Women and Music: The Case of North India

	From the point of view of a projected history of North Indian music, our knowledge about women performers dates from relatively recent times.If one were to think of the late 16th century as an important originary point in the construction of musical histories, the time from which major traditions are derived, there is little evidence of individuated women performers, as there are men. Abul Fazl's list of Akbar's musicians contains 36 names (tr.H. Blochmann, Tagore 214-16) , but no women. At the same time, we do know of classes of women performers. Musical tradition designates the important classes of Dhadis and Mirasis, the line of distinction being that the Dhadis were later arrivals in India, while Mirasis were native to the country. In his autobiography Alladiya Khansahab describes the occupation of Mirasi women as that of singing "during weddings and and on other festive occasions" (My Life, 73.). Gladwin's translation (Tagore 207) of the section of the Ain i Akbari entitled `Sungeet' mentions different classes of women singers and instrumental artists, including the `poorkeya'  and `duszun' singers of "Dhoorpad and Sohlah,  nuptial and birthday songs". There are also the "Kanchanee", the royal entertainers: other accounts mention Ramjanis, Domnis, and so on. The term Bai for Muslim dancing girls is apparently current by the beginning of  the 19th century (Bor, citing F. Buchanan c 1810). Women performers are designated as classes, conforming to ethnic or occupational groupings. The few names that do figure in records (like that of Lal Kanwar in Jahangir's court) do little to alter this impression. In a substantial way accounts in which  women performers play significant roles date from the middle of the 19th century. Even here the majority of accounts have to do with the interaction between male and female performers. Accounts are more plentiful from the end of the 19th century onwards: this is also the time of the advent of the recording companies.
	The more fundamental problem which arises in the case of women performers is of imagining pre-modern practices of music: what forms and styles did they specialize in? What kinds of training did they receive? In a general way one might say that there is no substantial information about early musical forms and the widespread belief in the extreme antiquity and stability of the genres of classical music is largely unfounded. It is widely agreed that the forms of North Indian classical music underwent continual change and development.  In the troubled course of its evolution, Indian classical music had developed infinite particularizations within its discrete and distinct forms like the dhrupad, the kheyal, the thumri and so on. Some were old and some new; some accepted and sung through gharana limits, others associated with particular schools, teachers and singers. A synchronic view of the important conjunctural point, the beginning of the twentieth century, would reveal them in various states of growth and decay: the dhrupad, whose passing is a familiar topos of contemporary discourses of classicity, is even at this time under pressure from the kheyal, and this contestatory relationship is the subject of quite a few oral narratives - which typically in the case of North Indian classical music, are structured in the shape of anecdotes. 
	The reliance of accounts of North Indian music on anecdote has always been one of its major problems. It is well known that the transactions of knowledge in the world of North Indian music has always been dependent on oral communication, and this practice has survived even in the face of rapid technological advance. Urmila Bhirdikar and I have recently argued for the need of devising a way of dealing with oral narratives and reading anecdotes. Some preliminary observations may be made here. Musicians habitually recount anecdotes in the course of musical performances: anecdotes accompany musical instruction and discussion of the intricacies of bandish and nikas. Given that this is the most significant domain of shared knowledge among performers and listeners, it is obviously shortsighted to ignore it altogether as so many accounts have done: equally, there does not seem to be much point in trying to distinguish between anecdotes on the basis of a criterion of `truth' or even of probability. It has seemed to us that the structure of the anecdote is what demands attention: the way in which musical knowledge can be transmitted from hearer to listener in the form of brief narratives: the limits are set by equally by operation of  memory in the musical community and the kind of expectation which is generated by the position of the subject in the ideological world of the narration. It remains to be emphasized again that anecdotes of male performers are far more plentiful than those of women, and in many cases the anecdotes move around the sharp splits and divisions between the worlds of male and female perfomers. Amiyanath Sanyal's Smritir Atale, an account which presents and unusually positive and sensitive view of the woman performer, uses the repetitive trope of conflict between bai singers and male ustads. Both  Moujuddin's animosity towards women performers and  Faiyaz Khan's encounter with Gauhar Jan, serve ultimately to present a view of the superiority of male singers both in terms of skill and innovativeness and of traditional knowledge.
