This grant supports Chennai-based researcher, Sumitra Ranganathan, to set up a multi-dimensional archive to preserve and sustain the performance practice and repertoire of the Bettiah gharana, one of India’s oldest and richest traditions of Dhrupad.

Sumitra has been training in Dhrupad and Khayal for about 25 years and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley. As part of her doctoral work, she conducted research on the multiple schools of Dhrupad that have links to the 19^th century court of Bettiah. “While studies of Indian music tend to focus on music and musicians in isolation my interest is in studying music making as ecology,” she says in her proposal. This interest has led her to study the interacting forces that shape musicality in the different places and spaces in which Bettiah Dhrupad has been practiced.

The Bettiah gharana is one of the oldest living traditions of classical Dhrupad, dating back to the 18^th century courts of the Maharajas of Bettiah in Bihar. The Bettiah court is said to have become the centre of Dhrupad from the 17^th century onwards, when some lineages of Mullicks migrated from the court of Shah Jehan to the Bettiah court. In course of time, the Bettiah court gained a singular place in Dhrupad history as it witnessed an outburst of compositional activity, giving rise to distinctive Dhrupad banis. While these banis of Dhrupad have been a contested term amongst musicians and musicologists, Sumitra’s ongoing research reveals that four banis were crystallized in the early 19^th century by the composers and musicians of Bettiah. This knowledge was carried forward by the Mishras of Benaras and the Mullicks of Bettiah. 

These two streams of the gharana are represented today by two contemporary musicians—Pandit Inder Kishore Mishra and Pandit Falguni Mitra. Both of them are Sumitra’s gurus and, for this project, will be her points of entry and reference into the tradition. “These musicians have over 500 compositions, each of a very unique repertoire. They have compositions by composers such as Inchhavaras, Vyas Das ji, Jagannath Kaviraya, Swami Haridas, Nayak Gopal, Baiju, Tansen, Adarang, Sadarang as well as compositions of the Bettiah maharajas Anand Kishore Singh and Naval Kishore Singh,” Sumitra notes.

Structurally too there is wide variety in these compositions. Unlike many other gharanas where compositions are found only in two parts, the hallmark of Bettiah Dhrupad compositions is their four-part structure. A number of rare ragas as well as uncommon versions of common ragas are handled in these compositions. Collectively, the material available with the two musicians include earliest published compilations of Bettiah Dhrupad, writings on Dhrupad banis by Bettiah musicians of Benaras, rare manuscripts and notations of compositions in all four banis. Through these emerge different histories of listening and practice and the musicians’ conceptions of their own tradition.

It is these histories, musical environments and pedagogies that the project seeks to understand through documentation and archiving of the enormous musical material. This, Sumitra feels, will address three significant challenges that have made Bettiah an ‘endangered tradition’. Firstly, there are only two living expert performers of tradition; secondly, Bettiah represents a distinctive minority group that struggles to be heard, given that the genre is dominated by the Dagars; thirdly, the musicians and students in Bettiah live in a depleted and isolated musical environment that is cut off from the larger world of Hindustani music.

Driven by these concerns, Sumitra envisions the archive as “a place of dwelling in which the sonic is an experience, a vibrant environment in which the Dhrupad tradition of Bettiah may be experienced as history, culture, performance, community, controversy and a way of life.” While serving the very important purpose of documenting a rich musical practice, culture and history, the archive will provide an environment for empathetic and critical listening, and learning and transforming the music of the tradition. The project is also expected to set in motion a series of steps to create a sustainable environment for the continued transmission of this valuable Dhrupad practice to future generations of learners.

The enlivening of Bettiah, both the town and the tradition, will be achieved through multiple channels. Physical archives of all the materials related to the tradition, including primary and secondary sources, audio and video recordings, will be set up in Bettiah as well as Kolkata, where these archives will become an integral part of the teaching-learning environment. The other channel would be a web portal, in Hindi and English, which will build community and musical ecologies through online installations. Content on the portal will be kept fresh through ongoing programming, podcasts, analytical and ethnographic essays. In addition, a guided listening DVD will be produced as part of the documentation of the tradition.

 

This description is part of the institutional records created by IFA at the onset of the grant. The project may have changed in due course as reflected in the deliverables from the Grantee.