Top Ten South Asian Pieces of Music

Perhaps it is the consequence of some deep-seated personal insecurity but I often find myself making lists of the essential pieces of music I would take with me in the event of a disaster. I live in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, a country where the ground shakes and lurches about seven hundred times a year. I play that scene in my mind all the time: earth quakes, I jump up, I grab my jacket and then, before running for the door, I sit on the floor and search my music collection for the tapes and CDs I ‘just have to have’. By this time, of course, the roof has clobbered my head and I’m dead.

So to improve my chances of survival I have decided to set aside the top ten pieces of South Asian music and have them ready by my bed next to my Discman. Should I find myself stranded under the rubble for some time at least I won’t be bored.

This list is definitive. But only as of today. Musical tastes and preferences like all positive energy, indeed, all of life is dynamic. I have gone years or months without listening to some the selections below but I find myself coming back to them like an exile to his homeland. Some I have only recently discovered but from the first listening they have soared through the ‘charts’ to grab a place on my personal ‘classic’ and ‘must have’ lists.

So without further ado, and in no particular order or rank, are the top ten pieces of music from South Asia to take with you in the event of an earthquake or sudden domestic evacuation.

1. Kumar Gandharva, Ud jayega hans akela. A bhajan of Kabir Das by the ‘bad boy’ of Indian classic singing. Like the swan that shudders as it stretches its neck and takes flight, Gandharva’s voice quivers with plaintive pleading to be lifted up to God. Gandharva spent a long stretch of his youth in bed victim of a serious disorder that robbed him of one lung. What God took away from him he returned with a voice that is thin, but as fluid and powerful as a flowing river. True spiritual music, Ud jayega hans akela, has all the intensity, humility and hope of the great Negro Spirituals of the American south.

2. Abida Parveen, Ghoom Charukhda. Spiritual music of another sort. Clanging, driving, driven, demanding and insistent. Abida’s one-of-a-kind voice and delivery is so confident that who dare argue? Like a maal gaardi cutting through the night, its iron wheels banging out a rhythm that lull you into a trance, the dholaks and other drums drag you into the presence of the holy one and veritably toss you at his feet. The closest thing to this is John Donne’s immortal plea ‘Break me, ravish me, three personed God’.

3. Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, Inshaji Utho. A universally acclaimed classic and an essential part of any collection, Inshaji has attained icon status in Pakistan. Unfortunately, most things accorded such elevated position are unable to withstand the weighty responsibility this thrusts upon them. But Inshaji, is the rare musical punch that hits you in the gut, heart and head with the same depth and intensity of emotion each time you hear it. From the loping taal of the tabla that opens the ghazal and conjures up a slow moving bullock cart, to Ustadji’s wry, world-weary delivery your attention remains transfixed. Who has not experienced the exhaustion felt in the words, ‘jab shahr ke log na rasta de/kyon ban mein na jaye bisram kare’. The maddening clamour and obstruction of daily life. Yet listen to Ustadji sing this sher though and you will be revived.

4. Kishore Kumar, Picheli yaad bhula do. You will say, what? Why select such an unknown song from such a huge star? I’m not trying to insult the man by picking some minor throw away track that he himself probably never sang again once it was cut. Indeed, my purpose is to show that even when performing a throw away piece, ‘filler’ as they say, Kishore ji sang with genius. Listen to his annunciation, his Sinatra-like phrasing, his warm baritone and his dramatic yet subdued delivery. I first heard this on a double tape I picked up in the bazar in Pindi in the late eighties of the ‘Ghamgheen Nagme Vol. 27’ or ‘Trajedy Gaane (Naaye!)’ sort. Most of the tracks are garbage but I will always treasure this piece of uncle Kishore’s advice on how to get over a rotten love affair.

