Rare Indian Recordings From 1900s Made Available by British Library
The British Library has made available
over 1500 rare Indian recordings dating from 1900 – 1940 on its website.
Now, we can listen to the first recordings
made by artists like Abdul Karim Khan, Bai Sundarabai, and Omkarnath Thakur.
“Khan Saheb” of the Kirana gharana trained singers who went on to become
legendary in their own right, like Sawai Gandharva and Roshanara Begum.
In this recording,
he sings the thumri still famous today, “jamuna
ke teer.” His student, Roshanara Begum, sings the hori
“khelut
nandkumar.”
In a particularly evocative rendition, Bai
Sunderabai (1885 – 1955) sculpts the
words of a thumri – “Akeli
mat jaiyyo, Radha, Jamuna ke tir…” Despite the heavy crackle
overlaying it, her voice rings out with power and delicacy, as though
Sunderabai is still alive, and performing before you, at a mehfil where you are in
the audience.
The recordings are a part of the Odeon
Collection, a series that has been digitised by Mumbai record collector Suresh
Chandvankar with funding from the British Library. They are also
available at other institutions including the Sangeet Natak Akademy, the
National Film Archive and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
In 1901, the Gramophone Company set up its
first branch outside the UK, in Calcutta. Sunderabai and the others mentioned
above were among those artists who responded enthusiastically to the
opportunity to have their music reach hundreds of ordinary listeners. Much
later, HMV awarded Sunderabai for having the highest number of 78 rpm record sales
in her time.
Odeon label shellac discs were issued in
India in two phases: 1912 – 1916, 1932 – 1938. In the first phase, engineers
traveled from Calcutta to Benaras, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore,
Bombay and back to Calcutta, recording a total of 700 titles. These were
shipped to Berlin for processing and manufacture and then shipped back to
India. In the second phase, Odeon produced over 2000 titles. With the outbreak
of World War II and the imposition of the embargo on German goods, however, it
had to stop production and shut down its business in India. It left behind
hundreds of titles, of which about 600 are estimated to survive in private
hands – “endangered” and in urgent need of preservation.
Apart from the most popular recording artists
of the time, the collection also features speeches, folk songs and skits by
less well-known artists and amateurs. It is an invaluable resource for students
and scholars of music, musical culture and history. It comprises what music
collectors would call “ephemera,” or media not intended to last,
offering snatches of everyday life and the popular musical culture of that past
time.
Much of what has been captured is not in
performance today. But what is also remarkable is how many elements of style
and genre – such as found in Sundarabai’s thumri – and how many songs survive
and linger, in unexpected places, carried on un-self-consciously by “small”
practitioners, unsupported by official systems and largely unrecognised.
Source | http://thewire.in
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
Best
Paper Award | Received the Best
Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on Future Librarianship:
Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23, 2016. The title of the
paper is “Removing
Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”
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