The Seni Gharana

(The Senia Maihar Gharana)

 During the past two decades, when music conferences became very popular, every musical artist proclaimed that he came front a particular famous Gharana, that is, a particular line of hereditary musical tradition and particular school of musical styles created or followed by great music teachers and their disciples.  Actually, there were two main Gharanas of Hindusthani music worthy to be considered, during and after the reign of Allauddin Khilji, the Pathan Emperor of Delhi. These were : --  (1) The kalawanta Gharana, founded by Baiju Bawra and propagated by Nayak Gopal which included the singers of the Dhrubapada style of music and the instrumentalists who played on Saraswat veena in accompaniment to the vocal Raga Alap and Dhrubapada songs.  (2) The kawal Gharana, founded and propagated by Amir Khusru and later on by Sultan Hussain Sarki of Jaunpur.  These Gharanas included the singers of Kawali songs and the instrumentalists who played on Sitar in accompaniment to the Kawali songs and Taranas. Later on, a third Gharana was formed by the instrumentalists who used to play on Shanai and Tabla. With the increase of the number of female singers and dancing girls in the Court, there arose a fourth Gharana of instrumentalist accompanying them. The Ostads of the third and fourth Gharana were called Mirasis and Dhadis.

 
                      SWAMI HARIDASJI OF VRINDAVAN

During the reign of Md. Adil Shali at Delhi, there were more than one hundred musicians in the Court, who were mostly the Kawals, Mirasis and Dhadis. After the fall of the Pathan Empire, Haridas Swami, the great saint of Brindaban was the main personality in the golden age of Hindusthani music, when the system of Rag-Alap and the Dhrubapada style of music founded by Baiju Bawra, attained perfection of expressions, and was held in the highest estimation by the royal courts existing in that period.  Under the influence of his inspiration, During the reign of the Emperor Akbar, Mian Tansen, the disciple of Swami Haridas, was called the greatest of all musicians and was the main centre of a great musical upheaval. All the disciples of other Nayaks became his disciples and his style of Alap and Dhrubapada was regarded and accepted as the best ever known. He enriched the Dhrubapada style with some Persian ornamentations. Mian Tansen was the leader of a group of famous musicians,

   
 SAINT HARIDAS'S DISCIPLE - MIAN TANSEN

    Mian Tansen was the greatest disciple of Swami Haridas and a foster child of Pir Md. Ghaus . He formed the main Gharanas, that is, the Seni Gharanas of Hinduathani music.
   The brightest sun in Akbar’s court was Tansen (1520-1589), a musical genius from Gwalior whom the Emperor had brought and installed as one of the Nine Jewels of his court. Tansen composed many new Ragas, such as Miya-ki-Malhar, Darbari Kanhra and Miya-ki-Todi, and laid down the foundations of North Indian classical music through 300 Dhrupad compositions. Although Akbar had a policy to convert talented people to Islam his reverence for Tansen was such that he never forced him to convert, but tactfully gave him the title Miya Tansen.
    Tansen had a Hindu wife as well as a Muslim wife, called Mehrunissa. From the latter he got a son Bilas Khan (composer of the Raga Bilaskhani Todi) and from the Hindu wife he had three children; Tan-Taranga, Suratsen and Saraswati Devi. Suratsen later founded the Jaipur Sitar Gharana. Saraswati was a famous Dhrupad singer who married Raja Misar Singh, a noted Beenkar (Veena player) of Rajasthan. Misar Singh eventually became a state musician in Akbar’s court and was converted to Islam and renamed Naubat Khan.
    The descendants of Saraswati and Misar Singh were Beenkars as well Dhrupadiyas and they continued and developed the traditions of Sitar, Sursringar and Rabab playing as well as vocal music. They established what is now known as the Seni Beenkar Gharana, the most important musical family in North Indian music. Although they officially had Muslim names, they also had dual Hindu names; thusWazir Khan, for example was also called Chhatrapal Singh. These descendents include Niyamat Khan (vocalist, also known as Sadarang in many Khayal compositions), Amritsen (Jaipur Sitar Gharana, 1814-1894) , Omrao Khan (Vina, Surbahar, Sarode), Gholam Mohammed Khan (Lucknow Sitar Gharana), Bahadur Hussain Khan (inventor of Tarana) and Ustad Wazir Khan.

 
USTAD WAZIR KHAN OF RAMPUR

     Ustad Wazir Khan was a brilliant teacher, performer and composer and the leader of the Seni Gharana in the last century. His family line could be traced back directly to Tansen and his musical knowledge included many of Tansen’s original Dhrupad compositions. Perhaps the most important occurence in the history of Sarode playing is the fact that two of the foremost Sarodiyas of the last generation Allauddin Khan and Hafiz Ali Khan came to be Wazir Khan’s disciples. Thus the full power and accumulated musical knowledge of the Seni Gharana was incorporated into the Sarode art of these two outstanding musicians. The result was that a style of Sarode playing developed in which the vocal traditions of Dhrupad and Khyal and the instrumental traditions of Veena (slides and glides) and Rabab (rhythmic, staccato and plucked) came to be blended beautifully and aesthetically into this one majestic instrument. This is why today’s Sarode playing has such a wide dynamic range from the most tender Meends to thunderous Jhalas and lightning speed Taans (musical sentences).  

