Faiyyaz is credited not only with popularizing a selection of ragas such as `Shobhavari` and `Leelavati`, but also succeeded in evolving a system of exposition of the structure of all ragas. He created the raga Chandraprabha.
Faiyyaz also wrote music in a lighter style, and had these pieces recorded by artists such as Begum Akhtar, Lata Mangeshkar and others. Faiyyaz was also an Urdu poet of considerable fame, using the nom de plume of Faiyyaz Jaipuri. He published a collection of verse which received an award in 1974.
The clean, disciplined and self-denying life style of Niaz Ahmed Khan earned him the title of Maulana. His forte was a systematic and meticulous style of raga development, but he could on occasion render the most touching and emotional thumri in the vein of Abdul Karim Khan. He once ended a concert in Bombay with the famous jamuna ke teer in Bhairavi and there was hardly a dry eye in the hall when he finished.
There were some values which the brothers stressed repeatedly and one of them was spontaneity. They seldom discussed or rehearsed what they were going to sing together. What they might thus have lost in rehearsed slickness was more than made up by the freshness and genuineness of their expression. They never encouraged their students to pre-plan their recitals, but always urged them to be true to the moment and listen to what the tuned tanpura seemed to be suggesting before deciding what they would sing. Their disciples included Ustad Mohammed Dilshad Khan, music director Khayyam, popular singers in the classical, ghazal and film genres including the late Mahendra Kapoor and Kishori Parikh, as well as Talat Aziz, Roop Kumar Rathod, Sonali Rathod, Purvi Parikh, Madhumani & others.
Their music was a rare combination of the highest standards of professional ability mingled comfortably with the broad sympathies and the human qualities that they upheld. After the demise of Ustad Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan on May 11, 1987, Ustad Niaz Ahmed Khan succeeded in establishing a solo career.
Ustad Niaz Ahmed Khan died on August 25, 2005.
We have pleasure in presenting some treasures from this remarkable teamwork. |