{"id":840,"date":"2011-12-05T17:55:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T01:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/?page_id=840"},"modified":"2020-08-16T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T15:23:08","slug":"c-r-vyas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/?page_id=840","title":{"rendered":"C.R. Vyas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"C.R.

Chintaman Raghunath Vyas
(1924-2002)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u266b Raga Ambika Sarang<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

About C.R. Vyas<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

C R VYAS<\/strong>
\nReluctant Master<\/p>\n

By S Kalidas<\/p>\n

He never sought it but recognition came to this vocalist in
\nthe evening of his life.<\/p>\n

The occasion is not without its nuances of anachronism
\nand irony. In the otherwise dog-eat-dog world of classical
\nmusic, this week Mumbai’s Nehru Centre is the venue for a
\nrare gathering of musicians of all hues, persuasions and
\ngenerations. Stars and stalwarts including Kishan Maharaj,
\nHariprasad Chaurasia, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Gangubai
\nHangal, Allah Rakha Khan, Amjad Ali Khan, Jasraj and film
\nmusic director Naushad Ali are going to publicly felicitate
\nPandit Chintaman Raghunath Vyas on his 75th birthday.
\nThey honour on that day not only the simple man and his
\nmany fine qualities as a vocalist and composer but, in the
\nprocess, also some six decades of single-minded devotion
\nto all that is authentically traditional in the field of
\nHindustani classical music.<\/p>\n

“In our time we did not think of earning either fame or money
\nthrough music,” says the ageing yet ebullient and sprightly
\nVyas, who held a white collar job in ITC for 34
\nyears. “Our aim was primarily to learn and master as much
\nas we could. Earning a livelihood through music was too
\nrisky.” Indeed, although musicians of Maharashtra
\nhad always known of Vyas, national recognition came only
\nafter he was 63 and that too when star instrumentalists
\nlike Shiv Kumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain projected
\nhim on the concert circuit. Even earlier, a host of younger
\nvocalists led by Jitendra Abhisheki had been learning from
\nVyas and singing his compositions in concerts for a long
\ntime. But popular success had eluded this modest and
\nsincere pupil of the khayal whose quest for traditional
\ncompositions and gayaki (singing style) spanned three major
\ngharanas or schools of khayal singing.<\/p>\n

Despite being firmly placed in the top league with all the
\nawards, recordings and concert engagements, Vyas remains
\nessentially a musician’s musician. His voice is not “sweet”
\nin the generally accepted sense of the word nor is his vocalism
\nalluring in keeping with the current trends. So what makes Vyas
\nworthy of such celebration? “A combination of guilt on the
\npart of reigning celebrities for having devalued classicism
\nand the renewed value that some of us younger musicians are
\nplacing on re-learning tradition,” says sarod player Biswajit
\nRoy Chowdhury who after mastering the sarod, sought out older
\nvocalists like Mallikarjun Mansur and Balasaheb Poonchhvale to
\nlearn traditional bandishes (compositions). No wonder
\nVyas’ faithful fans are musicians of this generation like Lalit
\nRao, Shubha Mudgal and his own sons, santoor player Satish and
\nvocalist Suhas. For Vyas today is undoubtedly one of a fast
\nvanishing band of old masters who are repositories of the
\nold khayal tradition.<\/p>\n

However, Vyas neither comes from any old gharana (traditional
\nlineage of khayal singers) nor limits himself to narrowly
\nfollowing any one particular gayaki. “I wanted to learn music
\nnot gharanebazi (gharana politics),” he asserts. Born in a
\nfamily of Sanskrit pandits and keertan (devotional music)
\nsingers in 1923 at Osmanabad in Maharashtra, Vyas plumbed
\nthe depths of three gharanas to arrive at his charmingly
\neclectic yet traditionally authentic style. His first teacher
\nwas Govindrao Bhatambrekar of the Kirana school. Vyas learnt
\nfrom Bhatambrekar for nearly a decade and was already singing
\nin concerts by the time he arrived in Mumbai as a young man
\nof 21. “But I was not satisfied with my music and wanted to
\nlearn more when a well-wisher advised me to learn under
\nthe Gwalior teacher Rajarambua Paradkar,” recalls Vyas.
\nFor the next 20 years Vyas led the life of an urban yogi.
\nLiving in a 270 sq ft accommodation in a Matunga chawl,
\nthe day began before dawn with riyaz (practice), then came
\nthe job at ITC, then straight from work to his guru’s house
\nfor tuition which often lasted through the night. Life was
\nnot easy but Vyas was oblivious of worldly comforts. His
\nthree sons and a nephew were brought up by his silently
\nsupportive wife, Indira, who never once complained about
\nhis complete absorption in music. Even today, as you sip
\ntea in his small but comfortable Chembur flat, Vyas is
\nall music. You can’t talk of his lifestyle, clothes, cars
\nor house or family. You have to talk about music and the
\nmusical values he so assiduously cultivated through his
\nlong and difficult life. When you try and gather trivial
\ndetails about his life and times, he bursts into song.
\n“Kaahe ho…” he sings, an 18th century composition in
\nraga Gaur Mallar, “This is the Gwalior style that I
\nlearnt from Rajarambua,” he says.<\/p>\n

Just when he had mastered the Gwalior idiom, Vyas stumbled
\nupon yet another muse. One day he heard another eclectic
\nmaster by the name of Jagannathbua Purohit and was so smitten
\nby him that he resolved to become his disciple. Purohit
\nbelonged nominally to the Agra gharana. Traditional repertoire
\naside, he was a major composer and it is to him that music
\nowes a modern masterpiece like the raga Jogkauns. Of all his
\ngurus it was with Purohit that Vyas had the most special
\nrelationship. And it is well known that after Purohit, if
\nthere is any one with a flair for composition in that mould
\nit is Vyas. Even his guru was so impressed by Vyas’
\ntalent for composition that their whole relationship was
\nbased on a musical exchange of bandishes. Purohit composed,
\nVyas sang. Vyas composed, his guru answered through another
\ncomposition. When they were apart they exchanged their
\nthoughts through letters written in musical notation. Over
\nthe decades, Vyas has composed scores of bandishes in old
\nragas and new ones which have been sung by his many disciples
\nand published in book form too.<\/p>\n

At the dusk of his musical journey, Vyas’ only fear is that
\nthe raga which has been the mainstay of Indian music for a
\ngood 2,000 years may not survive the turn of the century.
\n“The way things are going raga sangeet as we learnt it may
\nnot see the next millennium,” he laments. The real tribute
\nto Vyas will be for musicians to espouse and emulate his
\nlove and respect for tradition, if not for his simple and
\nuncomplicated lifestyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u266b Raga Ambika Sarang   About C.R. Vyas C R VYAS Reluctant Master By S Kalidas He never sought it but recognition came to this vocalist in the evening of his life. The occasion is not without its nuances of anachronism and irony. In the otherwise dog-eat-dog world of classical music, this week Mumbai’s Nehru...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6,"menu_order":1230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"pp_embeds":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2193,"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/840\/revisions\/2193"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.parrikar.org\/vpl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}