Z.M. Dagar was the slowest moving individual I've ever met. He was never interested in playing very fast music, and his mind and body seemed to be set at alap speed. He gave the impression of being continuously half asleep, but everyone who got to know him soon realized that Dagarsahib was alive and alert to subtle realities that most people never even notice. He was a keen observer of people and events, a sort of amateur psychologist, and he could speak to the innermost part of a person when he wished to - with his music of course, but also with words. English was his fourth language I think, but he got his point across splendidly.
Dagarsahib had very strong hands and fingers. I watched him make sitar mizrabs from heavy wire without any tools and of course he pulled heavy vina strings with phenomenal accuracy. Anyone who has tried to replicate Ustad's meend and sruti will know it takes not only a lot of patience and skill but steady endurance as well.
He was a splendid cook. He used black pepper as much as chilies and was fond of chicken. He made the best blackeye peas (loobia) and the best cauliflower I've ever eaten.
He felt that North Indian classical music, and Dhrupad alap especially, was a Universal Science of music and sound, of which India was the custodian. It could be learned, performed and deeply felt by non-Indians. He rejected the notions of "Hindu music," "Muslim music," "Black music" etcetera and I think he enjoyed gently annoying ethnomusicologists by his emphatic dismissal of their terminology and concepts. Of course he recognized different musical styles in different cultures and communities but he knew from experience how pure music could transcend rather than define the differences between people. He also knew that sound is vibrating air and that vibrating air in itself has no religious beliefs or cultural identity.
Dagarsahib was proud of his family and its musical traditions. He spoke to me often of his ancestors and their accomplishments and musical characteristics. It seemed to me that he had the highest respect for two in particular, his father Ziauddin Khan, and Behram Khan. He played Darbari Kannara rarely and Shri Rag virtually never, because these were, as I understand it, specialties of his father. Ziauddin died when Z. Mohiuddin was a teenager, and these rags apparently reminded him of this loss. His great great great uncle, Behram Khan, was Dagarsahib's model of the perfect musician.
I had the good fortune to be present when Ustad was teaching various students. I don't know how many dozens of lessons I witnessed. He related to each student differently but I can make some safe generalizations about his teaching methods. First of all he found a way for each student to relax and feel safe with nothing to defend or to prove. This was a prerequisite condition to both being able to learn and to achieve the fixed unwavering mind that is essential to this kind of music. Next, and equally important he would find the student's strength and affirm it. If a student was doing anything right, anything at all, he or she would hear about it from Dagarsahib, both directly and indirectly. He would usually discourage students from criticizing their own music, saying, with the greatest kindness imaginable, that if anything in the student's music needed criticism or improvement, he, the teacher, would be sure to mention it at the appropriate time. Which he did.
He would teach a student relatively few rags, but at great length and in great detail, as opposed to many rags quickly and superficially. The student eventually developed the skill and confidence to perceive the details of any rag one might hear, and to learn it without direct instruction. This of course took time and effort.
He always taught by singing, whether he was teaching vocal or instrumental music. The core of a typical lesson consisted of Dagarsahib singing a phrase and the student repeating the phrase. If the phrase was correctly sung or played, the student would be instructed to repeat it several more times. If not, Dagarsahib would sing it again and perhaps use sargam or demonstrate on the student's instrument. After the phrase was correctly repeated a number of times, Ustad sang a new phrase which was similarly repeated. Then the student would sing or play both phrases in sequence. In this way, over days, weeks, or months, 20, 30, 40 or more minutes of music would be memorized. This much was true of all of his students' lessons. But there were differences. One person would be asked to memorize something exactly. Another would be encouraged to expand or vary a phrase; or the same student would be asked to do any of the above on different occasions.
In my own case, I learned, through my mistakes, to intuit viable alternatives. When I would play something that was slightly different from what Ustad sang (although I had intended to render it perfectly) he would let me know if it was something he might have sung. In this way I learned the parameters of a rag. Over time I learned to make 'mistakes' that were coherent musical statements in the Dagar tradition. When starting a new rag he always made sure I could repeat the asthai exactly as he sang it. When we reached jor, sometimes he'd have me memorize phrases and sometimes he'd have me improvise for 10 or 15 minutes. He would nod approvingly, utter an occasional vahvah and would stop me only if I went out of tune or out of rag and I didn't realize it. I was always aware that he was always aware of what I was aware of.
