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“A Christy Minstrel, a Harlequin, or an Ancient Persian”?: Opera, Hindustani Classical Music, and the Origins of the Popular South Asian “Musical”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2020

Rashna Darius Nicholson
Rashna Darius Nicholson*
Affiliation:
School of English, The University of Hong Kong
*
Email: [email protected]
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Extract

The story of South Asian colonial modernity and music offers up a multidirectional and polymorphous conceptual terrain featuring, among many agents, Hindustani royalty, touring minstrel and burlesque troupes, Jesuit missionaries and orientalists, and not least, social reformists. Nevertheless, scholarship on the history of Hindustani music consistently traces its development through classicization against the rise of Hindu nationalism while overlooking other palpable clues in the colonial past. This article argues for a substantial reevaluation of colonial South Asian music by positing an alternative and hitherto invisible auditory stimulus in colonial Asia's aural landscape: opera. Janaki Bakhle contends that “as a musical form, opera put down even fewer roots than did orchestral, instrumental Western classical music,” even though she subsequently states that “Western orchestration did become part of modern ceremonial activities, and it moved into film music even as it was played by ersatz marching bands.” Bakhle further argues that Hindustani music underwent processes of sanitization and systematization within a Hindu nation-making project, a view that has been complicated by historians such as Tejaswini Niranjana. Niranjana describes how scholarship that focuses exclusively on the codification or nationalization of Hindustani music through the interpellation of a Hindu public neglects “sedimented forms of musical persistence.” Not dissimilarly, Richard David Williams highlights how the singular emphasis on the movement of Hindustani music reform risks reducing the heterogeneous and complex musicological traditions in the colonial period to the output of a single, monolithic, middle-class “new elite.” Previous scholarship, he argues, concentrates on “one player in a larger ‘economy’ of musical consumption.” Following these calls for more textured perspectives on South Asian musical cultures, I suggest a somewhat heretical thesis: that opera functioned as a common mediating stimulus for both the colonial reinscription of Hindustani music as classical as well as the emergence of popular pan-Asian musical genres such as “Bollywood” music.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 331 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2020

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Footnotes

This article was written during an HKU–Hughes Hall Fellowship (2018–19) at the University of Cambridge. I am especially indebted toward my host at Cambridge, Benjamin Walton; the two anonymous reviewers; the Editor of Theatre Survey, Marlis Schweitzer; Michael Kyung Hyun Ju and Michael Gnat for their helpful suggestions. All translations from Gujarati are my own. I have followed the ALA–LC transliteration system and have replaced Pha with Fa in keeping with the Parsi model of transliterating names.

References

Notes

1 Bakhle, Janaki, Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Niranjana, Tejaswini, “Musicophilia and the Lingua Musica in Mumbai,” Cultural Studies 32.2 (2018): 261–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 268.

3 Williams, Richard David, “Music, Lyrics, and the Bengali Book: Hindustani Musicology in Calcutta, 1818–1905,” Music and Letters 97.3 (2016): 465–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 468. Williams does not cite Bakhle's text here but specifically refers to works such as Farrell, Gerry, Indian Music and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar and Subramanian, Lakshmi, “The Master, Muse and the Nation: The New Cultural Project and the Reification of Colonial Modernity in India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 23.2 (2000): 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, 8 September 1849, 615.

8 Regarding these advances in shipping, see Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, 1 March 1851, 149; Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, 21 January 1857, 139.

9 Bombay Gazette, 18 April 1862, 371; “Evenings at Home!” Bombay Gazette, 8 December 1863, 1; “Evenings at Home!” Bombay Gazette, 15 December 1863, 1; “Herr Charles Wehle and Herr Feri Kletzer's Second Concert,” Bombay Gazette, 23 November 1863, 2.

10 “The German Minstrels and Madame Klippel,” Bombay Gazette, 1 April 1862, 1; “The San Francisco Minstrels,” Bombay Gazette, 10 October 1863, 2; “The Original Christy's Minstrels,” Bombay Gazette, 30 October 1863, 1.

