Alhaiya Bilawal

Joy in the Morning

The early morning rāgas - the Toḍis and the Bhairavs for instance - have an intensity to them, an almost meditative quality that suits the somber atmosphere of dawn. But once the sun is up and there is a morning cheer in the air, it is time for the mellow, light-hearted Alhaiyā Bilāwal to take over. There are few other rāgas that convey such unadulterated joy as Bilāwal, and this is an attempt to journey through that joyous Bilāwal soundscape.

All the mentioned tracks are compiled in a YouTube Music playlist linked at the end. It should be noted that most recordings are performances by contemporary musicians, mainly in an attempt to ensure that all recordings meet a certain minimum sound quality requirement. I present a short introduction to Bilāwal for the uninitiated - feel free to skip to the performances ahead.

A Brief Introduction to the Rāga

Alhaiyā Bilāwal (अल्हैय्या बिलावल) is the rāga that lends its name to the eponymous thāṭ Bilāwal in Bhatkhande's system of rāga classification. It employs all shuddha notes, but also uses komal Nishād in a particular phrase (D n D P/ D n P). Madhyam is rarely used in the āroha (alpa prayoga), while all notes are used in the avaroha, leading to a hexatonic ascent and heptatonic descent, as follows:

S R G P D N S' | S' N D P, D n D P m G, R G P m G, m R S

Pt. S. N. Ratanjankar (alias sujan), distinguished scholar and teacher and foremost disciple of Pt. Bhatkhande and Ust. Faiyaz Khan, explains the āroha, avaroha, pakad and presents a bandish as a tutorial on Alhaiya Bilawal in this small recording.

The above attempt at delineating the ascent-descent captures that Bilāwal is not a linear progression of notes, but a vakra construction. The vādi swara is D while samvādi is G. The Dhaivat-Gandhar interaction only happens via Ma in phrases like D m G or in meends such as D -> G, P m G or D -> G, m R G, P m G . It should be noted that while Dha is vādi (and aligns with the derived rule of uttarāng vādi rāgas - or rāgas having their primary note in upper half of the octave - classified as day-time), it is not a resting note. This gives the rāga a dynamic nature.

With that brief introduction, I jump to some notable performances and compositions in Alhaiyā Bilāwal. I will leave other Bilāwal variants for another blog post, some other time, because Alhaiyā Bilāwal itself has a treasure trove of performances fortunately available on YouTube.

I begin with a Rampur-Sahaswan gharana composition that was my introduction to Alhaiyā Bilāwal - sumirana kara mana rama naama ko. Ustad Rashid Khan masterfully plays with this rendition passed on from his maternal grand-uncle and guru, Ustad Nissar Hussain Khan. For those interested, Ustad Nissar Hussain Khan's rendition can also be found on YouTube.

Up next is one of the most famous compositions in this raag, kawana batariyā gailo (so famous that for some, just the name Bilāwal brings kawana batariyā to mind). The words roughly translate to a gopika complaining to Shri Krishna's mother about her son stealing all the makkhan (butter) from her house.

kawana batariya gailo mai deho batai mai gharwa gata bhai churilawa - Maa Yashoda, please tell me where Krishna went. While I had gone to the market, he stole all the butter in my house!

There are a lot of performances that can be easily found online (from Gānasaraswati Kishori Amonkar's to Pt D V Paluskar's ). I choose to include here a rendition by Pt. Kumar Gandharva, who presents a short opening sargam before he dives into the brisk bandish, setting up the playful nature of the composition very well through an equally playful opening.

Before moving to slightly longer expositions of the rāga, I present another bandish composed and sung by Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan, a Gwalior legend who was a prolific poet under the pseudonym 'rasan piya' and composed over 2000 compositions over his lifetime. He presents a beautiful bandish payaliya re baji baji baji sakhiri set to madhyalaya teentaal.

In a pleasant coincidence, while arranging these pieces I found that the three compositions provided so far happen to have their sama on the three main resting notes of the rāga - Ga (sumirana kara mana rama), Pa (kawana batariya) and upper Sa (payaliya re) - and the mukhada for all three bandishes ends at Ga (resting note and vādi of the rāga). The uttarāng-focused nature of Bilāwal should also become evident.

Pt. Ulhas Kashalkar is a contemporary musician who has received training in the Gwalior, Jaipur and Agra gharanas. Often called the musician's musician, Pt. Kashalkar is known for singing complex jod-rāgas and the giant traditional rāgas with equal ease and panache. The Gwalior gharana musicians love Alhaiya Bilāwal, and Ulhas ji here presents a vilambit cheez composed by Pt Krishnarao Shankar Pandit of the Gwalior gharana, Kanthā Moré, set to taal Tilwada. The alāp in the beginning is a delight, by itself a lesson in the rāga.

