Raghu Rai and Ashok Vajpeyi capture fleeting moments in Indian music
Raghu Rai’s latest book of photographs comprises pictures mainly of master musicians in the Hindustani tradition and covers a period of 30 years or more. Rai is India’s most celebrated photo journalist and the photographs in this anthology make up a mixed bag: some are beautiful and spontaneous, others arty. Amongst the most memorable is one of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan practising in the room where he learnt from his father, Ustad Allauddin Khan, in Maihar, Madhya Pradesh. It is a simple, even austere, image of the great musician in late middle age, immersed in riyaz. There is another of Kumar Gandharva in a meditative moment, flanked by two tanpuras with fingers stroking them. Another is a posed group photo with his wife and two children.
All the photographs are in black and white and the tonality that the medium yields – ranging from deep blacks to a gamut of greys leading into the whites – give the images a sense of drama not easily found in colour. Yet the intensity in many of the pictures is real, just as it is ersatz in several others. A reader who gazes at Mallik Arjun Mansoor’s portrait, taken at a concert – eyes closed, his entire being concentrated on the swara – might never actually have heard him sing, but can still derive an idea of the kind of musician he was. Another photograph, this time of the dying Mansoor, as he is offered a puff on a cigarette by son Raj Shekhar, is poignant beyond words.
In contrast is the droll picture of MS Subbulakshmi with husband Sadasivam at home – the wall behind them hung with pictures of famous people, including Mahatma Gandhi and, immediately below, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. There are, of course, markedly intense photographs of MS, taken in concert, when she was in her sixties.
The arty pictures include one of Carnatic veena maestro S Balchander, seated on the ground outdoors with dramatic clouds behind him, and four rather obviously lined-up figures in silhouette, balanced against the curve of a huge boulder in the foreground. A photograph of sitar maestro Vilayat Khan at home, with portraits of older masters in the background, and his family reflected in a mirror behind him, works in a curious way despite its artiness. There is an intense, sublime head-shot of shehnai wizard Bismillah Khan. In happy contrast is a family picture of him whispering into a grandson’s ear. Another one captures an intense moment with Khansaab doing his ablutions before prayers, in a Varanasi masjid.
Rai’s own personality is dramatic, verging on the theatrical – and so are his photographs. Most of the images have a similar intensity. Viewed individually, they work; viewed in sequence, as in the book, they can be a bit dull. Four pictures of flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia with fellow musicians, friends and admirers on his 60th birthday, taken in long shot, in the spirit of Henri Cartier-Bresson, for all their spontaneous energy, fall short on that vital ingredient – wit.
Rai’s pictures of musicians in concert had, of necessity, to be taken with a tele-photo lens that compresses perspective. Out of concert, he used very wide-angled lenses which enhance the drama within the frame – often to its detriment. But he does manage to draw warmth into many of the pictures regardless of the means used, because of his own empathy with music.
Poet and retired bureaucrat Ashok Vajpeyi’s text is restrained, informative, and an ideal foil to the pictures. The words act as a necessary counterpoint to the images.
This is a volume worth treasuring for its documentation of lost moments in the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions, and its gentle evocation of the transitory nature of time in both life and music.