11 “Local,” Bombay Gazette, 18 November 1863, 2; “The Christy's Minstrels,” Bombay Gazette, 27 November 1863, 3.

12 “Operā,” Rāst Goftār tathā Satya Prakāś [hereinafter Rāst Goftār], 26 February 1865, 131–2.

13 “Gāeṇ Prakās,” Rāst Goftār, 15 January 1865, 36–7; “Operā,” Rāst Goftār, 26 February 1865, 131–2; “Bhavāi Saṅgrah,” Rāst Goftār, 7 October 1866, 632–3; “Pārsī Klabo,” Rāst Goftār, 1 September 1867, 545–6; “Deśī Gāeṇne,” Rāst Goftār, 10 July 1870, 448.

14 “Iṭālīan Operā,” Rāst Goftār, 30 December 1866, 826; “Gāeṇ,” Rāst Goftār, 6 January 1867, 9; “Lukrīśīā Borjīānũ Dāstān,” Rāst Goftār, 13 January 1867, 23–4.

15 “Iṅglaṇḍnī Nāṭak Śālāo,” Rāst Goftār, 20 January 1867, 41; “Jāhermā̃,” Rāst Goftār, 10 February 1867, 87–8; “Attractions of the Opera to a Native,” Rāst Goftār, 18 January 1874, 34–5. Subsequently in an article entitled “Is the Opera to Fail Once More?” Rāst Goftār, 18 January 1874, 34, the Rāst described the performers in this third unsuccessful attempt to introduce “high class” European opera in Bombay as if their “chests were bursting.”

16 Ther, Philipp, Center Stage: Operatic Culture and Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe (Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2014), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Kābrājī was initially editor of the Parsi Mitra before heading the Rāst Goftār, which he made into a tool for social reform. He was a member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, a fellow of the Bombay University, and instrumental in the development of Parsi theatre and vernacular journalism.

18 “Gāeṇ,” Rāst Goftār, 4 July 1869, 417–18; “Mīujīk,” Rāst Goftār, 26 September 1875, 654.

19 “Pārsī Strīono Jāhermā̃ Dekhāv,” Rāst Goftār, 5 March 1865, 149–50. The Parsis are a minority of Iranian origin that prospered as compradors under colonial rule.

20 See Williams, Richard David, “Songs between Cities: Listening to Courtesans in Colonial North India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 27.4 (2017): 591–610CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soneji, Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadāsīs, Memory, and Modernity in South India (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

21 Dhalla, Maneckji Nusserwanji, Dastur Dhalla, The Saga of a Soul: An Autobiography of Shams-ul-Ulama, trans. Gool & Behram Schrab H. J. Rustomji (Karachi: Dastur Dr. Dhalla Memorial Institute, 1975), 474Google Scholar.

22 See Rousselet, Louis, India and Its Native Princes: Travels in Central India and in the Presidencies of Bombay and Bengal, ed. Buckle, Charles Randolph [1875] (Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corp., 1975)Google Scholar; Leonowens, Anna Harriette, Life and Travel in India: Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884), 179–90Google Scholar, for European views on the nautch.

23 “Ek Anītī . . . ,” Rāst Goftār, 14 November 1858, 570.

24 “Oratnu gāeṇ—Rāṇḍonā̃ nāc,” Rāst Goftār, 25 October 1863, 540–1.

25 Ibid., 540.

26 Allender, Tim, Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932 (Manchester University Press, 2016), 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Carpenter, Mary, Six Months in India, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1868), 2: 15Google Scholar.

28 “The Bombay Academy of Music,” Bombay Gazette, 15 April 1870, 1.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Music was first taught to girls in 1856 by schools established by the Student's Scientific and Literary Society (SLSS), an organization founded by social reformists such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji Furdunji, Sorabji Shapurji Bengali, and Bhau Daji. Bakhle, 62–3.

32 “Āpṇī Pārsī Chokrīonī Nīśāḷomā̃,” Rāst Goftār, 5 April 1868, 216. The ā̃friṅgān is a ritual of blessing.

