One Song at a time - 54. Hirabai's Hindustani Aarabhi

(Hirabai Barodekar)

"What is the Hindustani equivalent of Carnatic Aarabhi?", asked a friend on twitter. With confidence ignorance instills, "There is no Aarabhi in Hindustani", I replied. Doubts started seeping in after I replied and I started my search and hit this song on youtube. It is Hirabai Barodekar singing what appears to a Marati Natyageet and the title says it is Aarabh.

The song sounds close to Aarabhi. At the same time I also hear a lot of Suddha Saveri in it. So it may not be an exact equivalent to Carnatic Aarabhi. Yet I don't hear it as straigh Durga, which is the Suddha Saveri equivalent. In Carnatic music, Aarabhi, Suddha Saveri, Devagandhari and Saama are close to each other based on the notes they use. I believe Aarabahi and Devagandhari have the same set of notes. They differ in the way the notes are sung. S.Ramanathan, in one lec dem, demonstrates how Aarabi and Sama share the same notes and yet differ in the nyasa swara used. 'Nyasa Swara' is the landing note. I have also heard a lecture demo of K.S.Narayanaswamy on veena, where he takes the same set of 4 notes of Todi and Dhanyasi and differentiates them by the nyasa swara. Infact I have heard many vidwans say that when you start a raga alapana you must differentiate between two ragas by singing the common notes !!! What that means is: If you take Sankarabaranam and Kalyani, they differ only in the madhyamam, (S'baranam being Suddha Ma and Kalyani being PratiMa), you must start your alapana in such a way that you differentiate Sankarabaram and Kalyani without touching the madhyamam. You need to differentiate them using their characteristic gamakas on certain notes or based on the nyasa swara or some other technique. For pure listeners like us, these details don't matter. For the performer, it does matter. Semmangudi says in one documentary, that the performers must analyze such things and discover what gives life to a raga.

Whatever be the raga, Hirabai sings it wonderfully. Hirabai, was the daughter of Abdul Karim Khan, the Kirana Gharana master.  Her voice is so aligned to sruthi and in her singing you can clearly discern what the Kirana gharana masters held in high esteem: melody. And also note the taans. Even the super fast ones are so sharp and precise. Unfortunately this sense of perfection is what was lacking in most of the carnatic concerts I heard during the season, including in the performance of the so called modern masters. Carnatic rasikas have generally been a lenient lot when it comes to voice culture and perfection with respect to voice. Nowadays I think we have become even more lenient in this aspect.

I am happy that I started my New Year's  post with this top quality rendition. Anyone who has details about this particular piece, kindly give details in the comments section.