Artist at work

Hariprasad Chaurasia: Romance of the Bamboo Reed
By Uma Vasudev, Shubhi, Rs 495

This biography could well have had an alternative title: Turning Breath into Gold. What stands out in this work is the extraordinary personal power of an artist whose proficiency with the flute has been very familiar to connoisseurs of music for more than four decades. The biography itself is not distinguished by a lucidity of style or even readability ? the author?s presentation of facts is often interspersed with her own mythology of Indian music and its inherently spiritual dimensions, its symbolisms, that sound somewhat clich?d. However, a careful assemblage of details that weave a compelling story of an artist and his changing milieu more than makes up for what is lacking in style. Following masters like Pannalal Ghosh, Chaurasia played a major role in the larger project of elevating and consolidating the flute as a concert instrument in the Hindustani classical music tradition of North India. The elements that made up this story find only oblique mention in the biography, but the dynamism of Chaurasia?s personality and his single-minded engagement with his chosen instrument is a powerful and unifying motif in the narrative.

The biography has its share of snippets about his personal life, his charm and his interaction with individuals and institutions in the country and abroad. But none of these seem particularly relevant. In fact, these details appear more in the nature of journalistic reporting. They do not add up to a more complex story of the changes that the contemporary classical music scene has undergone and what the implications of these have been for the status of the modern performer of Indian classical music.