Filming a lost instrument to life

Documentary film maker Subha Das Mullick at the musical instrument dealers Braganza & Co in Kolkata

Meet Subha Das Mullick. She is a low-profile documentary filmmaker whose recent interests lie in rediscovering the history and ethnography of forgotten musical instruments that were once very much in demand among the elite of Kolkata. She is a name and face — with a crop of thick, wavy, white hair, familiar among documentary filmmakers, media and communication students across Kolkata.

A media teacher, she has made over 50 documentary films on a variety of subjects, most of which have been aired on national television. She has also been a professor at iLEAD. Her latest documentary, City Symphonies, is about the Harpsichord, a reed musical instrument that looks like a double-decker piano but is lost to time, and its impact on Indian musical traditions. 

Responding to what triggered the film on the Harpsichord, she says: “In my earlier film Calcutta Sonata I fleetingly mentioned Hindustani Airs — a genre of music born in (then) Calcutta in the late eighteenth century. I was fascinated by how sahibs gave their own interpretation to our music and created something might be ‘fusion music’ in today’s terms. To delve deeper into the subject, I started doing more research and came across articles by Katherine Schofield Butler, a scholar of oriental music at King’s College, London. Renditions of Hindustani Airs on the harpsichord by Jane Chapman are also there on the internet. I was intrigued by the proactive role played by women in giving birth to this genre of music. Since Hindustani Airs were written primarily for the harpsichord, this instrument has become the central ‘character’ in the film.”

In the late eighteenth century, Calcutta witnessed an efflorescence of musical experimentations. In the White town, memsahebs took keen interest in the music they heard at the nautch parties and transcribed the songs in western staff notation. They played these ghazals and tuppahs on their harpsichords. The new music acquired a new name – Hindustani Air. In the black town, Nidhu Babu composed tuppahs in Bengali and the kobis locked themselves in battles of musical wit. Keertans and Shyama Sangeet drifted from the temples and rent the evening air. There was music for every ear, every soul. Musicians and music scholars in Kolkata and London bring alive the lost era with soulful renditions and scholarly comments.

Explaining what inspired the intriguing title of the film – City of Symphonies which links music to the city of Kolkata, Subha says, “Since my film is named City of Symphonies, I thought that these genres of Bengali music should be a part of the film. Hence, I have included a Keertan, a Shyama Sangeet and a Nidhu Babur Tuppah in the film. Personally, I find the lineage of Tuppah very interesting. That is why I have used the Tuppah as the transition device for coming to the Bengali part of the film.”   

The film reveals layer-by-layer, not only the history and mechanics of this lost musical instrument but in so doing, explores unknown areas of Bengali schools of music which are slowly fading away from public knowledge and performance space. We are introduced to many experts  and scholars from schools of Western music in UK. Among them is Dr Katherine Butler Schofield, Senior Lecturer in South Asian Music and History at Department of Music, King’s College London, Jane Chapman, who has collaborated with ground-breaking composers, artists and dancers working with musicians from the worlds of Indian music, jazz, and the avant-garde. Jane is Professor of Harpsichord at the Royal College of Music.

According to Subha, “Katherine and Jane were very sporting. Jane and Katherine emerge as modern-day memsahibs giving their own interpretation of classical and semi-classical Indian music. The scene in which Katherine is writing down the thumri sung by Shatabdi Roy in western staff notation, had to be pulled off with a lot of planning. I had sent the audio recording of the thumri to Katherine. She played it on her laptop and wrote down the staff notation. In the film, this scene has matched very well with the scene of Shatabdi singing the thumri in the courtyard of a heritage mansion at Muktaram babu Street.”

Subha adds: Jane’s renditions of the Hindustani Airs on the harpsichord have given a new dimension to the film. For the Indian audience, these numbers offer a rare opportunity to enjoy the harpsichord. 

The visuals recreating the period in Kolkata within Bengal are beautiful as vibrant reconstruction of a period in Bengal’s musical history. Warren Hastings was instrumental in publishing the music book The Oriental Miscellany compiled by William Hamilton Bird. Though this book was published in Calcutta, not a single copy of the book is now found in this city – not in Asiatic Society, not in the National Library or the Victoria Memorial. 

Says Subha: “I was intrigued not only by the vanishing of this book, but also that this book does not have the notations of the songs that were popular in the Black Town of Calcutta – Keertans, Shyama Sangeet, Kheur, Kobi Gaan etc. This means that the sahibs and memsahibs went all the way to Mathura and Lucknow in search of songs, but did not penetrate into the Bengali quarters of the city. Actually, Bengali as a language and as a culture was not yet dominant in Calcutta.”

“I am grateful to Sabrananda Chaudhuri (Musicologist and Prof. Of Bengali at Netaji Nagar College), Sourendro and Soumyajit, who are the subject musical experts of the film, Debashish Raychaudhuri who readily lent his support and expertise, Sarvani Gooptu, a singer, historian and the Director of Netaji Institute of Asian Studies and most importantly to Shatabdi Roy, whose rendering of the thumri and keertan have taken the film to a new level,” informs Subha. According to her, “Harpsichords were slowly replaced by pianos and the attitude of the British colonizers changed over time. I guess they were no longer interested in promoting Indo British cultural fusion.”

Keertan, Nidhu Babur Tuppah and Shyama Sangeet are popular even today but Kobi gaan and Kheur have lost their popularity as they were elbowed by the ‘Bhadralok Bengali’ of the Bengal Renaissance. Subha points out three takeaways from her film. These are – (a) Greater understanding of the cultural scenario of late 18th century Calcutta, (b) Acquaintance with the harpsichord and (c) Acquaintance with the wonderful performers and resource persons.