Who was Gauhar Jaan?

Very little is known about Gauhar Jaan, the first Indian woman to have cut a gramophone record in India in 1902. This is strange, because her life story could define the script of a powerful Indian film. Vikram Sampath, a young researcher in music history wrote an entire book titled My Name is Gauhar Jaan – Life and Times of a Musician some years ago. Taking this as his root source, Bangalore-based playwright Mahesh Dattani penned a play called Gauhar that is being staged across the country with great critical success.

The play is produced under the banner of PrimeTime Theatre Company and directed by Lillette Dubey, the founder-director of the company, which celebrates its silver jubilee this year, and that makes Gauhar all that more significant. But first, we need to know a bit more about Gauhar Jaan a woman who lived life and loved and sang exclusively on her own terms, never mind that her extravagant way of life led her to deep penury when she passed away in 1930.

Who was Gauhar Jaan?
Gauhar Jaan popularised light Hindustani classical music with her thumris, dadras, kairis, bhajans and tarana renditions, some of which can still be heard on YouTube and other music channels that offer a glimpse of the talent of this very unconventional tawaif; she redefined the very term tawaif which means prostitute, through her talent and her uncompromising lifestyle that included her music. With her experience in recording songs where she introduced the novel style of announcing her name at the end of every song, she mastered the technique of condensing each song sung in Hindustani classical style to three and a half minutes that the recording technique demanded. Though initially she was shocked that a song had to be put through a ‘machine’ to be heard by listeners, she warmed up to the technique, though many music maestros of the time criticised her for this. The play Gauhaar brings across with lucidity, the passion that ruled Gauhar Jaan’s life, forcing the audience to question how she has been practically wiped out of the history of Indian music.

Asked what inspired her to do this play on Gauhar and that too in English, Lillette says, “I had been presenting very serious plays and wanted to do something with music in it. Then, there was my passion to place woman achievers in the archive of Indian theatre and Gauhar Jaan most certainly deserves a prominent place in it. She was a pioneer because she cut the first Indian gramophone record. The subject has universal appeal because it is relevant to the struggles and the stigmas and social ostracism most successful women in the field of music and media and cinema have to go through even today. Besides, as a singer, she is a legend by herself, though I have met many contemporary people from the music world who have never heard of her.

The play Gauhar sets out some important facts of Gauhar’s life. Gauhar Jaan was not Muslim by birth. She was born as Angelina Yeoward in 1873 in Patna to William Robert Yeoward, an Armenian Jew, an engineer in Azamgarh and Allen Victoria Hemming, a Jewish Armenian lady. Victoria was born and brought up in India, and trained in music and dance. The marriage ended in 1879 when Angelina was six. Trapped in a no-exit situation of social ostracism and financial distress, mother and daughter migrated to Banaras in 1881 with Khursheed, a Muslim nobleman who loved Victoria’s music. Later, Victoria converted to Islam and changed Angelina’s name to ‘Gauhar Jaan’ and hers to ‘Malka Jaan.’ In 1902, Gauhar Jan was asked by the ‘Gramophone Company’ to record a series of songs for them.

The play
Gauhar recounts the fascinating but sad personal and professional journey of Gauhar Jaan who sang in 20 languages and cut over 600 records. She is a part of India’s recording history during the British rule and though she initially felt, as the play shows, that recording one’s voice on a machine and then playing it back to be listened to was committing blasphemy on music. But she relented later going on to keep her voice on record for all time. Dubey adds that many from the world of theatre and also music were rather sceptic of a play centered on Gauhar Jaan, but her choice has proved right because till date, more than a dozen performances across Indian cities have brought in not only full houses, but also good reviews in the media.

Lillette adopted the unusual strategy of casting two different actresses to portray the two different aged Gauhars in her play. The younger Gauhar is portrayed by Rajeshwari Sachdev, known for notable performances in many Shyam Benegal films and on television. This was an actress who had to rehearse and re-practice her singing for the play. The older Gauhar is being portrayed by Zila Khan, a trained Hindustani classic singer who had never acted till now. This was an experiment of sorts casting an actress who is a singer and a singer who has been called upon to act.

Rajeshwari says, “I had not even heard of Gauhar Jaan when Lillete first told me about this play. I felt very guilty and at once read Sampath’s wonderfully researched book on Gauhar Jaan. Playing Gauhar was really difficult because I had to bring across the deep passion she felt about everything in life. It means a lot of emotional drainage for any actor especially since we were focussing only on the high points of her life. I had to live her life in my head. To sing like her was another challenge. It was just not possible to sing like her because I am basically an actress who can sing, and not a trained classical singer. But it all worked out in the end, For the singing portions, I relied on my own experience in singing and on the fact that over 10 to 30 performances, I would mature in my singing. The acting of course, I depended on myself and on Lillette.”

Zila Khan in personal life is the daughter of Ustad Vilayat Khan and is known for her music, trained as she is in Hindustani classical music. Responding to what attracted her to accept the acting assignment for the first time in her life, Zila says, “I would love to see tradition and history resurrected within the modern contemporary world we live in. What attracted me to play Gauhar is the fact that though she lived life on her own terms and paid a heavy price for her choices, she did not regret her choices at any point. She was made aware of her vulnerability through her betrayal by others. Towards the end of the play, she says that had she devoted the time to her music that she had devoted to seeking love, it would have produced sheer magic in music. What draws me to Gauhar is that she is as dynamic as she is vulnerable.” Zila also played Ruhani Begum in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s recent film Bajirao Mastaani. “The song I loved singing on stage the most are Raske bhare tore nain and Kaisi ye dhoom machai”, she sums up.

Gauhar was paid Rs.3000 rupees per recording, an exorbitant price at that time. But she also spent huge sums such as `1000 as fine everyday for insisting on riding on a carriage drawn by four horses which was against the law; she flouted the law each day and paid the hefty fine!

From 1902 to 1920 she recorded over 600 songs in more than 10 languages. She became India’s first “recording star” who learned the value of the recording industry for advancing her career. You can still hear her thumris on YouTube where the name of the raga was carried on the label of the 78 rpm record and the singer had to end her song with her name. The play has an amusing minute when the younger Gauhar after recording a song into the conical microphone, tells the would-be listeners, “I hope you like the song.” Over the years, she developed a love-hate relationship with F. W. Gaisberg of the Gramophone Company which, however, remained professional. Denzil Smith gives a wonderful account of himself both as Gaisberg and Angelina’s father.
Gauhar’s travels through the country singing songs in the language of the region – Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali and so on, where the audience keeps cheering, are essayed beautifully. The play, a bit too long for any musical that also charts history and biography along with the dramatic elements of love, betrayal, success and tragedy, is dotted with tender situations of romance between Gauhar and her male companions who loved her and her music, but never married her. In the end, she was left all alone, coping with the loss of her beautiful and spacious home in Calcutta through a man she ostensibly married, and who cheated her, and another young man who claimed he was her half-brother! The time and place markers are delineated imaginatively through screen shots on two sides of the stage and we get to know where she has been, opening with a suggestion of Calcutta and ending in Calcutta.

Both Rajeshwari and Zila Singh carry themselves with great poise and dignity despite their social positioning as a tawaif courted by Maharajas and zamindars, but shunned by mainstream society. The way Rajeshwari emerges as actress-dancer-singer getting under the skin of another singer-dancer of a different time and space is amazing. The younger Gauhar and the older Gauhar telescope into each other through time and in the end, deliver their swan song on stage, the younger one dancing as the older version sings – so beautifully.

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