The problem with the East-meets-West fusion of ‘Bandish Bandits’

This pained reaction, from someone who loves literature, language and fine arts, is duplicated when watching shows based on a forced fusion of Indian music forms with Western. They usually begin with cute visuals of groups of young, westernised Indians, carrying guitars and drums, looking around with childlike wonderment. They are headed, we are told, for old towns and bastis in search of Indian folk and classical music forms. Their funky clothes, which consciously combine the West (denims, branded walking shoes and guitars) and the East (kohl-lined eyes, colourful scarves with mirrors and heavy oxidised silver jewellery) confirm the intent.

Much hand-shaking and back-thumping of local musicians follows in the baithaks of gharana gurus and/or dargahs. But as stringed instruments are strummed and throats produce a quick display of alaaps and fast-paced taans, what emerges is a pale ghost of classical ragas and semi-classical nirgun songs, sufiyana kalams, folk ballads and mediocre poetry. The grand camera work and histrionics — flailing of arms, vigorous shaking of heads with eyes closed and locks swinging — the “wah wahs” from the sidekicks, all appear fake, technological enhancement of the acoustics notwithstanding. You can’t expect to bring together two musical genres to produce a divine new fusion music if the wobbly centre just will not hold.

And ah, the bandishes that the bandits wish to build upon. What are they? The poetry of love and longing they contain may be timeless and rhythmically correct, but great classical music is not just the literary text. It is the seamless flow of notes that breathes life into everyday speech and makes much of the physical world irrelevant. It is not enough to underscore the holiness and purity of old gharana music or perform rituals like the touching of feet and the ear lobe in memory of an old khalifa or guru. Hindustani classical music has a palpable but abstract inner logic created by pure musical notes. They cannot become algorithm-driven in a way that undermines their inner logic. Neither is real classical and semi-classical music an eye-catching conveyor belt carrying a misplaced assortment of socio-political and gendered baggage.

The world of musical performance today is like a noisy international airport, its peripheries crowded with folks who want to break all queues and run. But before you run, you must learn to walk. Organic communication in music between traditional performers breaks down due to Gen Z’s near-total lack of a grasp on vernacular languages and the performers’ ignorance of English. Without open-ended and constant communication neither today’s concert-goers nor the young fusion enthusiasts and their marketing managers can figure out exactly what they wish to communicate and how. As the Prime Video show Bandish Bandits opens and the two main characters exchange (mediocre) lines of Urdu poetry penned by a shadowy shayar, both mispronounce a key word “kha ma khwah”. The slip grates like grit under the molars. The young singers and actors in the role of organisers seem largely unaware of the right musical idiom from vernacular languages and introduce the artists and the bandishes in a pidgin Hinglish, mispronouncing names and drumming up an embarrassingly faux enthusiasm with much flashing of lights and popping of fireworks.

It does not work.

Good music is not about looking good but sounding good. Old timers will fondly recall the likes of Kumar Gandharva sitting, wearing an electric-blue cashmilon pullover, and Mallikarjun Mansoor turning up in a mussed up sherwani. Those representatives of sublime legacies refused to feed the petty snobberies of the new patrons of Indian arts.

Stories fed to the general public by uninformed members of old gharanas offer little information about the organic structure of gharana music. They try force-feeding young filmmakers myths and non-secular mumbo jumbo about the real religious identity of a sufi or saint-poet who blessed their guru and the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, or share some lore about miracles performed by the music of their ustads. But such lore does not lead to an understanding of music which can help fuse melodies and create real jod-ragas like those that the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana stalwarts created effortlessly.

What we have here only the ignorant will consider capable of healing the deep sectarian wounds that run through the soul of India today. Have you ever wondered why many classical music and dance performers feel the need to wheedle and beg to be included in government delegations that peddle “soft culture”? Why have several of them chosen to move to alien lands to give tuitions to NRI kids?

As our great artistic traditions are damaged by mindless politicisation and communal violence, it makes little sense to churn out shows about India’s syncretic culture. You cannot produce dazzling new fusion music with the help of strange-looking teachers in an even stranger Kasauli-based music college, while outside, in real life, groups of politically-protected fanatics defy court orders to continue digging up ancient monuments in search of a monolithic culture from the Treta Yug.

The writer is former chairperson, Prasar Bharati