MAKING MUSIC

MARRIED TO MUSIC

Sahara Times, New Delhi, June 25, 2005
By Subhra Mazumdar

Shruti Sadolikar is making mark as a performer-musician and a lady guru

WHEN ARTIST and noted musician Shruti Sadolikar shifted from Mumbai to Kolkata, a few eyebrows were raised. Born and brought up in the tradition of the Jaipur gharana of Indian classical music, Shruti was already an established performer and a promising upholder of her musical heritage. Last year, Shruti joined the Sangeet Research Academy as a faculty member, thereby becoming its youngest lady guru currently. This elite institution imparts knowledge of Indian classical music to a selected group of aspiring performers. These learners are placed under the tutelage of gurus, who are resident teachers as well as renowned performers.

Shruti’s shift from a tailor-made lifestyle of a successful performer-musician was done with a purpose. ‘It is because this institution fosters the guru-shishya parampara or the guru disciple relationship in learning, by a system of close proximity that influenced my decision to come here. If one has to make an artist out of a student learner, then the whole mental discipline of the student performer has to be targeted. Such a disciple must be there to watch the guru, objectively listen and hear and witness the guru. After all, it is necessary for the disciple to know the thinking of the guru’s mind and this is only possible in a situation of this kind. In Mumbai, my students were computer engineers and doctors living in the town and they came to me for lessons and went back to live their lives thereafter. Here my three disciples have got ample opportunities and there are gradation tests, and other systems by which their progress is being monitored and improved.

This happy balance of old world tradition and current assessment techniques woven into the curriculum for nurturing artists, would have pleased most gurus. But to Shruti Sadolikar, a challenge lurks behind every stepping stone to further success. Right at the start of her taking up this assignment, she had realized that SRA being a higher level centre of musical education, her disciples would not be beginners. ‘They had already learnt the basics and I knew that my charges would not come to me with absolutely clean slates. So training into being performers would not mean brushing aside all their previous learning, but rather looking at the same thing from a different perspective. It was, certainly not an unlearning process’.

This easy acceptance of her responsibility has created a wider ambience. ‘For chiseling out a smart musical personality you need to perceive the gem behind the rough stone, remove the extra material and have faith that there is something inside that needs to be sparked off and one has to take pains. On the shishya’s side too there must be the urge to perform and not imagine a routine life of taking the train home from work at 5.17.

Beside performances, she has been in the forefront of making music education a forte of academic research. ‘I encourage my students to develop a sound knowledge of literature and precise articulation to broaden their outlook. I like to arouse in them the curiosity to go into the depth of the subject to examine the Sanskrit granthas, to ponder over the compositions and their descriptions, to understand the meaning of the lyrics they are singing and, above all, to realize that music is not a static affair. One must move with the times’ she states and, therefore, in her art there is a seamless integration of the relevance of theatre, film music and classical inputs.

Probing into her background reveals an important trait. While other musicians of the gharana are hesitant about blending their music with their film counterparts, Shruti has welcomed these inroads with an open mind. ‘The erstwhile Prabhat Film Company was run by mother’s paternal aunt’s husband and theatre and stage have been an inextricable link with my family. So, I feel that having imbibed the best from different walks of life, my personal outlook has been enriched rather that cramped. But at the same time, my mind continues to be that of a discerning explorer. My approach has gone beyond the obvious and taken in the thinking process behind the idea of gharana-based musical education. Indeed Shruti effortlessly veers around her many worlds’.