33 “Jartośtī chokrīonī Nīśāḷomā̃ Apātī Keḷavṇī ūpar thaylā Homlāno Javāb,” Rāst Goftār, 12 April 1868, 227–8; “Chokrīonī Nīśālo ane Yajdā̃parast,” Rāst Goftār, 19 April 1868, 247–8; “Chokrīonī Keḷavṇī ūpar Yajdā̃ Parast no Navo Homlo,” Rāst Goftār, 3 May 1868, 276.

34 “Deśī Chokrīonī Iṅgrejī Keḷavṇī,” Rāst Goftār, 5 June 1870, 362–3.

35 For a description of these lyric forms, see Pradhan, Aneesh, “Perspectives on Performance Practice: Hindustani Music in Nineteenth Century Bombay (Mumbai),” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 27.3 (2004): 339–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 “Oratnu gāeṇ-Rāṇḍonā̃ nāc,” Rāst Goftār, 25 October 1863, 540–1.

37 “Gāeṇ Prakāś,” Rāst Goftār, 15 January 1865, 36–7. See also Tejaswini Niranjana, “Performing Modernity: Musicophilia in Bombay/Mumbai,” TISS Working Paper 3 (January 2015).

38 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Vintage Books, 1995), 153Google Scholar.

39 “Chokrīonī Nīśāḷomā̃ Gāeṇ,” Rāst Goftār, 21 March 1867, 243.

40 “The Science and System of Indian Music,” Rāst Goftār, 6 June 1875, 392–3; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 7 May 1876, 320–1; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 26 November 1876, 805–6. Denoting “conjoin,” sam is the first count of the cycle tala. Sur refers to svara, that is, musical notes, whereas tal refers to musical meter. The Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī or Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge was a reformist organization that organized lectures and exhibitions for the public. Kābrājī was its honorary secretary.

41 “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 3 December 1876, 823–4.

42 “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 17 December 1876, 859–60; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 26 May 1878, 345–6; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 2 June 1878, 363–4.

43 Hindu Music and the Gayan Samaj (Bombay: Bombay Gazette Steam Press, 1887), 34.

44 “Gāyaṇ Śīkhavvānī Deśī Nīśāl,” Rāst Goftār, 6 August 1871, 502; “Saṅgīt Vīdyālay,” Rāst Goftār, 22 June 1873, 394. Williams notes that Tagore was a complex figure, as his work spoke to both Hindu revivalism as well as British colonialism. Tagore's extensive research on Bengali and Sanskrit music literature nevertheless constituted a cornerstone for the development of a nationalist Hindu historiography of Indian music. Williams, “Music, Lyrics, and the Bengali Book.”

45 “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 10 January 1886, 39–40; “A Discourse on Indian Music,” Rāst Goftār, 17 January 1886, 60–1; Times of India, 26 May 1885, 3; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 28 November 1886, 1309–11; “Dnān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 5 December 1886, 1337–8.

46 “Jāher Khabar,” Rāst Goftār, 29 January 1860, 60.

47 “Vīkṭorīā Naṭak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 3 May 1868, 284; Rāst Goftār, 24 May 1868, 336.

48 “Deśī Strīone Māṭe Nāṭak—Strī Keḷavṇīno Ek Ūpay,” Rāst Goftār, 19 January 1868, 34–5.

49 Rāst Goftār, 23 October 1870, 701; Rāst Goftār, 30 October 1870, 717; Rāst Goftār, 6 November 1870, 733; Dhanjībhāi Na. Paṭel, Pārsī Nāṭak Takhtānī Tavārīkh (Bombay [Mumbai]: “Kaysare-Hind” Paper Printing Press, 1931), 59.

50 Paṭel, 59; “Parsee Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 3 December 1870, 2. Āpakhatyār and Kābrājī were competitors in the fields of music, theatre, and journalism as Kābrājī was not only editor of the rival Rāst Goftār but also had usurped Āpakhatyār's position as director of the Victoria.

51 Paṭel, 59.

52 “Parsee Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 7 November 1870, 3. Here “Ethiopian ballet” refers to a performance in blackface. Parsi troupes were heavily influenced by companies such as the Christy and San Francisco Minstrels.