He follows it up with a special Rubāʿī tarana (where the sthayi has meaningless syllables but the antara is a Rubāʿī - a persian couplet) set to teentaal. This is one of the few Rubāʿī taranas extant today, as the modern tarana is constructed completely from a combination of meaningless syllables and tabla bols.

In this All India Radio replay of one of her morning concerts, Vidushi Malini Rajurkar, another contemporary doyen of the Gwalior gharana known particularly for her mastery over tappas, renders a vilambit khyāl in Tilwāda, Daiyā Kahān Gayelo. This is another popular badā khyāl, and multiple performances by various other artists can also be found online (Pt. D V Paluskar's interpretation is also added to the YT Playlist at the end).

The drut cheez is Jā Re Jā Re Jā Kagawā set to drut teentaal.

While Vid. Malini Rajurkar sings Jā Re Jā Re Jā Kagawā as an addendum to a vilambit piece and gives it a fast treatment, Vidushi Padma Talwalkar opens with an alāp and sings the same composition as a madhyalaya filled with pretty meends (glides). The opening improvisations on the sthayi mukhada line are a treat to listen to. She ends with the same Rubāʿī tarana as Pt. Kashalkar.

In this marathi bandish Shiva Hara He Bhava Hara, Vidushi Malini Rajurkar explores Bilāwal yet again, demonstrating incredible command and control while swiftly and beautifully unfolding the rāga.

Vidushi Apporva Gokhale, a well-known vocalist of today with a firm background of Gwalior Gharana, presents a vilambit khayal - maai ek toh katha. This khayal is different from all the compositions listed so far in that the mukhada has an unconventional S-D coupling phrase S S D P D and ends on Dhaivat (Dha), which is not considered a resting note of Bilawal. The chota khyal Kamala nayan dekhan ko, nisa dina chahat in drut ektaal follows the bada khayal.

Side note: A slightly more brisk interpretation of the bada khayal is presented by Pt. Basavraj Rajguru (appended at the end in the YouTube playlist).

By now, it should be possible to discern that themes depicting playful longing, beauty (shringar) or even devotion (bhakti) can be found in the Bilāwal repertoire across gharanas.

Taking a break from vilambit and madhyalaya performances, I present a fast-paced teentaal composition, Bina dekhe chaina nahi aave sung by Pt. Mallikarjun Mansur, a Jaipur-Atrauli stalwart. Known for his mastery over complicated, lesser-known rāgas, a simple search of a combination of "Mallikarjun Mansur" and "Bilawal" on YouTube will yield a dazzling array of Bilawal variants - Kukubh Bilawal, Sukhiya Bilawal, Shukla bilawal, Yamani Bilawal, Jayjay Bilawal, Sarparda Bilawal (phew!). It is rare for him to have sung the 'mainstream' Alhaiya Bilawal, really!

I wind up my collection with two unusual places where you would find a khayal rāga such as Bilawal. The first one is in the tappa genre. Vidushi Shubhada Paradkar presents a Tap-Khayal (Tappa-Khayal combo as the name suggests) in Tilwada. She explains a bit as she sings, so I'll leave the explanation to the expert. She also elaborates on how the composition gives an illusion of two samas, because of the way emphasis is placed on the syllables.

I'll end with a famous natya-sangeet piece composed by Pt. Jitendra Abhisheki for the play Katyar Kaljat Ghusli, Dina Gele Bhajanaveena Sare. This particular rendition is by Pt. Shaunak Abhisheki.

Thanks for sticking with me if you've reached here! In attempting to form a comprehensive playlist that could represent what Alhaiya Bilawal is, I myself discovered some beautiful compositions, combing through the depths of classical music on YouTube. Here is the playlist that I have made that contains all the above songs, in the mentioned sequence:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVZiPNbu71xuvjZKd97r6y3VNi_Bb6lOo

I couldn't help adding two more pieces to the playlist. One is a madhyalaya bandish, delivered by Vid. Padma Talwalkar, that is a personal favourite of mine. I like how it conveys the melancholic situation very effectively - the words are Savariya Neend Na Aavat - talking about the subject losing sleep because she misses her lover, more so as the rumbling clouds and pouring rain bring in the monsoon blues. The second piece is Pt. Ulhas Kashalkar singing a vilambit tarana. Yes, the only vilambit tarana I have ever come across.

This set of performances is not exhaustive in any way, and most of these are just bandishes I really like, ones that my guru has taught me, or both. If you have some recordings, seminal or otherwise, published or unpublished, to share with a fellow Hindustani music aficionado or to add to this list, please use the contact page and get in touch!

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