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As a performing artiste, Girija Devi has become a
legend in her lifetime. There is no musical honour she has not
received. Her brilliant renderings of light classical music have
captured audience hearts worldwide.
The diamonds in her ears
sport the most traditional setting. The nose-pin is a single
unadorned solitaire and her sari is worn conservatively draped over
the back and shoulders. She is the famed singer, Girija Devi.
Listeners who have heard this famed artiste of Hindustani classical
music are bound to conjure up visions of leading prime donnas
enthralling audiences with voice and mannerisms. But this is far
from the truth. Instead of five-star comforts, this matronly prima
donna prefers to stop over at the homes of her pupils, joining family
meals, participating in family chores right down to attending the
telephone calls and asking after family members whom she envelops
with her affectionate charm in much the same way as one’s
favourite aunt.
But when the same person
sits on stage at a concert recital, the homely matron is a forgotten
image. She then emerges as the sensitive composer, the astute
thinker, the versatile vocalist and scintillating performer, capable
of a rare charisma hidden in the depths of her voice, her concert
preparation and capacity to mould an ancient tradition of music into
a forte of contemporary appeal without, of course, bending any of
the rules of her art. Well versed in the 18th century
classical singing tradition of khayal, she has now been
acknowledged as the pathfinder of her music tradition through her
expressive singing. Not stopping at this exacting form of music,
Girija Devi today has unmatched forms of Hindustani music, notably in
the singing of thumri form. This music was first brought into
vogue in the Mughal court of Delhi but reached its mature status in
the eastern kingdom of the Nawab of Oudh at Lucknow. The thumri
found a second home on the banks of the holy Ganga at the city of
Benaras where the sentiments of this music found roots that have
given it its distinctive genre. This fertile hinterland was ideal
soil – integrating folk-filled musical forms alongside the
thumri. Who could have been better suited to give notice to these
deep felt emotions of the human spirit than a native born, talented
artiste like Girija Devi?
Born in 1929 in this
haloed city, music lesions had started for Girija Devi in ’34.
Today there is no musical honour which she has not received.
A recipient of the
Padmashree (in ’72) from the President of India, she has been
honoured by all the music academies of the states and with the
coveted title of ‘Sangit Shiromani’ by the Prayag Sangeet
Samiti, Allahabad. In her forty-three year stint as a performing
artiste, Girija Devi likes to feel that there are few places around
the globe where audiences have not heard her music. Within the
country, through her widespread media performances and live concert
sammelan appearances, she has become a legend in her
lifetime.
Not that there has been a
lack of thumri singers before the advent of Girija Devi, but none of
them had captured audience hearts to the extent that she has
succeeded in doing. In a typical Girija Devi concert, there is music,
which speaks to the audience. “Before the public one develops
antennae for their responses,” she apprises, and the thumri
which she has made her chief vehicle of communication is a form which
depends heavily on this kind of two-way traffic of emotive rapport.
The parched hearts of musical audiences find succour when she sings
the dalliances of Lord Krishna with female devotees or gopis
in her innumerable thumris and this base is made the onus of a large
corpus of human emotions expressed through technique and eloquent
verse. “I loved decorating words with music,” she explains.
“Take for instance the line ‘rasa ke bhare toreh nain..’
suggesting the Lord’s eyes being a repository of emotions. I
imagine a hundred gopis or devotees of the Lord seeking attention in
the eyes of the Lord. Some see in Him a tinge of jealousy. Others
perceive a hint of pride or carefree abandon. Others see only a
divinity; some the playfulness of Krishna. I use notes to suit the
mood of the sentiment so that a single line can be sung to at least
25 different interpretations.” The music thereby inspires
listeners.
Besides the various
facets of the shringar rasa or sensual mood that these thumris
incorporates, Girija Devi impresses upon her listeners the beauty of
the bhakti rasa or divine mood. The reverence is not sung out
in a dirge but in the same variances, as is characteristic of the
thumri. Her favourite composition in this line is dedicated to Lord
Shiva describing Him as the god through whose locks flows the mighty
Ganga. Quite alien to the coquettish graces of the sensual number,
this composition calls for a certia mystical faith in the Infinity
and it rings most true in this voice, for music is for her a prayer
to the Divine. Indeed so unshakeable is her faith in the power of
musical evocation that she claims it even saved the life of a
drowning man at Benaras. With closed eyes and single-minded devotion,
she invoked Lord Vishwanath, the city’s guardian deity and the
close of her recital matched the miraculous rescue. Then the great
truth dawned that the linking device in this dramatically conveyed
emotion is nothing externalized or feigned but food for the soul. The
real source of musical propulsion is an intense feeling for prayer to
mark the singing. But these quick-silver changes of mood within the
thumri are not difficult. “I am basically a khayal singer, and
to change from the khayal to the thumri is just a s simple for me as
to be a mother to some, a sister to another or a singer to the
people.”
The best way to
understand her thumri is to pay heed to her own comparisons. “The
khayal is like a ploughed field sown over with a crop of wheat or
paddy. The harvest will yield only rice or wheat as it has a set
pattern of growth and works much like a machine. It cannot produce
another crop at harvest time. But the thumri is like a garden of
many flowers. Each one of them is a different coloured emotion
stirring the human heart. The singer plucks these flower of
different hues and scents and makes a posy, woven of different
ragas. Of course one has to see that the combination of ragas
is acceptable.”
Another facet of her
musical success, she claims, is the audience itself. In fact her best
loved concert memories take her back to a recent recital in France.
“I sang for three hours and fifteen minutes. The hall had a
capacity for 1300 but there were 1750 people in the audience. People
were seated on the aisle, ground… everywhere. Yet one could
have heard a needle drop. They were not Asian people but Europeans
and French but their understanding was superior…. beyond a
matter of words.”
From audiences too, the
response has come clear, in the most unexpected though pleasant
reactions. While performing at Harvard University, Girija Devi was
heard by people other than the academic community. Two of the ushers
in the crowd were so moved by her hymnal number, a composition by the
17th century saint musician, Meera Bai, that they could
not contain themselves anymore. The legendary Meera, renowned for her
devotion to Lord Krishna, is believed to have disappeared
mysteriously from the face of the earth carried into the arms of her
beloved Lord, leaving behind no trace of her earthly remains. The
enthralled usher, worried, approached the artiste’s daughter and
warned her about a similar occurrence repeating itself if she
allowed her mother to continue singing so soulfully for long.
The visage of a
saint-singer, a stirring artiste and a serene devotee is the
quintessence of her musical genius. But the journey to this rarified
pedestal has been an uphill climb where every step of the way has
been washed clean by purgatorial fire. While most children are
instilled into the art by the simple ceremony of tying a thread or
ganda around their wrists by the guru, marking a symbolic
acknowledgement of the responsibility of training shouldered by the
guru, Girija Devi’s ceremony was accomplished after years of
rigorous pedantry under the late Guru Shambu Mishra. Her teacher held
a musical trial for her before an invited audience of fifty learned
musicians. Only when these musicologists had given the nod of
approval for her did her guru acquiese to formally consecrate the
instructional process. Of course the question of making her debut
before concert audiences was to come later in ’49 when she
broadcast a recital from All India Radio Station, Allahabad. “The
idea was to assess whether I was progressing in the right directions
in my music and get a feedback from listeners about my performance.”
This seemingly innocuous event turned momentous. It was as if the
floodgates had opened and the very next year Girija Devi was invited
to give her first live concert at Arrah in the state of Bihar and
from the fifties, she was a constant invitee to concerts in India and
abroad.
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