It is ironic that Mallikarjun Mansur, the pre-eminent vocalist of the Jaipur gharana, enters his centenary at a time when India is riddled with demands for linguistic states. Mansur was born in Dharwad — that musical haven in Karnataka which nurtured the likes of Gangubai Hangal, Bhimsen Joshi and Basavraj Rajguru — and embodied a rare synthesis of traditions, values and aesthetics rooted in Kannada and Marathi cultures, the twin edifices of undivided Deccan of the colonial era. He was as proficient in natyasangeet as in Carnatic classical, though his destiny was writ elsewhere. His mastery of the khayal, and specifically of the esoteric Jaipur style, would eventually make him a maestro in his time.

More than his formidable learning and virtuosity, Mansur’s greatest contribution to Hindustani music is perhaps the aura of a lost world that he preserved in his singing. Initially trained in the Gwalior gayaki by Nilkanthbua Alurmath, Mansur received extensive taalim from Manji Khan, son of the legendary Alladiya Khan, the brain behind the notoriously intricate Jaipur school. Mansur weaned himself off his juvenilia — the 30-odd records he cut with the Gramophone Company in the 1930s bear testimony to this phase — to emerge as a pioneer of one of the best-preserved vocal traditions in the history of Indian classical music.

The singular charm of Alladiya Khan’s method lay in his sophisticated and uncompromisingly cerebral approach to raga and tala. Emotions were subsumed to the intellect. The aim was to explore the serpentine alleys hidden within each raga, to seek out all permissible paths through a seamless improvisation, as suggested by a magical continuity of phrases, motifs and patterns. Rare or complicated jod ragas are a speciality of Jaipur, as they offer more scope for engaging in such mind games. A superior command over breathing techniques is necessary to bring out the essential features of this style, namely, languorous badhats and prolonged taans in shuddh akar often running across the full metrical cycle of the vilambit teentaal.

Mansur was a faithful follower of his guru; his singing reminded the old and bereft Alladiya Khan of Manji, who died an untimely death. In fact, Mansur had internalized the traits so precisely and with such purity that he often ended up sounding all the same in most of his concerts. Yet, to be able to render a raga with such impeccable grace, orderliness and consistency was no mean achievement, though lay audiences sometimes complained of monotony. (Ulhas Kashalkar, another perfectionist and a kindred soul of Mansur, is often accused of delivering flawless but bland performances.) At the same time, Mansur, with his combination of gusto and gravity, did evolve a signature style, which he inscribed into his most celebrated renditions. His apartness from the other members of his gharana, such as Kesarbai Kerkar or Mogubai Kurdikar, is easily discernible from the distinct ways in which each approached typical Jaipur ragas like Lalita-Gauri, Kukubh Bilawal, Basanti Kedar and Sawani Nat.

There is now a common apathy for anything remotely difficult. Unlike connoisseurs who attended mehfils a century ago, audiences nowadays go to concerts mostly out of a lumpen curiosity to listen to young artists of exalted pedigree rattling off their ancestral rote-learning with aplomb. It would be unfair to undermine their stock athletic skills or their capacity to produce beautiful sounds, but they are seldom able to illustrate the inner richness of the music, as Mansur almost always managed to. Listening to him sing rare treasures like Khat, Bahaduri Todi, Sawani or Yamani Bilawal is as sublime an experience as hearing him delineate familiar ragas like Shree, Nayaki Kanada, Gaud Sarang or Bhairav. Mansur was less concerned with demonstrating his own ingenuity; he wanted his listeners to glimpse the mind at work beyond the voice. For him, making music went beyond technical acrobatics.

Contemporary audiences, attuned to the easy pleasures of singing contests, their tastes honed by a commercially driven ethos, tend to approach classical music in an intellectual vacuum. At music conferences in Calcutta — the self-proclaimed national cultural capital — one hears rousing applause after a feisty saath-sangat or a thunderous tihai, while many a subtle meend or unusual sargam goes unnoticed. The reason behind this decline goes back to what the artists routinely present before their audiences, as also to a serious lack of public discourse on classical music.

It is almost entirely out of form these days for artists to attempt rare or complex ragas at concerts, a practice with which a singer like Mansur earned his name. Most performances begin in the evening. The timing, by default, restricts the choice of ragas, since North Indian ragas follow the diurnal cycle. So artists end up choosing from a handful of ‘popular’ ragas like Yaman, Bihag or Kedar. At best, crowd-pleasing leads to amusing subversions, such as Darbari Kanada at eight in the evening or Marwa at nine. The urban workaday schedule, market forces and sundry practicalities have as good as finished off the Sarangs, Bilawals and Sakhs.

As for serious discussions of classical music, Indian media hardly offer suitable platforms, choosing instead to lavish attention on the artist’s wardrobe, charming looks, idiosyncrasies or exaggerated gifts. Criticism is usually an exercise in cryptic remarks or showing off one’s special knowledge. (Daniel Barenboim, the famous conductor, tellingly described specialization as “knowing more and more about less and less”.) And although there is no dearth of scholarly research on classical music, very few works are pitched at the intelligent lay reader, whose interest in music is more historical than musicological.

Although barely literate, Mansur understood the value of musical contemplation much deeper than seasoned academics. For him, singing was an encounter with memory which involved invoking all that he had absorbed from his guru as well as from his contemporaries. He was an archivist of a precious tradition that few had the gifts to retain. His career unfolded with a certainty of purpose, not just with determined ambitiousness — he was a tireless assimilator and disseminator of history. He was also fortunate to have been born in the cusp of modernity, when changing systems of patronage were pushing court musicians into the concert space and a new intellectual ethos for classical music was being carved out in Maharashtra alongside popular appreciation of natyasangeet or abhang. The towering influence of musicologists like Srikrishna Ratanjankar or Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande coexisted with the sensuous prose of critics like Govindrao Tembe.

We are fortunate that Mansur has left us many recordings, at once learned and full of insight. In his centenary year, as we grapple with a deepening cultural amnesia, we have another reason to be thankful to him — for embodying the fleeting spirit of a forgotten age.