	 The relation of early recording to the hierarchy of classical and sub-classical genres is also worth reflecting on. We are fortunate in now having a complete listing of all Gramophone Company recordings between 1902 and 1910 (Kinnear 1994, 2000); other lists of recordings made by women performers are available in articles in The Record News (now) published annually from Mumbai. It should be noted that the availability of these lists has opened up new possibilities for study. Previously research into the history of recording was on the basis of private record collections and the annual catalogues of the recording companies, imperfectly and incompletely preserved. More genersal observations have now been enabled.  Splits along gender lines are visible in the lists, with the musical forms ideologized as being `higher' falling in the male domain and being contained within the inherently patriarchal construction of the idea of gharana; the so-called sub-classical forms being the field of professional woman artists, referred to as bais or baijis. The authorizing locus of knowledge is the male gharanedar ustad ideally working under conditions of  courtly or aristocratic patronage, from whom other male students learn through a kind of economy of gift, in which the returns for the gift of knowledge are conceptualised in terms of service and fidelity. That in practice this was not always how things worked, and that competing systems for the dissemination of musical knowledge is something that could be studied through the examples of women artistes. Early lists of recordings show unusually large numbers of women artistes entering into the field. Forms of music practised by women are therefore recorded in large number. From a total statistical analysis it would appear that the number of recordings in the early lists is inversely proportional to its place in the imaginary hierarchy of musical forms. Thus there are the fewest dhrupads and the greatest numbers of geets, ghazals, dadras and kajris, with khayals and thumris lying somewhere in between. But the opportunity afforded by the neutral space of recording is used by singers to create images of the self which run counter to the general run of musical practices. Let me introduce this point with a glance at the lists. 
	In the course of the Gramophone Company's recording tour of 1906-7, William Gaisberg and George Dillnutt recorded the songs of Miss Oomda Jan, a well known singer in Hyderabad. She appears to have made a favourable impression on the organizers. She recorded 14 songs, a number which appears to be high without being excessive; in the same tour 20 songs of Jankibai of Allahabad were recorded. What distinguishes Oomda Jan's efforts is that she appears to have recorded songs of many different types: 3 dhrupads, 3 khayals, a sargam-geet, a tappa, in addition to horis, thumris and a gazal. Given that at this time social distinctions reinforce formal distinctions in the musical world, this freedom to negotiate genres appears to be of significance. Recorded repertoires often run counter to the content of performances or even the status of musical knowledge. Women singers, we know, often began concerts with a short khayal composition or two; or if they were also skilled in dancing, as Gauhar Jan reputedly was, they rendered a tarana while dancing. All these were designed to evoke admiration for virtuosity; but there was no doubting that the main content of their concerts in most cases was  a range of sub-classical forms. In Oomda Jan's case - and in many others too - the space afforded by recording becomes a way of recasting musical identities. On the other hand, the popularity of light classical forms as items of recorded music, prompt male ustads to strive for competence in these as well; many of the male singers in the early lists record them side by side other kinds.
	 When the record companies appear on the scene, male singers of classical music, particularly those hierarchized in the gharana system, seem hesitant to enter into its domain.  On the other hand, women artists make remarkable use of its potential, creating often new images of themselves. Women artists also often record vast numbers of songs. Gauhar Jan is reputed to have recorded near about 600 songs: the survivals of Janki Bai Chhappanchhuri, Gauhar's greatest rival, are also very considerable. The range of forms is also of great interest, for women record in all the varieties of classical and sub-classical music: dhrupad, dhamar, sadra, kheyal, chaturang, tarana, sargam-geet, as also thumri, dadra and its innumerable varieties now largely forgotten: like sohar, bandra, ghato, chaiti, savan, jhoola. Also represented are ghazals and geets, various kinds of devotional music, including in rare cases qawalis (Bai Banni Jan of Meerut  recorded the famous Amir Khusrau composition `Chhap tilak sab chhinire').  
	Thus one of the immediate effects of early recording in India was to alter perceptions of ability, repertoire and virtuosity. But if, in the short run, the general tendency is towards variety, the superimposition of new possibilities on a field already replete with different kinds of highly individuated practices, the more extended effects are of another order altogether. I can only point to some of them here. Recording operates as a form of disclosure, pushing forms of knowledge held privately, or in specific occupational groups eis to meson, into the middle,  for public consumption. As such it is one of the earliest examples of the institutionalization of music, one which  serves to create new norms of taste and receptivity. `All internal and external relations' writes Pierre Bourdieu `...that agents of production, reproduction and diffusion manage to establish are mediated by the structure of relations between the instances or institutions claiming to exercise a specifically cultural authority. In a given space of time a hierarchy of relations is established between the different domains, the works and the agents having a varying amount of legitimizing authority.' (`The Market of Symbolic Goods', The Field of Cultural Production, Polity Press, 1993, p. 121).  One is aware of course that here recording takes its place with other forces and developments: the emergence of the concert stage as a musical forum, the growth of new forms of classification and pedagogy, as for instance that associated with the name of V.N.Bhatkhande, the establishment of the All India Radio, and so on to the newer developments in the technology of musical reproduction and dissemination. One would then also have to talk about the effects of the decline of patronage and the strategies of survival that classical music has to adopt. 
