Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music (review)

In Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music, Ritwik Sanyal and Richard Widdess have provided an admirably erudite and thorough study of this venerable and hoary genre of North Indian classical music. Sanyal is a respected dhrupad singer and a scholar teaching at Banaras Hindu University; Widdess may be regarded as a leading Western-based scholar of Hindustani music, of the generation after Nazir Jairazbhoy and Harold Powers. The collaboration of these two experts constitutes a model for the sort of joint undertaking that should occur more often in the field of ethnomusicology.

The introductory chapter of Dhrupad outlines the distinguishing features of dhrupad as a genre, and discusses aspects of its prevailing ideology and aesthetics, including the invocation, by both Muslim and Hindu exponents, of a spiritual, predominantly Hindu-based devotional orientation. In some respects, this quasi-sacred, ritualistic character presently ascribed to dhrupad stands in contrast with its overwhelmingly secular nature during the Mughal period, and its patronage, in various historical contexts, by Hindu, Muslim, and even Sikh establishments. The second chapter, drawing from the relatively few relevant historical sources, plausibly reconstructs the genre's development from a desi (regional) genre of fifteenth-century Gwalior to a celebrated idiom of the Mughal courts. In the subsequent centuries, the authors note, the emphasis on compositions and composing gave way to a foregrounding of style and interpretation, both as focuses of interest and as features distinguishing the genre from the emerging khyâl, which, from the eighteenth century on, came to usurp dhrupad's popularity and pre-eminence. As the authors also note, although dhrupad achieved a certain pan-regional status as a court and concert genre, its decline relative to khyâl seems to have paralleled the shift of the Mughal court from Agra and the Gwalior region to Delhi in the seventeenth century.

Chapter 3 discusses the somewhat ambiguous notion of the four bánis, which, in the realm of dhrupad, have since the nineteenth century connoted categories in some ways corresponding variously to distinctive stylistic approaches and/or gharânas (family musical lineages). The following chapter focuses on the Dagar family tradition, which has enjoyed the greatest vitality and prominence in the last century, and of which Sanyal is himself a disciple and exponent. The authors note the venerable heritage of this family line, whose members legitimize their origins in Hindu temples, Mughal courts, and Sanskrit treatises; they also, however, call attention to their innovations, especially the emphasis on âlâp and on rhythmic effects (laykari) which the 'elder Dagar brothers' (Moinuddin and Aminuddin) promoted in the mid-twentieth century.

The next four chapters are devoted to stylistic analysis. Chapter 5 looks in detail at âlâp, situating it in the context of historical counterparts suggested or documented since the ninth century ce, and illustrating the use of various lakshanas—in this case, technical Hindi/Sanskrit terms for particular ornaments and effects. Despite the utility of these and other Sanskritic terms, the authors mention the paucity or inadequacy of terms for other aspects of form and structure, obliging them, for example, to coin such neologisms as 'medium âlâp' for the overtly pulsed section of âlâp (referred to in instrumental music as jor). Chapter 6 analyses in detail an individual âlâp, sung in rág Multâni by Sanyal, which is transcribed in full and included on the compact disc accompanying the volume. Although the first section of âlâp is generally and justifiably regarded as free-rhythmic, the authors, elaborating a notion explored by Martin Clayton, show how a subtle pulse is often suggested. This pulse and other features are clearly evident in the transcription of the âlâp, which combines staff notation, Indian sargam (solfège), and digitally generated spectrogram charts. Such graphs have started to appear in more and more publications, as the technology to produce them has become accessible. Often they tend to function as...