                                                                    Aacharya Baba Allauddin Khan

                                                         Founder of SENIA MAIHAR GHARANA

     Ustad Baba Allauddin Khan (1862-1972) as we know is a legendary figure in indian classical music as well as western classical music.Baba Allauddin Khan was born to a wealthy and cultured family in Bangladesh in 1862. As a youth he learned tabla and violin with his brother, Fakir Aftabuddin (a singer and drummer, who was later to popularize the dotara and the flute as classical instruments). At the age of 8, he ran away from home to Calcutta, and started to study singing with Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya. With this famous singer, he studied only exercises and technique for twelve years. One day his brother came to call him home, for his family had arranged his marriage to an 8 year old child. He agreed to respect his parent's wishes, but he left his bride on the wedding night and returned to Calcutta. There he found that his guru had died suddenly during his short absence.
   Dejected, he turned from vocal to instrumental music. He began to study a variety of instruments: violin, clarinet, piano shenai, and drums - this list would grow to encompass 200 kinds of wind, string, and percussion instruments. Habul Datta, the brother of Swami Vivekananda, was among his teachers, as was Mr. Robert Lobo, the conductor of the Eden Garden Orchestra in Calcutta, who with his wife taught Allauddin Khan western classical music, and Hazari, the shenai player.
    He started playing at various theater, opera and music halls, until one day he heard a master musician performing on the sarode. Unable to study with this sarodist, he journeyed to Rampur where he studied under Wazir Khan of the Tansen family. The Mian Tansen family traces its lineage to Tansen, the musical genius of the 16th century Mughal emperor Akbar's court, who is considered the source of North Indian music. For forty years, he learned dhrupad, other styles of singing, as well as sarod, sursringar, rabab, and other instruments.
    Baba Allauddin lived only to serve the cause of music. He was a lifelong devotee of the Goddess Kali and later as a court musician in Maihar worshipped Sharda Devi, also known as Maihar Devi, and a form of Goddess Kali. He avoided fame and wealth, pursued music as a path to spiritual salvation and offered his creations at the feet of Sharda Devi. In later years Baba’s salary was paid from the earnings of the Sharda temple. He was regarded throughout India as a musical saint and many students journeyed to Maihar to learn from him. He himself remained a student of music till the age of 70 completely mastering the Dhrupad and instrumental compositions of the Seni Gharana and adding innumerable new compositions and many new Ragas, such as Hemant, Shobhavati and Durgeshwari. His eventual contributions are so outstanding that today this Gharana is known as the Senia Allauddin Gharana or Senia Maihar Gharana.

  He became court musician to the Maharajah of Maihar and a musical legend in his lifetime. He organized the Maihar band with 100 orphan children that he brought to his house and taught strings, brass, bagpipes and drums. The band was a pioneer in the orchestration of Indian musical isntruments and a true combination of Eastern and Western ideas. His teaching method and style, though strict, was lucid and successful at turning out accomplished musicians.
     Baba openly and generously transferred the vast wealth of his musical knowledge to a large number of disciples. Of these the most famous are his son  Ustad Ali Akbar Khan ,his daughter Smt. Annapurna Devi, his son-in-law Pandit Ravi Shankar, Late.Pandit Nikhil Banerjee,Timir Baran,HIs grandson Ustad Aashish khan, the Maharajah of Maihar, and others

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 The dazzling virtuosity, musical depth and brilliance of these  musicians and their extensive touring over the last 40 years have exposed audiences all over the world to the treasures of the Senia Maihar Gharana, the art and magic of Sitar and Sarode, and the exquisite beauty, creativity and sophistication of North Indian classical music.With such

a fantastic heritage the future of instrumental music and the sarode in particular bright indeed.

                                       Yehudi Menuhin on Indian classical music  

"Indian classial music, compared with our Western music, is like a pure crystal. It forms a complete perfected world of its own, which any admixture could only debase. It has, quite logically and rightly, rejected those innovations which have led the development of Western music into the multiple channels which have enabled our art to absorb every influence under the sun. Freedom of development in Indian music is accorded the performer, the individual, who, within fixed limits, is free to improvise without any restraint imposed externally by other voices, whether concordance or discordant - but not to the basic style, which excludes polyphony and modulation."
(source: Indian and Western Music - Yehudi Menuhin, Hemisphere, April 1962, p. 5)
" While Western music speaks of the wonders of God's creation, Eastern music hints at the inner beauty of the Divine in man and in the world. Indian music requires of its hearers something of that mood of divine discontent, of yearning for the infinite and impossible."  
    Rishi Ranjan is has been associated  with this venerable Gharana learning  Rabab and Sarode As a disciple of Sarode Maestro  Ustad Aashish khan  from  last two years.