My first year of study with Dagarsahib was entirely on sarod, which I had been playing for about five years. Soon after, I began to learn and concentrate on the sursringar, which has a beautiful voice for alap, akin to the vina. I also learned vocal music from Ustad for about a year. Just as he treated every student according to their 'nature' as he would put it, my lessons on each instrument had somewhat different qualities, reflecting the nature of the instrument and its effect on me. My sursringar lessons were serious and exacting, the music slow and profound. On sarod he would have me play very fast three octave tans that I wouldn't have dared to try on my own for fear of ruining the music. He would say: "You are always showing me what you can do. Show me what you can't do so I can help you." This was so disarming that I found as I would attempt 'impossible' tans that I actually could play them after all. During another sarod lesson he had me switch 'on command' between Bhairavi and Bilaskhani Todi, until I could produce, to some extent, the microtonal differences at will. In my vocal lessons he stressed an open unconstricted sound and instructed me to arise at 5AM each morning and sing SA and PA alternately on the vowel 'aa.' When I first received my sursringar (this was his personal instrument which he brought to me in California from Chembur and sold to me at cost) he gave me only sarod lessons and told me to "play whatever you feel" on the sursringar each night for a half hour or so just before going to sleep. After five or six days we began lessons on the sursringar.
Z.M. Dagar was a famous binkar and teacher, but he was also a wonderful singer. He didn't have a loud voice or (so he said) a lot of vocal stamina, but he had a mastery of nuance, sruti, and phrasing that I have never heard equaled. Listening to him sing was not unlike listening to him play. As for his playing, he put in a lot of detail, a lot of meend, more microtones then most other musicians, and he maximized the vina's ability to sustain long tones. His music was slow, majestic, and deeply spiritual.
I heard him play about sixty rags, but he had favorites that he played regularly. His concept of certain rags (Multani, Malkosh, Mian Malhar, and Todi, all come to mind immediately) was similar to that of other Dagar family members. Other rags like Abhogi, Chandrakosh, Bhairavi and Yaman, he played with facets and details never heard elsewhere. His Behag was exquisitely delicate, his Marwa hypnotic, and I am at a loss for words to describe his Bhimpalasi - it was beyond compare. His versions of Desi and Jaijaiwanti also had fascinating beautiful special features that no other contemporary North Indian musicians displayed in their renditions, but curiously he never seemed to play these two rags in public, only for friends and select rasikas, and then only for a minute or two.
He was rightly known as an alap specialist and gave a relatively short portion of public recital time to playing with pakhawaj. Yet he had an unusually firm grasp of time and tal. This was particularly evident when he was giving vocal lessons. He would sing dhrupad and dhammar in an apparently nonchalant manner and suddenly without warning land forcefully on sam. He would lead the listener away from counting beats or any kind of metered perception and then when one least expected it: BAM!, as if to say: "I was never lost..." It was like a giant whale moving gracefully on the surface of a calm sea suddenly diving with a great splash and flourish.
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Who I'd like to meet: Master of the Rudra Vina
USTAD ZIA MOHIUDDIN DAGAR (1929-1990) was the world's most renowned exponent of India's ancient rudra vina, the instrumental ancestor of the sitar. He was also one of the few masters of dhrupad, the slow, austere, meditative traditional music still performed as it was centuries ago by Dagar's forefathers in the Mughal courts. But Dagar was no mere historical curiosity. He had several promising students in India, and in the United States, where he performed and taught regularly since his American debut in 1968. Dagar was affiliated with the American Society for Eastern Arts in Berkeley, California, and he also taught for many years at the University of Washington, in Seattle.
A staunch traditionalist, Z. M. Dagar represented the nineteenth generation of an illustrious family whose musical traditions date as far back as the thirteenth century. Yet Dagar did break with tradition when he became the first in his family of classical vocalists to publicly perform on the vina.
"All dhrupad singers were vina players," Dagar explained, "because vina was very important for dhrupad. Sometimes a singer would play the vina to check the shrutis (microtones, of which there are 22 in the Indian octave), and by listening to them on the vina, he would learn. But the singers never performed on vina outside the home."
Dhrupad means "fixed poetry," and in fact refers to a style of classical Indian vocal music. Though it is commonly held that dhrupad was originated in the fifteenth century by Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior, in north-central India, it is more probable that the raja merely revived and encouraged a musical form evolved from prabandha, a far more ancient type of classical song composition. Because of their sacred temple origins, dhrupad songs were religious or philosophical. They were majestic paeans to gods and goddesses, performed with great reverence. Gradually the object of these grand hymns shifted from divinities to nature, and to the kings and emperors who protected and patronized the musicians.
A dhrupad text, which avoids ornamentation and demands clear, firm intonation, consists of only four lines, and with these any raga or other composition can be rendered in its purest form. Each line, which forms the basis of a musical segment, has a name and an order of its own, and in Indian terms, "the musical idea stretches its wings in the asthayi (first section), soars up in the antara (second section), goes in the sanchari (third section), and finally, with a broad sweep of notes in the abhog (fourth section), furls its wings."
