Gangubai Hangal was a descendant of the Devadasi tradition of courtesan musicians but what an elegant and dignified life she led as one of the most unassuming talents the subcontinent could boast of. —File photo

MICHAEL Jackson’s death brought grief but it wasn’t the heartbreaking tragedy for an entire generation of music fans as the sad demise of John Lennon was in 1980.

Both enthralled India and in turn were mesmerised by it. But both trooped in at historically different moments in the country’s material and spiritual trajectory. And they came for different reasons.

The Beatles were in India in 1968 when they came as seekers of inner wisdom, not as an iconic rock band that they were. They experimented with transcendental meditation in the mountain resort of Rishikesh. They took a slice of India’s fabled mysticism but rejected the rest as mumbo-jumbo.

Perhaps one of their songs, which had George Harrison playing the sitar, best reflected the essence of the spiritual makeover from the Beatles’ private tour that became unwittingly public. It is not certain if it was the consequence of their interaction with sitar guru Ravi Shankar, but clear traces of the delicate Raag Bageshwari on the sitar in ‘Norwegian Wood’ summed up both their quest and the mingling of cultures.

If their musical interlude with Ravi Shankar was the highpoint of the Beatles’ contact with India, Michael Jackson’s trip to Mumbai in 1996 catered to an entirely new genre of Indian fans. The new music enthusiasts embraced the robotic movements that Jackson deployed to mimic the uncoiling human destiny and which Charlie Chaplin had first pointed to in Modern Times. Something more sinister happened on that trip. In the 1960s it was Maharishi and Ravi Shankar that symbolised a confident and self-assured cultural ethos of their country. The dominant metaphor in 1996 – within a span of three decades – was Bal Thackeray, and it was Jackson’s karma that his highpoint was a picture session with the Mumbai strongman.

Politics and culture have a dialectic relationship.

There was another significant difference between the two generations of music buffs as far as India is concerned. In a broad sense, people who played Beatles LPs in their living rooms were also likely to be devout patrons of Indian classical music, if not also of the western genre. Much of the cultural life revolved around the concert stage where eminent singers and instrumentalists wove magical notes that made the listeners swoon and grovel for more.

This cannot be said about Jackson’s followers. On the contrary, his music has spawned a subculture of pelvic thrusts; mindless screaming and gyrations that would be the joy of any middle-income bonesetter, as Michael Jackson’s own ordeal with painkillers should testify. Moreover, the hooting tones distorted the lilting musical cadence of the 1960s.

Michael Jackson’s death and A.R. Rahman’s winning the Oscar awards, both events in the precincts of Los Angeles, have refused to vacate the banner headlines in South Asia. However, from Los Angeles, it’s about an eight-hour drive to San Francisco. It was here that Ustad Ali Akbar Khan taught the fine art of Hindustani music to an international cluster of devoted musicians for 50 years. Ali Akbar died in San Francisco on June 18. I read a couple of moving obituaries to the sarod maestro who was once described by legendary American violinist Yehudi Menuhin as the ‘greatest musician in the world’. Were there any takers in India?

In the meantime we have lost Gangubai Hangal (96) and D.K. Pattamal (90) two of India’s greatest female singers in a span of a week. Did any of the newspapers (barring one or possibly two) pay heed or a TV channel, absorbed with the Rahman–Jackson saga, shed a tear? Gangubai was a descendant of the Devadasi tradition of courtesan musicians but what an elegant and dignified life she led as one of the most unassuming talents the subcontinent could boast of.

In a musical career spanning eight decades, Gangubai never sought riches. When younger vocalists charged Rs50,000 to Rs2 lakh for concerts, Gangubai remained steadfastly pegged at Rs25,000 firmly believing that to profit from music was to prostitute it.Pattamal was a brave woman in her own right. She was the first female Brahmin singer to dare to adorn the concert stage in ultra-orthodox southern India. The other day I was listening to two of her lighter compositions – Aayar kula chiruvan, which sounded like a Carnatic variant of northern Raag Bhairavi, and Kannan vara kaanaenae, which could pass for a southern Shuddh Saarang.

The orchestral ambience in these compositions was so similar to the numbers sung, say, by Khursheed or Kanan Devi that any veteran Indian music buff would be a loser for not switching on the magic. Pattammal’s classical repertoire of course covered the entire range of Thyagaraja, Arunagirinathar Swamigal, Muthuswamy Dikshithar and Shyama Shastri.

Music is not the only cultural realm in which the comprador character of modern-day patrons shines across in South Asia. There’s so much excellent work being done in the world of theatre in the region that to ignore it would require a subversive streak and that is precisely what may be happening. Habib Tanvir died on June 18 in his home in Bhopal. He may not have been as well known in the world of theatre as the great Harold Pinter was. Pinter was of course a Nobel laureate and activist. His stand against nuclear arms and American adventures in Iraq gave courage to millions.

When he died of lingering cancer global newspapers covered the story and paid a fitting tribute to Pinter’s undying spirit to fight for social justice. When Habib, a great admirer of Pinter, and himself a veteran theatre man died there were two and a half obituaries in India’s national newspapers. On the other hand, there is no dearth of space for the trivial delights of burgeoning reality shows. The comprador class is in total control and defines what passes for India’s culture.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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