In India we tend to be fond of regional stereotypes eg. the martial Sikh, the intellectual Bengali, the cunning Marwari, etc. And yet the most impactful Indians break free not just of their geographic origins, they also break free of whatever cultural stereotypes we might associate with them. In doing so, they profoundly influence the development of the nation at large. We are thankful to Malini Nair for this wonderful story in Scroll of the Bodas clan of Marathis who migrated to Kanpur a century ago from Sangli in Maharashtra. Over the next 80 years, the Bodas family would proceed to firmly establish the Gwalior gharana of Hindustani classical music in the industrial city of Kanpur.
Shankar Shripad Bodas (SS Bodas) was born in 1900. Around a decade or so later, he became the pupil of the renowned musician-reformist of the Gwalior gharana, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. In 1924, Paluskar send young Shankar to Kanpur to “evangelise classical music in Kanpur.
For young Bodas, the move to Kanpur as a music teacher at PPN College was a step into the unknown. Yet, he worked with relentless patience and enthusiasm to take music to the city’s schools and colleges, set up an arts institution, and establish a music society that brought great artistes to Kanpur. Behind him, working with equal fervour, was a triumvirate of musicians – his wife Shanta, son Kashinath and daughter Veena.”
SS Bodas & his family overcame huge cultural obstacles to establish Kanpur as a seat of classical music: “Veenapani Shukla, who attended Bodas’s classes at Kanpur’s SN Girls’ College. Now based in Pune, the 83-year-old has clear memories of Kanpur of the 1940s and ’50s and its social taboos.
“What he did for Kanpur was huge,” she said. “My mother had learnt some of his bhajans but she married into an orthodox family so that was the end of her music. She let me take his classes but under one condition – I could only learn, not perform, I could sing for the family, not strangers, never on stage and not even on radio.”
She was allowed to participate in a bhajan recital on All India Radio with threeother girl students. “But each of us was assigned a stanza. A family friend heard me sing two lines solo and asked my mother about it. And that was it, that was the end of my music.”…
Shukla says Bodas worked patiently to make inroads into the city’s heart by following the Paluskar model of promoting classical music – do what you can, open a music school, teach music in a high school or school, or join a music society. Teach using systematised, course-based lessons like any other subject and ensure students can read notation. Use bhajans as an entry point to ragas and start early.
“He would never insist that children sit in a class and learn music,” said Shukla. “They would be taught at play, jumping to taal. They were introduced to notes as human characters.””
Ms Nair explains that her article is based on “the story of their eight-decade-long, singular music campaign came alive in The Bodas Legacy, an exhibition presented at Kolkata’s Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre last September. The exhibition was researched and curated by Ranjani Ramachandran, a student of both Kashinath and Veena, and also a researcher-performer who teaches Hindustani music at Visva Bharati in West Bengal.”
Ms Nair writes about the multi-lingual nature of both the father – SS Bodas – and daughter – Veena Sahasrabuddhe’s learning and music: ““The most interesting for me was the display of notations in notebooks in different scripts: SS Bodas’s writings in Marathi and Hindi, and Veenatai’s performance scripts,” she said. “It showed how musicians and educators negotiated (and still do) language and script in this process of teaching and practising their art, the relationship between the written record and the performance, and the everyday multilingual worlds of Hindustani music.””
Like SS Bodas’ daughter Veena, his son Kashinath Bodas would continue to enrich his legacy: “Kashinath and Veena, however, emerged as both superb performers and teachers… hile Kashinath and Veena were initiated into music by their father, they followed independent creative paths… “Both of them were also deeply inspired by Kumar Gandharva’s music and assimilated several aspects, such as subtle voice modulations and vocalisation patterns in their own gayaki,” said Ramachandran. “Kashinathji had an exceptional voice, an all-round sweetness, melodious yet vazandaar (weighty), and his music carried a sense of effortlessness and ease.” Renowned for his fine expertise in tuning the tanpura, Kashinath was also inspired by the musical refinement of DV Paluskar, the son of his father’s guru…
Kanpur gave the siblings a unique advantage. “Growing up in Kanpur, both had impeccable command over the Hindi language and the understanding of the lyrics of the compositions, stressing on a meaningful interpretation of the song texts, clear diction and pronunciation of the lyrics of the bandish, contributed to the aesthetics of their music,” Ramachandran said.
The family invariably kept up its association with teaching and institutions. Kashinath taught at the women’s college in Kanpur and died young at 59 of a cardiac arrest. Being far from the country’s busy classical music hubs, the stalwart did not get the recognition he so richly deserved.”
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