Women of Hindustani music in the modern era: Gauhar Jaan, Kersarbai Kerkar and Begum Akhtar

Hindustani Music has been enriched by woman practitioners across generations. Especially, the women belonging to the courtesan community were some of the greatest exponents of Indian classical music since the seventeenth century during the Mughal era to the mid-twentieth century. Despite the marginalization that this community faced owing to the anti-nautch movement during the British colonial rule and the Indian nationalist reform movement, many women musicians rose to the challenge and contributed towards music’s modernization. When gramophone recording technology came to India in early twentieth century, it was the women who embraced this new technology first and acknowledged the role of archiving in the propagation of classical music. This article presents the pioneering work of three such women musicians who helped pave the way for future generations of female music practitioners.

Gauhar Jaan (1873-1930) was one of the earliest musicians to be recorded on the Gramophone. Born in Allahabad as Angelina Yeoward, she best symbolized the secular ethos of Indian classical music. Her grandmother was Hindu, grandfather British and father Armenian Christian. She later embraced Islam and remained a devout Muslim all her life, though many of her compositions are replete with Krishna bhakti. Gauhar Jaan spent her prime years in Calcutta as a court musician of Wajid Ali Shah. She trained under several masters including Kale Khan of the Patiala gharana and in dance from Ali Baksh. Many teachers followed, including the great thumri singer and harmonium player Bhaiya Saheb Ganpat Rao and the famous Kathak maestro Bindadin Maharaj of Lucknow. In 1902, she became the first classical musician to record for the Gramophone Company in Calcutta. As one of the earliest recording artists of classical music, she improvised commendably with the expansive and long format forms like khyal and condensed musical material into three minutes that the 78 rpm recordings permitted, keeping the aesthetics of the genres intact. Gauhar Jaan was a multi-faceted musician with an illustrious recording career spanning from 1902 to 1920. She was prolific and is understood to have recorded close to six hundred songs in ten different languages and her repertoire included a diverse set of forms including thumri, dadra, kajri, chaiti, hori, dhrupad dhamar, khyal, tarana and bhajan.

Contemporaneous but younger to Gauhar Jaan was Kesarbai Kerkar (1892-1977), a khyal practitioner and one of the foremost representatives of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana of khyal vocalism. Born in Keri, Goa she spent her formative years in Kolhapur, Maharashtra where she learnt from Abdul Karim khan, the founding member of the Kirana gharana and then later from Gwalior gharana exponent R  amkrishnabua Vaze in Mumbai for a brief period. She eventually had rigourous talim from Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur Atrauli gharana for close to 15 years. There was a sense of grandeur in her personality which reflected in her sonorous broad voice and her gayaki. She had a long stint of discipleship with Alladiya Khan, who agreed to teach her apparently on the condition that she was not to perform publicly during his lifetime. This meant that her career as a performer commenced only in her forties. Within a span of twenty years she built a formidable legacy. Her vocal range that easily traversed three octaves with no change in texture, her command over presenting rare (aprachalit) ragas of the Jaipur repertoire with ease, intricacy of tanas (fast melodic passages) and perfection in presentation were unmatched qualities of her musicianship. She did live on her own terms; Refused to teach, as a result of which Dhondutai Kulkarni was her only shishya, she retired from active and busy performing career (a rare decision in the field of Hindustani music)  as soon as she realized that her voice was waning and she did not want to compromise on the quality of her performance. Rabindranath Tagore, upon listening to Kesarbai, conferred her with the title of Surashree. Her 78-rpm recording of thumri in Raag Bhairavi ‘Jaat Kahan ho’ was included as one of the sounds of the Voyager Golden Record (a collection of sounds and images of the earth) which was sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecrafts in 1977.

Begum Akhtar (1914-1974) is considered as an unparalleled exponent of ghazal and thumri. Born as Akhtaribai Faizabadi, she was later addressed as Mallika-e-ghazal (queen of ghazal). She grew up in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh and was encouraged by her mother Mushtari Begum, in her musical pursuit since early childhood. She was a disciple of Ata Muhammad Khan of the Tanras gharana and was trained rigorously in the nuances of khyal gayaki and also thumri, dadra and ghazal, observing her natural inclination towards the latter genres. Later, she also learnt from Abdul Wahid Khan of the Kirana gharana, giving her a firm grounding, talim and tayyari as a musician. She enthralled music lovers in her debut performance as a 20-year-old in Alfred Theatre, Calcutta and received appreciation from Sarojini Naidu who attended the concert. She had a brief but a very successful stint as a singing actress featuring in several films including Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (1958). Her ghazal ‘Deewana banana hai toh deewana bana de’ recorded by the Meghaphone Record Company in 1938 was an instant success and gave her celebrity status as a professional musician. Begum Akhtar played a crucial role in the milieu of Urdu literature and gave the ghazal, a new lease of life. The poetry of Ghalib, Jigar Moradabadi, Faiz Muhammad Faiz, Kaifi Azmi among several others, came to life through her impeccable  and sensitive renditions. Writer Sheila Dhar who had a close association with the singer, would describe her music as effortless with great sophistication and restraint.  

All three women belonged to the lineage of courtesan community of women musicians. They led extraordinary lives and attained an iconic status. They were simultaneously negotiating the patriarchal world of classical music and the impact of the ostracization that their community faced. They embraced modernity and became very successful recording artistes, thanks to which, their music is studied, followed, idolized and researched widely even today by practitioners, students of music and connoisseurs.