It was during the reign of Akbar the Great (1542-1605) that dhrupad reached a high-water mark, and four banis - methods of improvisation or presentation - became apparent in the songs. These were the gaudahara bani, the naohara bani, the khandara bani, and the dagora bani. The last of the four literally has been synonymous with the Dagar family tradition to the present day.
Z. M. Dagar was born on March 14, 1929, in the town of Udaipur, within India's state of Rajasthan. He began his training early under the tutelage of his father, Ustad Ziauddin Khan Dagar, court musician for the Maharaja of Udaipur. "Actually I was five years old when I started singing," recalled Dagar, "and I practiced exercises until I was seven or eight, when my father started me on compositions and ragas - but no theory, because I was very small. At that time I was also given a small vina to play, but it was hard for me; so my father said, 'Start with sitar.' A couple of years later I switched to vina."
The order of strings on the vina, from bass to treble, is the reverse of that on the sitar. But the change did not seem to hinder Dagar's transition from one to the other. "It all depends on practice," Dagar insisted. "Though the vina is really strung opposite, I never felt any difficulty, because vina is a family tradition. My father was a very great singer, but in the daytime he played vina. I always watched him; I liked the instrument. My mind was all the time vina, vina, vina, vina, vina! He cautioned me, 'You want to learn, but don't play vina outside the home!'"
The young Dagar was inspired by the playing of such greats as Dabir Khan and Sadaq Ali Khan, as well as by that of certain sadhus - holy renunciates who played only according to their deep devotional moods. Finally, Dagar became so intent on devoting himself solely to vina as a means of expression that his father consented to a public recital. Z. M.'s performance career began at age 16 at the court of Udaipur, like so many of his family before him. "Practice and keep your tradition," the maharaja told him.
Dagar remembered that he was only 11 when he first began thinking seriously about improving the structure of the vina, but his father did not encourage experimentation. "So many times I changed the peacock sound chamber and decorations," Dagar said, "but my father would say, 'Wait, wait! Don't!"' In 1948, two years after his father died, Dagar resigned from the Udaipur court and began a lengthy period of research, experimentation, and practice. He traveled to Jaipur, to Calcutta, and finally, in 1951, to Bombay - where he lived for the rest of his life.
As a result of his investigations into improving the vina's sound, he decided to totally redesign his instrument. For hundreds of years, vinas had been constructed the same way: A light, hollow length of bamboo served as the neck, with nonmovable wooden frets secured to it by hard wax, and two dried gourds (tumbas) served as sound chambers. In 1959, Dagar commissioned the shop of Calcutta luthier Kanai Lal to construct a strikingly different prototype. One year later Lal's younger brother, Nitai-babu, proudly unveiled the finished product. The neck of Dagar's new vina was a hollow tube of seasoned teak, with a large, intricately carved peacock sound chamber at one end and a dragon's head at the other. The lotus-bud-design tuning pegs and the floral decorations that covered the gourds were also fashioned from teak. To further enhance the deeper sound quality he had sought, Dagar had Lal substitute two giant tumbas, specially grown in central India, for the standard-size gourds.
Dagar also began using heavier-gauge strings, and he added another chikari, an auxiliary rhythm string, to the traditional pair. He further ordered that the metal-topped wooden frets be lengthened from 2-1/4" to 3-1/2", giving him greater freedom to bend his notes. "This was good for pulling," he explained. "With the longer frets, I could pull five notes on my first (kharaj or bass) string, whereas before I could pull only half a note!"
Another innovation was in the method of fastening the frets to the neck. "Originally," Dagar explained, "the frets were fixed in place with wax, which was a lot of trouble. If the weather was very hot, the wax would melt. If the weather was very dry or cold, the wax became tight and cracked. So I liked the idea of fixing the frets as sitar frets are fastened - with thread, and movable along the neck." Though 24 frets gave Dagar all the notes, including sharps and flats, necessary for Indian classical music, the movable frets allowed the minute tuning adjustments needed for various ragas, as well as allowing compensation for seasonal or climatic changes.
In playing his new vina, Dagar dispensed with mizrabs, the wire plectrums traditionally used for vina and sitar. He found that striking the strings alternately with the nails of his right-hand first and second fingers, while occasionally striking the rhythm strings with the slightly elongated nail of his pinky, produced a "better, mellow sound."
Finally, he even altered the established north-Indian manner of holding the vina. Traditional practice had vina players resting the instrument's upper gourd over the left shoulder; instead he nestled the large gourd upon his left knee, in the way of south-Indian vina players.
