Begum Akhtar: Queen of ghazals
Begum Akhtar was an iconic musical personality in India, active from 1929-1974. Her thumris and ghazals (semi-classical genres of music) entered my listening orbit at 19 years of age when a friend lent me a cassette of her songs. Most of the long 10-12-minute thumris were dismissed by my teenage brain as being “boring” but I lingered on the shorter compositions and kept going back to ‘Woh Jo Hum Mein Tum Mein Qaraar Tha’. I thought it would be the perfect heartbreak song for when the situation arises. What I was reacting to, as I learned while writing this article, was Begum Akhtar’s unmatched skill of adding more depth to the Urdu poetry with her singing and enunciation of specific words or phrases. I knew nothing about her life until I was commissioned to write this piece. I dove headfirst into the book, Akhtari: The Life and Music of Begum Akhtar, edited by Yatindra Mishra and distilled the information I found interesting into this piece. The book is an interesting collection of essays by several historians, music experts, Akhtar’s own students and friends. Read the article below to learn more about her life. This article appeared in the March 2023 issue of NCPA Mumbai’s magazine, On Stage ahead of a tribute concert at the performing arts venue.
Queen of Hearts
Singer extraordinaire Begum Akhtar received several accolades including the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Sangeet Natak Akademi award and multiple national honours, but the most enduring title she received was that of ‘Mallika-e-Ghazal’ (Queen of Ghazals). The ghazals she sang touched such heights of fame that writers and poets of the time—such as Shakeel Badayuni, Kai Azmi, Jigar Moradabadi, Sudarshan Faakir—wanted her to compose and sing their ghazals in her inimitable style. Equally adept at other semi-classical genres such as thumri, dadra, hori and chaiti, it was the way she infused both love and pathos in her singing that won the hearts of millions of rasikas and inspired artistes of several generations. Having been touted as a ‘light classical’ singer, Akhtar created a lasting legacy that even classical purists bowed down to. A trendsetter, she earned respectability for female performers and was the first female guru to take on gandabandh shishyas, thereby changing the age-old male tradition. She is also credited with adding gayaki or vocal idiom to ghazal that was usually recited in tarannum (lyrical poetry).
Ode to a master
A tribute concert, titled Aye Mohabbat, curated by composer and sitarist Tushar Bhatia will be presented at the NCPA this month. During his stint as a producer in the 1980s at Music India and HMV, Bhatia had the privilege of producing quite a few albums of Akhtar from archives of private collectors as well as her personal collection. Explaining the genesis of the concert he says, “The inspiration came from the fact that the ghazal has travelled a long way from its origins. In my humble opinion, Begum Akhtar was the pinnacle of the form which is being sung. Right from her early days till she passed away in 1974, she has cut so many albums and so many videos are available of her singing that we are privileged to have her music preserved so well.”
The programme will feature Akhtar’s masterpieces such as ‘Aye Mohabbat’, ‘Diwana Banana Hai to’, ‘Koyaliya Mat Kar Pukar’ and ‘Mere Humnafas’ which will be sung by vocalists Sraboni Chaudhuri, Shivani Vaswani and Aditi Banerjee, accompanied by Vanraj Shastri on sarangi, Sudhanshu Gharpure on harmoniun and Mithilesh Jha on tabla. “The artistes have been trained by great masters including Shobha Gurtu and others. It is a tting tribute from today’s generation to a master musician. Begum Akhtar also sang in multiple languages such as Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati. We will try to present songs in a few of these languages to represent her repertoire,” adds Bhatia. Explaining the essence of ghazal, he says, love has many shades and many experiences. “She has covered a whole gamut of emotions through her music and we feel those emotions when we listen to her music.”
From Akhtari to Akhtar
The iconic singer’s life is often viewed in two phases— before her marriage and after—characterised by two different names and arguably, two different performing styles. Born in 1914 in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, Akhtar was the daughter of Mushtari Bai, a well-known courtesan. Before she married and became Begum Akhtar, she was known as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi. Mushtari Bai ensured that her daughter received the best musical taleem from various gurus that included Ata Mohammed Khan and Barkat Ali Khan of the Patiala gharana, Abdul Waheed Khan of the Kirana gharana and Ramzan Khan.
