Pt Ram Narayan who mainstreamed sarangi as solo instrument is no more

Sarangi legend Pt Ram Narayan, 96, passed away, leaving a legacy of musical innovation; he was cremated where his friend Jaidev was laid to rest.

MUMBAI: When nonagenarian sarangi legend Pt Ram Narayan was consigned to the flames on Saturday, his body lay in the same spot where his old friend, AIR colleague and music composer Jaidev, was cremated 37 years ago. Vocalist Chhaya Ganguly pointed this out at the Shivaji Park crematorium, where she was present along with family and friends for the last rites of her guru, who was given a state funeral.

Pt Ram Narayan who mainstreamed sarangi as solo instrument is no more

The maestro, who popularised and made the sarangi internationally well known as a solo instrument, passed away close to midnight on Friday at his Bandra residence. The 96-year-old was surrounded by his family and students in his last moments, among them his daughter Aruna and his grandson Harsh who have gone on to become well-known sarangi exponents in their own right.

An emotional Aruna told this writer how her father held her hand and smiled a while before breathing his last. “I feel blessed to be born to this sage-like legend who was deeply spiritual in his approach to art,” she said, and reminisced how she would watch him play the sarangi from 1954 when she was born. “The strains of the sarangi wafted to my ears long before I even spoke, so the instrument and his music became a part of me,” she said. “Later, as I sat at the tanpura with him to learn singing, I was even more drawn to the sarangi. His eyes lit up when I told him suddenly at 18 that I wanted to play the instrument. He picked out a sarangi for me in Nashik, which was previously owned by a travelling mendicant musician he knew.”

And was it tougher to learn since she began learning quite late? “He didn’t make it formidable and tough,” she said. “Very lovingly he would goad me in the right direction so there was no fear. He let me pick up and pursue it full-time without any pressure ever.”

This gentle approach was characteristic of Pt Ram Narayan’s music too, which he had experimented with and developed on his own, said Harsh Narayan, the maestro’s 39-year-old grandson who trained under him since the age of six. “Whether the meditative and measured alap and jor or the faster gat, he’d become one with the music and encouraged all of us disciples to do so,” he said. Harsh added that he would learn the sarangi while Pt Narayan simultaneously put playback singers Kavita Krishnamurthy, Ranu Mukherjee and Chhaya Ganguly through the paces vocally.

Krishnamurthy began training under Pt Narayan very early on. “I was still singing jingles and covers then. So much of what he has taught me has become part of my core musicality,” she told this writer. Krishnamurthy remembered her experience of singing for the film ‘Tulsidas’, for which Pt RamNarayan composed music. “Unfailingly, I sing his version of Shri Ramachanda kripalu bhaj man,” she said. “When Chhaya alerted me that he was sinking, on October 15 we both went to his home and sought his blessings.”

Dr L Subramaniam, Krishnamurthy’s husband, reminded this writer of what the violinist-conductor Yehudi Menuhin had once said: “The sarangi remains not only the authentic and original Indian bowed instrument but the one which most poignantly in the hands of Ram Narayan revealingly expresses the very soul of Indian feelings and thought. I cannot separate the sarangi from Ram Narayan, so thoroughly fused are they, not only in my memory but in the thought of this sublime dedication of the great musician to an instrument which is no longer archaic because of the matchless way he has made it speak.”

Subramaniam added: “While his contribution to classical music could make for an entire treatise, if you go back to some of the most haunting melodies by Madan Mohan, you will see how his brilliance shone through even in those brief sarangi interludes.”

Ganguly spoke of his devotion to mainstreaming the sarangi. “Though he was sought after by all the top music composers in Bollywood, he stopped working for films and threw himself completely into refining his art till he gave his first solo concert in 1956,” she said. “He went on to perform in every major music festival of India and was the first artiste after sitarist Pt Ravi Shankar to make waves across the US and Europe from 1964 onwards.” She remembers how Pt Narayan had asked her, Krishnamurthy and Suresh Wadkar to sing for a Janmashtami special on ‘Aarohi’, a Doordarshan music show. “When we sang those songs, we didn’t realise he was making note of our strengths,” she said.

Vasanthi Shrikhande, his disciple for over two decades, encapsulated his life with: “There will never be another sarangi artist like him.” Dr L Subramaniam echoed her sentiments, saying: “This is a void the music world can never fill.”