Finding travel difficult with such a large, delicate instrument, Dagar kept one vina in the United States and two in India. "I'm still researching for a better sound," he reported, "and I've ordered two more vinas from Kanai Lal, so every year I go to India, spend a month at my home in Bombay, then go to Calcutta to check everything. Now each vina takes a couple of years to make."
Despite all his technical innovations, Dagar insisted that his music remained unchanged. "Many people ask why I don't play faster - though I know how to play fast, also," he said. "My father told me, 'Please keep the tradition. Your style should be slow, not fast.' Some gharanas [traditional stylistic disciplines] play with a lot of mizrab, a lot of ornaments and improvisations; each is different. But I never change my style."
Dagar's playing has been described as being "both sensual and profoundly spiritual at the same time." Capturing the subtle, unique character of each raga often depends on accentuating the sharp, flat, or very flat qualities of certain notes; and it was the perfect rendering of these subtleties that became a Dagar trademark. In a deliberate and unhurried fashion, he unfolded and revealed each note of the alap movement, the slow, serene solo exposition of a raga - hypnotically, hauntingly coaxing and stretching the most delicately shaded nuances, the notes between the notes, from the thick bronze strings. Dagar's stylistic emphasis clearly was on the alap, his vina's voice supported only by the drone of a tanpura, a plucked open-string instrument used to constantly sound the tonic and dominant notes of the scale as a guiding background for the soloist. In recitals outside India, Dagar often performed only with tanpura accompaniment, though he enjoyed the addition of a pakhawaj - a large, sonorous, double-headed wooden drum - when available, to round out a performance by bringing it to a stately conclusion.
Dagar's theoretical knowledge, much of which was handed down to him by his family, was voluminous; yet he seemed to prefer limiting his concert repertoire to a few favorite ragas. These are profound, sober, mysterious pieces, tinged with pathos, longing, and majesty, and he explored them anew at each recital. To maintain the intimate quality of his music, Dagar tended to avoid large halls or outdoor performances. He said that "a small hall, a good amplifier, sensitive microphones, and a good audience" were the elements most conducive to enjoying his transcendental Indian chamber music.
Today both the rudra vina and the dhrupad style are rare in India. Times have changed, and audiences have been won over by the faster, more exuberant improvisational khyal techniques of the sarod and the sitar. "Twenty years ago there were a lot of vina players," lamented Dagar, "and now only a couple are left in India. Dhrupad is very, very difficult. It requires much practice, patience, and a lot of time before a teacher will allow a student to perform. Khyal is a little easier than dhrupad; but I like the sound of vina. It makes me relax!"-Adapted from article in Frets Magazine, May 1981
Respected & Beloved Dagar ji, Hello/Namaskar, Thank you so much for your add me in your friends list in myspace. With best wishes ,and much regards.Happy to see your info. keep in touch. This is funny to say here in myspace that friend to you,but trully speaking you are my Guru, i remember well you was visiting my pune's home meny times,when my father was alive.you gave me a lot of Love,just like your own son.i cannot forget that beautiful days. may be this profile is running by Dagar's family memeber's or students,because today Dagarji is passed away long time.
mush respect,& much regards & Love to this profile runner. Pt Hindraj Divekar.
Home: Pt Hindraj Divekar. 82,Budhwar peth, Ramsukh Tulsi build, 3rd Floor,Flat no 301-302. Ganapati chowk, Tulsibag Ganapati, Pune 411002.M.S.India. www.hindrajdivekar.org for audio and video recording. Rudra Veena Khayal style & Dhrupad style & Sitar Sadhak of Pune India. Tel:+91-20-24458026. M: +91-0-9371556801. M:+91-0-9923551095. Email: info@hindrajdivekar.org hindraj_divekar@hotmail.com hindraj.divekar@gmail.com pthindraj_rveena@yahoo.com
Thanks for add, here I leave you a video of my new project "Manglis Compas Machine", fusion of flamenco with Indian roots, jazz and blues, I hope your opinion, and give yourself greetings Spain
Hi, Thanks for the add. So much respect. My best wishes of love, peace, wisdom and prosperity for you and yours and I hope you make me a 'space visit' soon.
Thanks a lot for the add, i'm honoured ! RESPECT for the whole Dagar Family.
Welcome in the living light of The Guru of all poets, Kalidasa, the one who was even closer to kali than Murali to Lord Krishna. My name is Eknath, i'm a french writer, i have created the present profile in honour to the great poet that is quite unknown in Europe, except by the erudites. But i also have my own page (Eknath, in Kalidasa top friend).
Still be inspired by the Pranava sound and inspire us with divine music,
