Brothers in music

It was wonderful to listen to the Gundecha Brothers, Umakant, Ramakant and Akhilesh, on Worldspace this afternoon. To some, dhrupad may be an acquired taste, if at all, but I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. The vocalists Umakant and Ramakant are brothers in case you didn't know and a third brother Akhilesh accompanies them on the pakhawaj.

It was a sleepy afternoon and the exquisite music by the brothers had a meditative, deeply peace-inducing quality to it. I was trying to read a Tamil novel with a view to evaluating it for translation purposes (I work for a publishing firm bringing Indian writing in Indian languages to the world via English). Soon, it was a losing battle, and I closed the book--and my eyes--to drink in the profound beauty of the music.

I remember the first time I heard of the brothers. My wife Gowri had accompanied M S Subbulakshmi to Bhopal where she received the Kalidas Samman awarded by the Madhya Pradesh government. The young siblings sang the prayer song or gave a short recital, I don't remember which, and Gowri gave me rave notices about their voice and vidwat.

My first experience of their concert music was when I heard them at the Krishna Gana Sabha at T'Nagar a couple of years later. It had exuberant, vibrant vocalisation all the way. The sruti suddham gave it a quality of majesty. Gowri was away and I did not walk up to the young trio and introduce myself.

I met them before long. They came to Madras for a live morning concert at All India Radio and I drove them around in my battered 1964 Fiat. They were simple townsmen quite in awe of the big city. Their joy knew no bounds when, after the concert, Gowri and I took them to meet M S Subbulakshmi. There they prostrated before MS and Sadasivam seeking their blesings.

By the time the Gundecha Brothers came to Madras again and called us, they had become internationally known. This time they sang for an hour at MS's residence before a small, invited audience. Surprisingly, their voices were unduly subdued and I wondered if their music was suffering some kind of decline. (Little did I know then that that was their way of showing their respect for a great senior musician!) The social interaction, however, was spontaneous and warm, and the brothers stole everyone's heart with their humility and pleasant manners.

The Gundecha Brothers became more frequent visitors to Chennai, mostly thanks to their close association with Chandralekha, the late dancer. I heard them in concert a few more times, only to realise that their music, far from declining, was in glorious bloom, attaining greater and greater heights with the passing years.

And, while international celebrityhood has given them a robust confidence in their art, they remain simple and unspoilt as before, for all that they are the torchbearers of a great tradition of music.