Performers - trainingThe following examples are typical of how non-Indian-Americans have found training in the Hindustani tradition:
Arn Burghardt: I heard Brian Silver play over somebody's house, and I decided maybe I would ask this guy if I could subsequently did and he said, "Sure"....Every week I'd go up to the cities for about a year and a half at his house for private lessons. So I was studying with Brian continuously for quite a while. So in the Fall of '73 and '74, my wife and I went over. We were studying with the same family that Brian had studied with...I hooked into the gharana immediately because Ghulam Hussain Khan--who Brian studied with--his sons were in Bombay trying to make it as musicians...[I returned to the States] and decided to do a national tour for Ghulam Hussain Khan's older brother, who was a bin player and a sitarist...and also a vocalist coming out of the true Indore gharana tradition...after that, in 1975, 1976 I went by myself to India and did a little bit of work with those guys. Not a whole lot because the relationship got really strained at that point...I have a friend named David Barsamian who...knew Asadali Khan [Jaipur/Alwar/Rampur gharana] fairly well... Asadali agreed that we could do a tour for him...What was in it for me was, I literally spent eleven straight weeks with these guys, and therefore, what was in it for me was a whole heck of a lot of music education. I learned more on that tour than any other part of my endeavors in learning music. Burghardt doesn't think that he can be classified by gharana, though he identifies with both gharanas that he has studied. Lutnes recounts:
It was difficult [to find a teacher in New York City] because there are so many sitar players here, and when you're new you don't know who is good and who is not...I did eventually come across a teacher named Vasant Rai. I studied with him for a while, a couple of years. [Vasant Rai passed away]. Then eventually I met my wife who is from Germany. We lived in Munich and I met a very good sitar player there, a German fellow named Al Gromer. He had studied with Imrat Khan for a number of years in London and in Calcutta. I was only in Germany for eight months, but four or five months after I came back to New York, Imrat Khan came to give a concert...and he took me as a student. I've been studying with him since that time, which was probably around eight years ago. He comes to New York maybe an average of once every two years...But he gives me enough material to work on for the time. A lot of what I have learned has been from recordings. Lutnes has had one of the more stable learning experiences that I have come across for an American, and he feels that he plays the Vilayat Khan gharana's style, as he has learned it from Al Gromer and Imrat Khan. Good fortune guided him to a stable relationship with a teacher, as compared to the way Burghardt shrewdly set himself up as the impresario and road manager for those teachers he wanted to study under and the dedication and struggle which David Whetstone endured in order to find his ultimate teacher:
I went to the Ali Akbar School and it didn't seem to be a very good place actually, because I had read about Indian music and you had your guru-shishya relationship or you had your master. There were thirty other people in my class. Ali Akbar had adapted his knowledge to the school situation which is very disreputable in India. So when I came back to Minneapolis, I found an American who was a good player and a good teacher--[Brian Silver]. Then I decided that I wanted to study with Vilayat Khan, one of the great masters of the instrument and prepared for that for seven years before I met him. For about four or five years I listened only to his recordings. It was really preparing for the day when I would go to meet him and play for him because I heard that he did not accept students. [David went to India and after tribulations was accepted as Vilayat Khan's student]... Whetstone does not consider himself a part of the Vilayat Khan gharana. Although his training has mostly stemmed from it, he doesn't feel that he has acquired the essence of that gharana. The school-like approach of the Ali Akbar School, which posed a problem for Whetstone, was more than adequate for Misha Masud and Patsy Margolin who attended Ravi Shankar's similarly organized (though somewhat smaller, hence more personal) Kinnara school. Why would we wish to take note of gharana associations? Each gharana has passed on its own traditional way of creating the music--from improvisational learning methods to traditionally performed ragas and compositions. Each has been the instrument of some element of continuity and change. The fact that many Americans are not studying within a single gharana to the point of mastery, but rather combining traditions from several gharanas to form an aggregate musical product, affects the life of the music here in America. For better or for worse? There is no agreement to be found: some see the results of the breakdown of the gharana system as a great loss, a few see it as a step in the life of the music that could perhaps bear rewards in the future, and still others do not believe that it is proper to pass judgement on the life of the music, but to simply accept the changes. What have we found so far, in terms of gharana? We have found that Indians coming from families specializing in music follow their family tradition. Indians coming from families that are not so musically specialized have more latitude to explore outside the family tradition. Non-Indian-Americans have had diverse training histories, often sporadic and from many teachers from several gharanas. Consequently, they may or may not consider themselves to belong to, or be associated with any one or more gharanas. Have the training methods of Americans resulted in a "proper" depth of understanding? Generally, they have not. This is not to say that native born Americans will not become masters of the music, but that they generally have not achieved that status as yet. This is because they have neither been playing nor learning for a long enough period. I make this distinction because I have noticed that many of the musicians had stopped their student style riaz when they started playing professionally. They also start playing professionally long before they would be able to do so in India. They are able to do this because, unlike India, there are no competitions to rate musicians; there is no formal method of initiation into the professional world (which is seen as the master's world by Americans). As Enayet Hussain explains, "There is only a bottom and a top; the bottom doesn't really exist because the people playing are at the top." Of course, ignorant patrons of Hindustani music, exemplified by Menusan's restaurant patron, who "didn't know what a sitar was", have allowed students of Hindustani music to enter the performance context before they would be considered ready to perform in the India based Hindustani music culture. Another example of the uninitiated patron affecting the music can be seen in the hiring process even for the position of a teacher, who further affects the music through teaching. Whetstone describes the results of such ignorance:
Resume becomes important in Indian classical music, more so than for Western classical music. In Western classical music, they'll listen to your tape. In Indian classical music, they will just look at your resume. How do you play? They don't know. This seemed a timely remark by Whetstone, as I had seen this process occur at his interview for the position of "Adjunct Instructor in Raga" at Carleton College. Thus, American Hindustani music culture does not force musicians to reach a high level of mastery before allowing them entry into the musical profession. While one might argue that one does not need to be an ustad to teach the basics of the music, one might also argue that the lack of an ustad's example to emulate, a student be mislead to what desirable performance standards in the music are. What one can learn from recordings of the masters is limited. The lack of the vibrant, pervasive, eminent, Hindustani music culture that exists in India can not help but have an effect on American students' conceptions of the music. Again, this is not to say that no Americans have learned the music to its highest levels. Burghardt relates this experience:
I played some stuff for Ghulam Hussain Khan...and it just blew his mind...when I played the bin. He said, "I am really happy to hear this." He was really, really happy. You could see it in his face... He was really happy to hear the traditions being maintained. He said, "Nobody in the family can do this, and here you are doing this. It's really nice. It makes me feel good to hear this." This is not simply an affirmation of an American's attainment, but also recognizes Burghardt's playing of a common role that "outsiders" to music cultures, as well as scholars, have played throughout the history of music--that of saving dying parts of a tradition. Just as Bartok recorded and saved much of the folk traditions of Central Europe, Burghardt, by his own study and playing, is playing a role in extending the life of the dhrupad tradition.
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