Pt. Mallikarjun Mansoor was lucky to have been born into a family of performing arts and musicians. Hence, from childhood he was hooked to theatrical recitals and even sang for the actors. He was avidly attracted to this artistic genre, and even had dropped out of school. But, fate had other plans in store for him. During one such performance, he was noticed by none other than the illustrious Nilakanthbua Alurmath, who advised his brother to train him in music and sensing, and not acting. Mallikarjun was overjoyed by this proposal, and gladly followed him to Maihar, where the next few years were his most phenomenal stage in life, and he was transformed into an erudite singer. The upcoming years saw his rise and more rises in the success ladder, through his excellent performances in various musical styles and fashions. Despite all such kudos and his innate genius in renditions, he always maintained a humble and modest attitude to living, never yearning for stardom or flashy self-promotions. He ever remained a man of the village and dressed in a similar lamer, never hankering for city life and money. His years with his celestial guru, Manji Khan, son of Ustad Allauddin Khan were somewhat responsible for his code of conduct. When on stage, he would be completely engrossed in his rhythm and melodic combination and perform a song with such perfect ease and depth, that he could almost be named a perfectionist classical singer.
The Hubli-Dharwad belt is sacred to most musicians and music lovers. For it is this prolific area that has given the country some of the finest Hindustani singers, both male and female, in the 20th century. The names are big, and the numbers many. Yet the one name that has become synonymous with the place is Mansoor`s. Mallikarjun was born in the village of Mansoor in 1910 into a family with musical and artistic interests. Encouraged by his brother, himself a talented actor, Mallikarjun was drawn to theatre during his boyhood so much so that he dropped out of school. He could also sing and play the harmonium quite well. A Carnatic singer and violinist, Apayya Swami, who lived in the Dharwad area, initiated Mallikarjun into Carnatic music during his boyhood. Once during a theatrical performance, the well-known Nilakanthbua Alurmath, a direct student of Pt. Balakrishnabua Icchalkaranjikar, was impressed with Mallikarjun`s singing and asked him to come along to train in the Hindustani system. Nilakanthbua told Mallikarjun`s older brother that Mallikarjun`s talents were being wasted in the drama troupe and that they ought to be channelised to classical music. After receiving permission from his family, Mallikarjun gladly followed him to Miraj where he trained under the Gwalior maestro for six years imbibing all the fundamental aspects of music from this fine teacher. Though he moved on, Mallikarjun always said that Gwalior provided the base of his gayaki and was never one to belittle its impact on his early career. He moved to Bombay and started giving concerts. He also cut a few records during the very early 1930s, which created quite an impact.
But his quenchless thirst for music, fortunately enough, drew him to one of the concerts of Manji Khan, the gifted son of Ustad Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. He beseeched Manji Khan to accept him as his disciple, Manji Khan, after listening to some of his fine recordings, readily took him under his wings, impressed as he was by the young man`s sincerity and gifts. The two and a half years of training that followed were intense, in that it was during the period that Mallikarjun was introduced to the subtle beauties of the mode of raaga development followed by the Jaipur gayaki. Manji Khan, in his teaching sessions, interspersed practice with theory. From this ebullient guru Mallikarjun learnt the Jaipur gharana`s rhythm-melody combinations, especially the attractive manner in which the raaga is patterned within the framework of tala. Importantly, it was Manji Khan who initiated Mansoor to the importance of technical virtuosity (taiyari) and made him a finished concert artist.
But his newly found guru was fated to breathe his last in 1937 at a very young age, and at the very pinnacle of powers. The grief-struck Mallikarjun now approached Alladiya Khan himself and requested that he be given further training in several aspects of Jaipur gayaki. The Ustad said that his own advanced years stood in the way and therefore directed him to his younger son, Bhurji Khan.
His training continued under Bhurji Khan, during which Mallikarjun learnt the dhrupadic elements in the Jaipur style, as well as the rare, complex and compound raagas specific to the gharana. As Mallikarjun was to confess in his later years, the two gurus were like two perennial rivers from which he never drew enough to slake his unquenchable thirst for music.
In the meantime, Mallikarjun got married and started a family. Yet, amid all his domestic responsibilities, he continued his tapas with unfaltering absorption and application. He would shunt between Kolhapur, his guru`s abode, and Dharwad during those difficult but happy years, learning all that he could as also giving concerts. Unlike several of his contemporaries Mallikarjun never dreamt of moving to Pune or Bombay in order to further his professional career or improve his standard of living. His outwardly quiet life, its routine joys and despairs, as also his intense riyaz and his deep spirituality were all bound up with the simplicity, peace and quiet of Dharwad. He was thoroughly content with the simple but sincere audience he got in his village. The city lights figured in his life and career time and again. Success and recognition came in many forms from the 1950s on. Yet none of these things affected him as a person or as a musician.
The aesthetic subtlety and complexity of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana shine forth in Mansoor`s singing. His smooth and sweet voice, his full-throated voice production, devoid of nasality or gruffness and his incredible breath-control gave him a significant edge in singing the complex Jaipur gayaki fluently. In fact, his supreme control over his voice gives it a sense of effortlessness as he shifts from the bandish to taans and back. The steadiness and sinuousness of his badhat give a sense of fullness and control. For, unlike Ustad Amir Khan, he never banks on the slow raagavistaar, or on fast embellishments like Bade Ghulam. Those looking for stately vistaars of profound explorations of tonal richness will not find them here. Instead, he `tames` his melodic sense to fit into the fluid carriage of rhythm. Mansoor`s style is neither needlessly placid nor breathtakingly supple. It occupies the middle ground between melody and rhythm, insofar as he deploys both in mutually reinforcing ways. Simply put, melody conditioned by rhythm is the hallmark of his style as it is of his gharana.
