Over the populous span of South Asia, a region which stretches across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka while often regarded as incorporating Afghanistan, musicians of the Hindustani classical tradition are linked and identified according to their gharana, a system of lineage and apprenticeship which indicates their adherence to a particular musical style.
When it comes to khayal singing – more stylistically expressive than the ancient dhrupad, and typically comprising shorter lyrics of a romantic nature which are sung over ornamental raga – the Gwalior gharana is especially cherished as a kind of wellspring of the form. Renowned for its clarity and balance, eschewing the extremely slow tempos of other traditions while still elaborating the essence of each lyric without succumbing to decorative excess, the Gwalior gharana traces its roots back to the court of Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, and the singer Mian Tansen who was invited to Akbar’s fledgling court at Fatehpur Sikri at the ripe age of sixty years old in 1562.
Muslim Shaggan, a singer from Lahore whose new album Asar is out on the Pakistani label honiunhoni this week, traces his lineage back even farther than the court of Akbar and the dhrupad of Mian Tansen, all the way to Bhai Mardana, who was a longtime companion of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. Mardana would play the lute-like rabab when Nanak recited his hymns and prayers, and according to legend he counted the mystic and classical composer Swami Haridas among his disciples, with Haridas a court musician in the city of Gwalior becoming the teacher of Tansen, as depicted in Mughal miniature painting.
From Mardana to Haridas to Tansen, in turn Muslim Shaggan was trained by one of the finest contemporary practitioners of the Gwalior gharana, his grandfather Ustad Ghulam Hassan Shaggan who received both the Pride of Performance and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, two of the highest civilian honours in Pakistan, while also touring across Europe and collaborating with the world fusion or ethno-techno collective Fun-Da-Mental.
Nourished in the gharana from the age of seven, Muslim Shaggan is now an accomplished vocalist in his own right who performs across festivals and mediums in Pakistan. Over the seven tracks of Asar he sings khayal and other adjacent South Asian forms like ghazal, those amorous odes which are often tinged with great sadness as they deal aphoristically with themes of separation or unrequited love, thumri which are brisker and folksier with an enduring link to kathak dance, and kafi which is more devotional in nature.
He plays mostly the harmonium, a tempered instrument which is now commonplace as an accompaniment to khayal singing, whereas purists might argue that dhrupad depends upon the slides, glides and microtones of string instruments like the veena, sitar, sarangi and tanpura as Indian classical music is rooted in just intonation. Sometimes a tanpura adds to the accompaniment, with the harmonium maintaining an evocative and nostalgic, brackish or slightly seasick drone while the tanpura is more buzzing and piquant, creating a blend between the urban and streetfaring on the one hand and the more rambling or even celestial.
What’s more Asar collects Muslim’s unfettered performances in three different locales, a room, a courtyard and a park each with their own acoustic environments. The album opener ‘Ambwa’ for instance, a ghazal which finds the singer underneath a mango tree or stranded in the midst of a monsoon, desperate for the return of their beloved, was performed in an open park with a few croaking bird calls audible towards the end of the track, only enhancing the creaky aspect of the harmonium as Muslim in yearning ardour sings ‘take me for a swing, my love / erase from my heart / the darkness of sorrow / in this monsoon darling / please come home to me’.
Meanwhile for ‘Rooth Gayay Moray Baankay’, a thumri based in the popular raag Khamaj and something of a Shaggan family heirloom, as the lyrics were written by Muslim’s grandfather and the composition was put together by his uncle Qadir Shaggan, the singer hunkered down in a small courtyard which adds a cloistered atmosphere to the expressive yarn about trembling hearts, idle jealousies and a cold and empty bed, even as the narrator laments with a degree of irony the wasting away of his youth at the hands of some ‘foolish lover’.
The wind buffets the microphone on ‘Rooth Gayay Moray Baankay’, adding another texture to the warbling yarn and the oscillating drone of the harmonium, but that rustling sound has abated somewhat by the time of the penultimate track ‘Asar Us Ko’ which occupies the same courtyard by evening. A faltering and downcast lament over an unrequited love, ‘Asar Us Ko’ is another composition by Qadir Shaggan, this time based upon a ghazal by the Urdu poet Momin Khan Momin.
The oft-performed ‘Dil Jalane Ki Baat’, described in the album notes as ‘a rite of passage for any musician in Pakistan or India’, is given an especially beautiful rendition by Muslim as his voice aches to reach its upper register. Asar includes a couple of works drawn from film, as the album opener ‘Ambwa’ was composed by Safdar Hussain and introduced by Igbal Bano for the 1959 Urdu-language musical Nagin, while the centrepiece ‘Aaj Socha To’ from the 1973 Hindi smash Hanste Zakhm alters the mood of the record, carrying a baroque air and feeling decidedly more eerie, with the harmonium resounding with the fullness of a pipe organ as Muslim pumps away and pulls out the stops, imbuing the tearful dirge with a percussive element.
From the sixteenth-century Sufi poet Shah Hussain, one of the pioneers of kafi devotional poetry and an icon in Muslim’s native Lahore, the track ‘Ni Saiyon Asi’ is another which seems to capture the still air of the evening. Then after the wailing lament of ‘Asar Us Ko’, the album draws to a rapturous close through ‘Dilri Lutti’ which was written by the nineteenth-century Sufi and mystic Khwaja Ghulam Farid, who composed in the Saraiki language and spent the last eighteen years of his life in the Cholistan Desert, as Muslim quavers and caws from the back of his throat, seeking to emulate the characteristic vocal style of that sandy region.
Honiunhoni provide an attractive introduction to the music of Pakistan and some of its finest contemporary practitioners. Bolstered by regular uploads to their YouTube channel, Asar is only their fourth release following Jingul by the Balochi benju master Ustad Noor Bakhsh, the Guldasta or bouquet of the clarinetist Jaffar Hussain Randhawa and last year’s stunning Aap ka number hai? by the Talib Trio, one of Culturedarm’s favourite records of 2024 as led by the beguilingly charismatic Muhammad Talib on the electric bulbul and his own fretted tambooro. Asar by Muslim Shaggan is another captivating addition to their repertoire.