	It may be said that the turn of the century - the century whose end we ourselves are witnesses of - was  a time of many changes in Indian classical music.  The practices of music are seen in a state of fluidity and instability. One reason was the changes in forms of patronage and consumption; the incursion of new technology certainly played its part. Among the most obvious effects of recording, one was to alter radically the patterns of circulation and dissemination of music. Now purchasable as a commodity, music associated with definite and specially value-laden social loci - like the durbar, the mehfil, the kotha, the theatre - can be transferred into the confines of domestic privacy, and acquires the near-miraculous power of reproducibility, thus crossing the boundary of what Jacques Attali has called the domain of representation to that of repetition (Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, tr. Brian Massumi, U Minn. Press, Minneapolis, 1985).  
	On the 11th of November, 1902, Fred Gaisberg, principal recording engineer for the Gramophone Company recorded the most important of his artists: Bai Gauhar Jan. This is clearly a moment of great importance in the history of Indian music. Gauhar made quite an impression on the recordists, and in a memoir published in 1918 by W C Gaisberg ( F W Gaisberg's  brother and successor as recording engineer for the Gramophone Company), she is described as being ` a great artist' who was `really delightful and intelligent'.  Her records sold particularly well and were popular throughout the country (evidently not the case with other artists, who enjoyed local popularity).  But perhaps there is a musical point to be made as well : that presumably for the first time in history were the different kinds of traditional musical compositions being sung in a particular timed format,  corresponding to the limits of the discs: time, held firmly as laya, jati, chhanda and matra within the musical composition itself becomes the determining force in the outer form of the recording, raising new questions about selection and combination, form and structure. The new determinacy enables new approaches to style.
	From the beginning of recording in India, the field appears to attract a large number of women artists. This is clear in all three of Kinnear's sets of lists; this is also borne out by later catalogues. The voices of these women still speak out to us eloquently, requiring us to imagine their historical contexts. Much of the music is of a high quality, but this appreciation needs to be guarded against unthinking romanticization. The question that presents itself is as to why so many women should have been recorded in the early phases of recording and what bearing this has on the status of musical knowledge. It may be advisable to start with a closer look at  some of the evidence. In the 1902 lot there are something like thirty male artists (including all categories - recitations, religious texts, etc)   and fifteen (or 16) women. Of the total of 553 recordings about 230 are either solely or jointly by women. For the stricter classical pieces,  we have only Gauhar and Lal Chand Boral (5 each incl. 7" and 10"). The 7" g suffix series of 1904-5  includes Carnatic music, and so is difficult to assess: but the ratio has certainly gone up in favour of women. Of the 22 classical (khayal-dhrupad- tarana) pieces 11 are sung by a number of women artists, whereas the bulk of the male recordings are of the redoubtable Abdul Karim Khan, at this time had just left the court of the Gaikwad in Baroda.  In the next series (1906-7) the female presence is even stronger.  
	A further point needs to be made. Male recordists are seen offering a greater variety of kinds in the absolute sense (i.e instrumental music, parodies, animal imitations religious, recitations), whereas women when not singing theatre songs, are seen exclusively as singers of a variety of classical and sub-classical forms. Thus when the question of recording is narrowed down to these, women artists seem to acquire even greater importance. For Will Gaisberg there was no doubt in fact that woman artists were the most appreciated: `the male artistes are not great favourites and their part generally consists of teaching the girl singers their songs and making up the orchestral accompaniment' The only truly popular male artist he knew was Peara Saheb, and he had a voice like a woman's! (TRN, Jan. 1995, p.40)
	This may also be a way of countering the totalizing discourse of gharana and guru-shishya paramapara that we have become inured to. The great diversity of musical practices - both those of men and those of women -  that is described in the lists of recordings  largely exists outside the valorization of gharana music. The only male artists that Will Gaisberg could see were those that formed part of the woman singer's entourage. One of the most important facts to be noted is that women artists are identified by their place of residence, whereas the important male ustads are generally known by their gharana labels. In most cases, the women artists belong to urban centres, or market towns.  There is ample evidence that women artistes lived in communities which acted as relatively stable points on a map of music that was rapidly changing with the centres of male patronage decaying, and the performers themselves forced to make long journeys for alternative employment, or even to supplement their incomes. As professional performers they had regular incomes – in some cases, very substantial incomes, so that Janki Bai refused an offer of Rs 5000 from Beka Record A.G. And The International Talking Machine Company m.b.h. to sign an exclusive contract. Between 1908 and  1910 the Gramophone Company alone sold nearly 23,000 copies of her discs. The extent to which women artists - the much reviled professional community of women singers - supported and subsidized the economy of music is poorly documented. It is  known that Janki Bai paid her ustad, Hassu Khan, the sum of Rs 2000 a month: Akhtari Bai studied under Abdul Wahid of Kirana, as Kesarbai did under Alladiya Khansahab. Other bais are known to have supported their ustads. That they afforded hospitality to ustads on long visits, and provided  for their needs, is well known, and this practice was common at least till the 1970s. Yet it is equally clear that this economic support did not in any way improve the position of women in the hierarchy of music.