53 Paṭel, 50, 60.

54 Jahāṅgīr Pestanjī Khambātā, Ek Jāṇītā Pārsī Ekṭarno Ardhī said Uparno Nāṭakī Anubhav (Bombay [Mumbai]: n.d., 1913), 3–4.

55 “Parsee Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 7 November 1870, 3. “Parsee Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 14 November 1870, 3. See also “Native Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 12 November 1870, 2; Bombay Gazette, 31 October 1870, 1; Bombay Gazette, 6 April 1871, 1.

56 “Pārsī Kānsarṭ ane Āperā!” Rāst Goftār, 13 November 1870, 741.

57 “Parsee Opera, Concert, &c.,” Bombay Gazette, 5 December 1870, 3.

58 P. M. M., “The Parsee ‘Opera,’” Bombay Gazette, 16 December 1870, 3.

59 J. P. K., “Parsee Opera,” Bombay Gazette, 19 December 1870, 3. Additionally, Āpakhatyār sent off a letter to the Rāst Goftār that was distributed in handbills and published in other Parsi newspapers, “challenging” Kābrājī. Kābrājī was quick to respond, “Āpakhatyār fails to understand the word opera just as he does not seem to understand the word challenge. . . . If a performance is good the public will patronize it, but the theatre was empty for this ‘opera's’ second performance.” “Mī. Nasarvānjī Dorābjī Āpakhetīār,” Rāst Goftār, 27 November 1870, 773–4.

60 Chatterjee, 127.

61 Niranjana, “Musicophilia and the Lingua Musica,” 271.

62 Ibid.

63 P. M. M., “Parsee ‘Opera.’”

64 The actor-manager Dādābhāi Sorābjī Paṭel is to be distinguished from Dādābhāi Paṭel the theatre historian.

65 Rāst Goftār, 1 June 1873, 355; “Hedrābādmā Nāṭakśāḷā,” Rāst Goftār, 2 February 1873, 72.

66 Rāst Goftār, 5 October 1873, 658. See also Paṭel, 180, 284.

67 Khambātā, 31.

68 “Science and System of Indian Music”; “Dnyān Prasārak Maṇḍaḷī,” Rāst Goftār, 7 May 1876, 320–1.

69 Novak, David, “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood,” Cultural Anthropology 25.1 (2010): 40–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 49.

70 Khorī, Edaljī Jamśedjī, Jālem Jor (Bombay [Mumbai]: Mumbai Vartamān Press, 1876), 5–6Google Scholar.

71 Paṭel, 150–2.

72 Ibid.

73 Sykes, Jim, “Towards a Malayan Indian Sonic Geography: Sound and Social Relations in Colonial Singapore,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 46.3 (2015): 485–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 491.

74 Ibid., 489.

75 See Nicholson, Rashna Darius, “Troubling Englishness: The Eastward Success and Westward Failure of the Parsi Theatre,” Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 44.1 (2017): 75–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Nakassis, Constantine V., “Citation and Citationality,” Signs and Society 1.1 (2013): 51–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 52.

77 Ibid., 54.

78 “Parsee Theatre,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 28 September 1892, 2; “Parsee Theatre,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 25 October 1892, 2; “Parsee Theatre,” Daily Advertiser, 29 September 1892, 3; “Parsee Theatre,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 29 October 1892, 2; “Parsee Theatre,” Daily Advertiser, 22 December 1892, 3.

79 meLê yamomo, Theatre and Music in Manila and the Asia Pacific, 1869–1946: Sounding Modernities (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 226.

80 Cohen, Matthew Isaac, “Thousand and One Nights at the Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theatre and Travelling Stories in Colonial Southeast Asia,” Middle Eastern Literatures 7.2 (2004): 235–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 237.

81 Ibid., 243.

82 Hesse, Barnor, “Racialized Modernity: An Analytics of White Mythologies,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30.4 (July 2007): 643–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 643.

83 P. M. M., “Parsee ‘Opera.’”