Making music speak for itself

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Bela is a different woman at different times. In Mumbai, she is an actress. You might hear her singing on the radio. She shakes her hips while moonlighting as a wedding singer. Then she also sings qawwalis. Bela and her family epitomise the journeys musicians must embark upon, keeping up with the times so that history doesn’t leave them behind.
Bela’s story is an episode from Stories in a Song, an Arpana and Underscore Records production that was performed at Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai last weekend. Conceived by Shubha Mudgal, this “collage of theatre, literature and history” has been directed by Sunil Shanbag. It uses theatre as a medium to tell stories of musical forms, and talks about the travails of musicians who have been associated with them.
“The idea was to put together a collage of stories and accounts of music-making spanning several forms of music. We have talked about folk music, classical music and even remixes. There are instances of interaction between Western music lovers and Indian musicians. Both my husband Aneesh Pradhan and I are students of music and read a lot about it. We came across historical accounts and fiction; sometimes, those narratives were so riveting that we were led to visualise how music was made in different circumstances. So we requested a theatre expert and our friend, Sunil Shanbag, to adapt these accounts to the stage,” says Mudgal, who, with Pradhan, has selected and composed all the music.
In moments, Stories in a Song draws out the nuances of lives spent on stage. Exhibitionism is staged; but there is also introspection, where musicians enact very public roles, even as they fiercely guard their space. The latter also leads to a tongue-in-cheek but sensible dialogue about artistes and their tantrums. Musicians are remembered for their music, but rendered iconic by their quirks.
Talking about the varied ways in which these episodes were dramatised or fictionalised, Shanbag says, “One interesting episode we feature is a dramatic recreation of the idea of copyright. By tracing the path of a traditional tune as it is remade through various avatars, we raise questions about the issue — who owns the music, whose music is it? Sometimes we created a theatre piece and at other times we used excerpts from our sources, working with writers, translators or both to adapt these episodes. Music is at the core of all our pieces — we ensured that to maintain some integrity. We tend to use lots of music in our theatre but it is the text that is in the foreground. Balancing theatricality with music was hence a new experience. Theatre had to step back and let the music come upfront.”
Poignantly following the copyright episode is one of the most rousing and humorous moments of the play, the rendering of a kajri (a genre of Hindustani classical music) in English, where the poet translates lines of poetry composed in Hindi. So we are left with gems like “Dear darling o Radhe please search my Murli with me” and “Catch wrist of sweet Radhika.” Perhaps most intriguing is the line where the poet indicates his name — “Hearing the kajri of Jawahar, enemies are about to ran!”
Describing the process of playing with a story to adapt it to theatrical presentation, Shanbag explains, “One of the historical incidents we portray is the little-known story of the tawaifs (courtesans) of Amritsar and Mahatma Gandhi, who stepped in when he was asked to intervene by people who took exception to the presence of the tawaifs, feeling that they were a threat to decent society. But Gandhiji was extremely supportive and empathised with the tawaifs. Here, on the stage, within 12 to 15 minutes, we must elaborate on a tradition that has existed, describe the threat to it, and its subsequent denouement. We wrote out a dramatic script and fictionalised the incident, though the facts were still the same, on the lines of what was reported in the historical documents we studied. We are thus making a fictional statement by collapsing time — just one of the theatrical devices we must use,” he explains.