How Purab Ang Gayaki Utsav keeps alive the thumri tradition in Bengal through a concert series

Reviving thumri through Purab Anga Gayaki Utsav

At a time when Bengal is screaming ‘We Want Justice’ against the atrocities meted out to women , one could not help but think about the professional women singers, who were stigmatised for centuries as tawaif or baiji till the early 1950s. These real custodians of Hindustani music including the classical dhrupad dhamar, khayal etc, were popularly associated with thumri even after Independence. The decline of thumri was accompanied by the marginalisation of its accomplished practitioners, till the Indian government’s policies remained shackled by the double standards of the Victorian value framework.

The recent ‘Barkha Bahaar’ session, featuring thumri, kajri, jhula and tappa styles , saw many young vocalists turn up as keen participants and audience, as if to avenge the pain and frustration of those Nayikas. Held for two days at the upscale Chowdhury House, it was presented by Aniruddha Chowdhury’s organization, Calcutta Performing Arts Foundation, and assisted by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

In general, thanks to the efforts of legendary musicians such as Girija Shankar Chakraborty, Prasun and Meera Banerjee, Girija Devi, Sipra Bose, and Purnima Chaudhuri, thumri and its allied forms are still practised in Bengal. Nevertheless, many of these forms, with all the riches of the indigenous charm of folk music of Ganga-Yamuna region, are either getting distorted or diluted now.

In 2011, two years before Purnima Chaudhuri’s untimely demise, a series of Purab Anga Gayaki Utsav was held in different Indian cities. It was organised by Vinod Kapur, a music-loving businessman from Grurugram. “VSK Baithak took the initiative to rescue this Gayaki from the dark corner, and bring it back to centre stage by giving this heritage a new name ‘Purab Anga Gayaki’ (PAG); and celebrate it through a series of Baithaks held in Delhi, Varanasi and Kolkata,” says Vinod Kapur, the person behind PAG’s revival. And ‘Barkha Bahar’, a festival to celebrate monsoon, has been taking place in Kolkata, as part of the PAG utsav.

These quarterly Utsavs were organised to assess the selected artistes from all over India and encourage the participants by honouring the top three with ‘Girija Devi Puraskar’. According to Vinod Kapur, he discovered ‘the vocalists of Bengal who have the most appropriate attributes – the sensitivity, quality of voices and femininity to effectively express the nuanced emotion of this Gayaki.’

Interestingly, till 2018 all the awards were won by Bengalis. By then Appaji had left for her heavenly abode. Vinod Kapur was distressed to see that the goldmine of PAG is deprived of gurus who could familiarise the learners with the dialects, literature, lifestyle and culture of Hindi heartland. He, therefore, started the Purab Anga Gayaki Project and entrusted the noble work of disseminating the vidya to several erudite gurus across the country. But, later narrowed it down to Vidushi Manju Sundaram of Benaras and Vidushi Dalia Rahut of Kolkata. They are nurturing the khayal and thumri artistes of different calibre, enabling them to grasp the meaning of a word that carries layers of unexpressed emotions, that bring us closer to our roots, which serves as the lifeline of this rustic yet complex gayaki.

From these angles, the rustic beauty of Abanti Bhattacharjee’s alluring ‘Piya to maanat nahi’ (Kafi) and the desolate ‘Tarape bin baalam’; and vocalist-sitarist duo Debapriya-Samanwaya’s complex and rare tappa in raag Purvi followed by a lilting jhoola set to Megh, stood out. So was the effortless free flow of Jhumpa Sarkar’s Pilu thumri ‘Saiyan nahi aaye’, followed by a swinging jhoola.