New Delhi, Oct 26: Yesterday, I had a chance to witness a live programme at the India Habitat Centre titled “O Gaanewali”. A journey through history, storytelling, and unforgettable music. At first, the name “Gaanewali, looked as if someone in the neighbourhood was calling someone or shouting at someone, but a nearly two-hour running programme fixed me in the past, where I had read in some books about how Tawaifs or Kothawalis would attract royalty, the decision makers in the early 1900s and were even considered sometimes celebrities like today’s movie stars. Recently, in the Netflix series of Heeramandi, where glamour, curated dresses and sets mesmerised everyone and took us back into history, including the roles of a few in the independence struggle. This live “O Ganewali” programme was no less well-crafted, well-researched, a unique musical celebration of the forgotten women who defined, popularised, and immortalised genres like Thumri, Dadra, Ghazal, Chaiti, Hori, and more. The programme, curated and written by Avanti Patel, a resident of Mumbai, with co-vocalist Rutija Lad, and directed by Mallika Singh and Meghana AT, these two well-educated modern looking young Avanti and Rutija, the lead vocal, taking us into a journey of the past, the unparalleled legacy of artistry and emotion, shaping Hindustani semi-classical music history.
Avanti took us to the memory lane past through their melodious singing and equally explaining the happening, the love, in absence of love, the created love, the pain in it and made us to walk through with their excellent performance of singing in a sombre melody voice, through well-known classical famous singers like legendary performers such as Gauhar Jaan, Begum Akhtar, Iqbal Bano, Shobha Gurtu and several women artists after them and the songs they sung of famous Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz poetry.
Looking back through history, the term ‘gaanewali’ has never just meant ‘a woman who sings’. The label has always been taken away from its literal moorings and loaded with a certain moral suspicion for women performers who have been given other names, such as tawaifs, baijis and nautch girls, among others. Said Avanti. This was despite them being master artistes, whose contribution to the subcontinent’s cultural landscape remains invaluable. “They are forgotten legends, history doesn’t remember them, even their role in the independence struggle against British rule is forgotten,” says Mumbai-based Hindustani classical vocalist Avanti Patel, who has won several awards in the past and whose parents are both famous Doctors by profession. The two women vocalists, along with three professional musicians on instruments like Harmonium, Sarangi and Tabla, took us down memory lane through celebrating the voices that shaped Hindustani semi-classical music. O Gaanewali honours the legendary women, Gauhar Jaan, Begum Akhtar, Iqbal Bano, Shobha Gurtu, and more, who turned emotion into timeless art.