His raagavistaar commences with no detailed aochar at all. In fact, his `no-nonsense` approach makes his openings sprightlier and more energetic than that of his Kirana or Agra counterparts. Mallikarjun prefers to open with a madhya laya khayal which gives his rhythm-melody complex certain nimbleness and tension to begin with. Unlike the Kirana singers, he does not develop the raaga in a linear fashion. Instead, he fills up each aavartan with embellishments. So each new tala cycle is unique insofar as he fills it with a combination of raaga elaborations, intricate and subtle embellishments and varieties of fast taans using his spontaneity. Each aavartan send the imagination into a frenzied search for fresh melodic possibilities. What one sees in Mansoor`s style is the restlessness of a luxuriant imagination bursting with musical ideas. The composure and the agility with which he arrived at the sam of every rhythmic cycle, after a series of improvisations using the lines of the mukhda, was something the listeners looked forward to. The tempo of tala itself remains soothingly constant providing the necessary framework; only the speed of vocal rendition or laya is varied by Mansoor in several ways.
Mansoor`s silken voice, with its `swinging` quality, weaves complex patterns of the raaga in the way a spider weaves a web. His voice is so smooth that when he switches from badhat to taans the shift is hardly perceptible at all to the listener. In Mallikarjun`s gayaki, alaap and taan, together with other embellishments, go to make a seamless matrix. His singing therefore gives no signs of effort or strain even when he sings dazzlingly; the golden mean he discovered was so finished and so polished.
True to his gharana traditions, Mansoor was perhaps one of the few singers who could render rare and complex raagas with effortless ease and enviable maturity. In fact, he usually avoided singing prachalit (popular) raagas. If singers from other gharanas sang Mian ki Todi, Allaiya Bilawal, Yaman, Bihag or Darbari, Mansoor sang Bahaduri Todi, Yamani Bilawal, Bihagda, Razia Kannada, Sawani Kalyan, Khokar, Khat or Shudh Nat. In fact, these raagas have come to be associated with him. Few could carry these raagas off with the assurance he possessed. Intricate structures seemed all the more beguiling when he sang them with such poise. Yet, on several occasions when he sang prachalit raagas, he reeled off bandish after bandish showing rarely seen facets of these raagas. Like his illustrious Jaipur-Atrauli gurus, Mansoor too was a storehouse of compositions. The number of bandishes he knew was, reportedly, mind-boggling. Such was his scholarship, such was his dexterity.
Mallikarjun`s recorded music, which for the most part maintains a high standard, gives everybody a fairly reasonable idea about his style and approach. Being a dedicated and conscientious artist, he always sought to achieve the highest degree of perfection both in his recitals as also in his recordings. His rendition of Gaud Malhar, Bahaduri Todi, Jaunpuri, Bihagda, Shivmat Bhairav, Ramdasi Malhar, Nand, Yaman Kalyan, Lalita Gauri, Shree Nat Bihag, Sampurna Malkauns and Maru Bihag are outstanding. His Gaud Malhar shows the weaving of a plethora of translucently beautiful silken patterns of melody inside the loom of tala. Everything about the rendition is superb, starting with the immediate rapport he makes with the listener, all the way through his perfectly planned sequences of soothing phrases and improvisations. Bahaduri Todi swiftly sets the prayerful note in an ardent and sustained manner. It becomes evident that Mansoor is tuned in to a higher melody, to higher intensity when he goes through the interlacing patterns of rhythm and melodic movements with feeling and verve.
Mansoor`s Nand (live recording) is a truly memorable experience. One only has to compare it with Amir Khan`s more romantic rendition to understand the difference between a meditative singer and subtle one. In fact these are probably two of best-recorded interpretations of the raaga one has with him/her by two stalwarts. His Shree (live recording) and Lalit Gauri (one of his favourites), evoke that affecting inwardness so characteristic of these sandhiprakash raagas. Mansoor`s Ramdasi Malhar is a steady and powerful rendition of this monsoon raaga. The elevating and the emotional come together here. One can see deep feeling interweaving beautifully with classical control. The effect is exquisite. One perceives few signs of tiredness or exhaustion in this rendition even though the recording was made during his last years. It is indeed one`s good fortune that he left behind a legacy of over 80 hours of recorded music with the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. These would eventually prove to be a valuable treasure trove for students of music, scholars and passionate lovers of music in future.
Mansoor lived outwardly like a householder, but was a renunciant within. His music derives its fervour and his life its simplicity from his devout temperament. A great devotee of Shiva, he used to get up during the early hours of dawn and walk up to the local temple even after age and ailments took their toll on his health. In fact, by his own confession, he never differentiated between his devotion to god and the dedication to his art. The sincerity one sees in the person and his art is one that emanates straight from the heart.
Mansoor`s commitment to music was total. In fact its rhythm was indistinguishable from his pulse. A few weeks before his death, with his lungs racked with cancer, he sang for AIR Dharwad as he did at the Lingayat Math in his wheezing voice, but with tremendous enthusiasm. Even when admitted to a hospital in Bangalore during his last days, he chose to regale the inmates and visitors with his singing. When unable to sing, he would ask his visitors with his son Rajashekar to delineate his favourite raagas and sang them inwardly after his own fashion. Such intensity and passion are indeed rare.
Mansoor leaves behind no known disciples worthy of taking up his mantle. His standards were lofty and his demands exacting for even the brilliant student of music. He expected nothing short of total dedication and all-consuming passion for the art from those that wanted to be disciples. His expectations from them were no different from what he expected of himself. Anything less would have been a compromise. His son Rajashekhar Mansoor follows his father`s style quite ably.
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