Musical patronage for courtesans under feudal India meant that the mother-daughter duo had to relocate many times to different cities that promised better opportunities and recognition for young Akhtari. After moving to Gaya, Calcutta and Bombay, the duo finally anchored themselves in Lucknow, by which time Akhtar had already cut several 78-rpm discs, acted and sung in Bollywood films and performed at a number of prestigious baithaks in royal courts. With ascending fame and hard-earned financial stability, Mushtari Bai made a personal and professional decision that became the cornerstone of Akhtar’s future success. As described by historian Saleem Kidwai in an essay in the book Akhtari: The Life and Music of Begum Akhtar, edited by Yatindra Mishra, “Mushtari did not set up her daughter’s kotha in the Chowk Bazaar, which was then, as it is now, most associated with kothas and mujras. Instead, she settled her on the edge of Hazratganj, the posh commercial hub of the colonial city, home to the influential elite. Mushtari had shrewdly positioned her daughter in one of Lucknow’s exclusive neighbourhoods to become the cynosure of the social and cultural life of the city.” Akhtar became the most sought-after performer of her time, travelling all over the country performing for wealthy maharajas and zamindars. It is well-known of her that she maintained utmost dignity during her career as a courtesan singer, even showering her patrons with expensive presents as a reverse gesture of gratitude and lasting friendship.
By mid-20th century, courtesan culture was not only on the decline but was also being increasingly attached with social stigma. Akhtar’s search for respectability as well as enduring love resulted in her marriage with barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi in 1944. She became a Begum from a Bai which also meant there were now several curbs on her social and professional life, especially to do with performing music. She moulded herself into domestic life for a few years but her fame was difficult to hide from and, more importantly, she could not be kept away from music. Gradually, she reinvented herself as a suave, sophisticated singer of ghazals and thumris and brought the two forms of music out of royal courts and kothas on to concert platforms. Her popularity was such that everyone from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Sarojini Naidu and future stalwarts of music including Pandit Jasraj, Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar became ardent fans of her singing.
Sweet torture
Akhtar’s enigmatic personality and inimitable voice quality earned her an almost cult status. Bismillah Khan, a friend and a fan of Akhtar’s, has been quoted as saying: “There was a strange attraction in Begum Akhtar’s voice. This is known as ‘akaar ki taan’, which means that her voice would break a bit at the singing of ‘aa’. And this was her virtue. But in classical music, this is considered a drawback. Once I said, ‘Bai say something, sing something.’ Begum started singing ‘Niraala banra deewana bana de’. Once, twice after singing ‘Deewana bana de’ her throat pulled. I said, ‘Ah! This is the sweet torture of your voice.’”
This ‘cracking’ in her voice became a signature quality of Akhtar’s singing and was eagerly awaited by listeners. Renowned vocalist and composer Shubha Mudgal, who curated Akhtar’s birth centenary celebration with leading tabla player Aneesh Pradhan at the NCPA in 2014, says, “Initially, I would try and even imitate the break in her voice as well as learn by rote every alaap, every variation she had recorded. Fortunately, better sense prevailed as I grew up and realised that imitation gets you nowhere, particularly with an artiste as inimitable as Begum Akhtar. For me, her ability to be profoundly expressive while retaining impeccable accuracy melodically (what she herself in an interview calls sur ki sacchai) has been a great inspiration that I turn to again and again.”
Akhtar had the unmatched ability to infuse emotions into poetry without compromising on the musicality or raagdari in a song. In the book Akhtari, Kaumudi Munshi, a former student of Akhtar’s recalls the latter’s words describing the right effect that a performance should have on the audience, “Child, there should be a recounting in your singing. You are singing a poem, some words, literature, you should recount it, tell it. Your singing should tell the story. There should not be too many twirls and meandering; do not digress; that makes the literature complicated. Sing well, sing unreservedly; express yourself in such a way that the lyrics and the music are both clear. You don’t want just the words and neither do you want just music.”
What does it mean to celebrate Akhtar’s legacy in current times? Mudgal certainly speaks for several artistes when she says, “For students of music like me, she is an icon whose immortal music continues to inspire us to immerse ourselves in the study of music and literature and in the process, enrich our individual journeys. A true celebration of her legacy would be to encourage artistes to showcase compositions inspired by her legacy and her aesthetic.