DHRUPAD OF THE DAGARS
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS
By Ashish Sankrityayan
In English. Published in 2020. By Vikram Jain for Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. Hardbound. 836 pages.

The birth anniversary of Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar falls in the month of June. The dhrupad maestro was born on 15 June 1932 in Udaipur and passed away at the age of 80 on 8 May 2013 in Panvel, Maharashtra. He dedicated his life to performing and propagating the dhrupad tradition in India and abroad.

So this month we present a solid book for you in the library of the Music Academy Madras.

The author, Ashish Sankrityayan,who has a masters in mathematics from the University of Mumbai, is a dhrupad exponent who has trained under several elders of the Dagar family, including Zia Fariduddin Dagar. He is deeply interested in the history and musicological foundations of dhrupad, and is actively involved in performing and propagating the tradition in various ways.

In the tome, “Dhrupad of the Dagars, Conceptual Foundations and Contemporary Questions”, the author deals with the history of the tradition of the descendants of Behram Khan, renowned today as the Dagars, and the conceptual foundations of their art, in the overall context of Indian music. The book deals at length with the traditional system of pedagogy of the Dagars, and the changes that came about in teaching methods in the last several decades. It tries to establish that dhrupad is the culmination of a long process of development from the Vedic chants, and differs in a fundamental sense from the forms that developed later, in the very concept of a note, of tonal relations, and of raga. The music of the Dagars is based on the older shruti-grama-murcchana system, that got supplanted by the new thata or mela system based on twelve notes, around the seventeenth century, with the older system surviving as esoteric knowledge in a few traditions.

The Contents include 25 Chapters, Appendix on Ragas and Their Systems of Classification Through the Ages, Bibliography, several footnotes, and a thoughtfully categorised Index.

The front cover has impressive pictures of Zakiruddin Khan (left) and Allabande Khan (right). Zakiruddin Khan, grand nephew of the famous Behram Khan, was reputed for his powerful singing, musical knowledge as well as his regal sartorial style and bearing. In this portrait from the Pathuriaghata Rajbari, Calcutta, based on a photograph, he is wearing the typical Mewari turban of Udaipur and the distinctive dress — the safa. He often performed with his younger brother Allabande Khan.

During a leisurely visit to the Music Academy Library, you can marvel at the over 600 rare photographs in the book, priced at 6000 rupees. It comes with a CD and additional 8 GB of digitised rare publications and manuscripts which you can browse on the computer.

S. JANAKI