	Women also learnt in at least two other ways, though they may have used their gharanadar ustads' names for the purpose of publicity. . First of all, women artists learnt the great part of their repertoires (of sub-classical forms) from other women singers. These songs seem to  exclusively exist in the feminine domain: their striking presence in the repertoires of women artistes widely separated in time and place is a subject worth the closest study. Secondly, as Gaisberg noted, they learnt from sarangi players whom they often employed on a permanent basis. The fact that they were accustomed to thinking of musical knowledge as lying in the field of economic exchange, both of reception and consumption, may go along way to explain their willingness to enter into the arena of recording, which they consider as another means of marketing their music. Existing always on the fringes of the musical world, women artists appear to have used their musical knowledge as a way of gaining a measure of economic freedom. Even when successful, their prosperity in most cases lasted only as long as they were able to sing. This immediacy, even materiality, in the view of musical knowledge is reflected in their facility in the world of gramophone records. A more polemical point could also be made here: the common association of technology and masculinity clearly does not work here. Male reluctance could not have stemmed purely from aesthetic reasons such as the inadequacy of time, the vulgarization of music and so on. As a number of oral records indicate, the fear of losing control over one's musical knowledge was strong among male ustads.
	 Women seem to have fewer qualms. Early recording was often - critically - thought to be excessively dominated by women artists. To make another polemical point, in the early phase of recording men imitate the tonal quality and pitch of women while recording. The aesthetics of feminine voice set the norms of taste in the field. But the survival and success of the recording industry sees in time the gradual entry of male artists in large number. It is difficult to discern a specific point of time when this happens, but it is caused by the increasingly tenuous forms of patronage as much as the growing awareness of the advantages of recording. By the fourth decade of the century, the culture of music has changed considerably. As the names of eminent gharanedar ustads like Bibe Khan of Lahore, Banda Husain of Saharanpur and Nisar Husain of Sahaswan feature in the 1940 Gramophone Company catalogue, so do those of a new generation of singers like Mallikarjun Mansur and Basavraj Rajguru. In time the field of recorded music becomes more strongly dominated by male artistes, who come to set a new set of norms of taste in recorded music. The community of women artists baecome increasingly marginalised, and those who still command respect and popularity  are, in large part, those who can be placed within gharana confines: Hirabai, Gangubai, Moghubai, Kesarbai. I hope to be able to comment on this in my essay.
	Let me conclude this series of rather disparate reflections with a point about taste. Artists entering the field of recording found themselves facing  a new kind of audience: one that could not be seen, and, therefore, one whose tastes could not be fully predicted. The fact that artists feel impelled to record in so many different varieties, may itself be attributed in some part to a kind of anxiety that performers face in confronting this realm of indeterminacy. But the very success and popularity of the recording industry, invests the act of recording with a new kind of importance. The greater the stakes in the field of recording, the greater the sense of unease, and the more pressing the need to isolate those forms which are most viable. Certain forms and styles of music appear to become, in the simplest sense, uneconomical. This point is clear, in fact, when we study the survivals of an artist like Janki Bai of Allahabad; she recorded principally (if not entirely) in a wide variety of light classical forms. While some of these forms are easily recognisable as being connected with forms popular in later times, a greater number seem to have disappeared without a trace from the repertoire of the classical artist. Forms like the soz and the marsiya are cases in point:  a far more restricted notion of the realm of the `classical' is seen to emerge. One is left to speculate about the construction of a notion of taste, now located in the unstable and unpredictable public world of consumption.