5. Mohammad Rafi, Yeh duniya yeh mehfil. Again I know you will lay the charge that I’ve bypassed the master’s best numbers. But Rafi recorded so many classic songs the only one that comes close in the world of western popular music is Dylan or the Beatles. I first heard this song riding at dusk in a crowded wagon from Abbotabad to Pindi in the mid-eighties. The conversation petered out and we all listened in silence and growing darkness to this renunciation of the messy unreliable world. I was an instant fan. Rafi was a consummate professional playback singer. His edges were always polished, his performances always smooth. Yet listen to this and you’ll hear a breathlessness and an urgency that Abida Parveen would find compelling.

6. Farida Khanum, Woh ishq jo hamse root gaya. In the late ‘80s my idea of a good ghazal was Pankaj Udhas singing ‘Ek taraf us ka ghar’ (a classic in its own way) until a dear friend said, “Listen to this, then tell me what you think.” I listened. Then again and again. Indeed, I went out and bought the entire tape, which was released by EMI Pakistan and called, I think, ‘An Evening with Farida Khanum’. Farida looks like a Punjabi housewife just stepped out of the bawarchi khana. Or perhaps your best friend’s auntie all dolled up at a wedding party. Nothing on the surface to suggest her interpretive skill and vocal agility. Take my advice: search this tape out and buy it. If you can’t find it steal it from someone.

7. Jagjit and Chitra Singh, Woh kaghaz ki kashti. When I left India in 1975 for an uncertain life in the cold mid-west of the United States I carried a huge chip on my shoulder. I felt as if I were being exiled and spent the next two years literally pining for those places and faces and times of my childhood in India. The first time I heard this song I cried. It became a constant companion and did more to keep the flame of an Indian childhood alive in my heart than any piece of music or any image. In fact, listen to this and your mind will fill with so many wonderful and warm images. There is no better ode to lost innocence and nostalgia then this ghazal from the early ‘80s.

8. Shankar, Pancha Nadai Pallavi. This Tamilian violinist played in some of the earliest ‘east west fusion rock’ albums in the mid and late ‘70s, along with Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin. This CD is an almost perfect blending of east and west but without the guitar wizardry and canned pseudo Hindu trappings of those dated Shakti records. The music is from the east, Ragam Tanam Pallavi. But the sensibility with which Shankar saws his electric violin and squeezes the haunting yet pacifying sounds from his strings is a tip of the hat to jazz and even the blues. Listen to the alap of Ragam Tanam Pallavi and you’ll hear the echoes of a hundred scat singers as well as the moanings of Keith Jarret making love to his piano. Whenever I hear the supposed compliment, ‘he’s a one man band,’ I make a mental note to avoid that person’s music. But Shankar has shown how to do it. Near the end of this amazing piece of night music you’ll hear the bass guitar, the drum and the flute but he’s only got a violin. Absolutely essential listening!

9. Asad Amanat Ali Khan, Umara lagiyan paba par. Not every song on this old tape, Live, Vol. 2, (will they ever issue it as a CD?) is a winner. But who cares when you have such a stunning virtuoso performance of this Sufi cri de coeur. Many wonderful minutes long with a table master that just doesn’t know how to let up; Asad sahib’s high-pitched voice scales the summits as he reaches for ‘oonchiyan lambiyan lal kajura’. There is no need for him to prove that he is his own man. This amazing song shows very clearly that he has wrestled his father’s long shadow and has come out victorious.

10. Lata Mangeshkar, Pakeezah and Asha Bhosle, Umrao Jaan. I picked this tape up in Kissa Khawani bazar in Peshawar in 1987. I’ve had two other copies since then and it is without a doubt one of the tapes I want buried with me when I finally leave this vale of tears. Two great films and a mountainous muthi full of great filmi songs. But filmi songs from a time when they still evoked emotions and spoke about real things and were something other than the robotic repetition of ‘dum de dum’s and nonsense ‘la la la, jhapka da’s’ that so much of contemporary filmi music seems to be (if the videos they show at the local Indian restaurant are any indication). The songs are indeed classics and it would be hard to pick one out as the winner but what is so great about this tape is the muqabala between the two sisters and two greatest female voices of popular Indian music.

I think I feel the earth rattling again. I’ve got to run for cover. But this time I’m prepared.