Prabha Atre: The quiet iconoclast

The Hindustani vocalist, who died on January 13, hailed from a family of teachers, and was able to challenge many gharana conventions, writes Chetan Vinchhi

The passing on of Vidushi Prabha Atre on January 13, marks the end of an era. She was not only a great maestro of raag sangeet but also one of the last surviving links to Hindustani music’s rich history. 

Fondly called Prabha-tai, she hailed from a family of teachers. She stumbled into the world of classical music almost by accident which was rare in that era. This gave her a unique outsider’s perspective on tradition, and allowed her to challenge it and influence it in no small measure. 

Her primary gurus were Pandit Sureshbabu Mane and Hirabai Barodekar, siblings and torchbearers of the Kirana gharana. She was thus grounded in the core ethos of that gayaki, which includes great emphasis on the purity of swaras, aesthetic presentation, and emotional richness. It may be noted that U Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana gharana, was himself a romanticist and unafraid of bending rules. Prabha-tai had inherited that trait to a great degree. 

Prabha-tai chose ‘sargam’ as the topic of her doctoral thesis. As a producer for All India Radio in the 1960s she was greatly influenced by the gayaki of U Amir Khan as well as being exposed to the usage of kalpanaswarams in Carnatic vocal music. She came to believe that sargam — which was looked down upon by some traditionalists — was an essential tool for learning, teaching as well as presentation. She had a part to play in sargam becoming widely accepted and practiced by Khayal singers. 

Perhaps influenced by her parents, she was passionate about teaching, but in her own style. She became the head of the music department at SNDT university, Bombay. She put her mind and body into transforming the curriculum according to her vision, incorporating world music, other arts, sociology and language into the syllabus. SNDT came to be hailed as one of the best and most progressive music programs in the country. 

As an organiser of Sangeet Rajani 2002 in New Jersey, I had the good fortune of meeting and interacting with Prabha-tai. She wore her fame and status lightly. She was gracious and approachable, and treated all present with kindness. She was soft-spoken, but firm in her convictions even when they did not conform to tradition. I could clearly see that she was an iconoclast, albeit a quiet one! 

On that occasion, she sang raag Apurva Kalyan, which is her own creation. The presentation was unhurried, almost languid, and brought out the beauty of the raag very nicely. She sang two of her own bandishes ‘swami maha gyani’ in vilambit ektaal and ‘karam karo mo pe swami’ in drut teentaal, both excellent compositions. 

She has created a handful of raags. But as a vaggeyakar (composer of bandishes) she was prolific. Her compositions are a lens into her musical persona. That she composed so much is itself a break from the Kirana tradition. She stays loosely within the bounds of bandish structure and language, but her compositions are in a class of their own. The words she chooses are mostly philosophical and spiritual, and markedly different from vanilla khayal sahitya. Even her melodic lines are unique. These mark her out as a maverick. 

Prabha-tai was of the firm belief that there is something good to learn from any kind of music. She could relate to any genre. She was especially fond of Thumris and bhajans. She must have learnt the art of Thumri from her guru, Sureshbabu Mane, and sang them beautifully. Her recording of ‘kaun gali gaye shaam’ is very popular. The folk-based composition ‘jamuna kinare mora gaanv’ was made famous by stalwarts like Kumar Gandharva and Vasantrao Deshpande, but Prabha-tai’s interpretation is delectable in its own right. 

Her very first commercial LP achieved iconic status. It included the marvelous drut ektaal cheez ‘tana mana dhna to pe varun’ in raag Kalavati. It attained near mass popularity status especially in Bombay and Maharashtra. And to this day, this recording is synonymous with the raag. 

In many ways, Prabha-tai was ahead of her time. She was a deep thinker about music, and insisted that chintan-manan along with experimentation is the only way for our music to be progressive. She challenged even basic tenets like the association of raaga with time of the day through her meditation and experiments. She strived to go back to the essence of musical theory and apply it to current times and situations. It was as if she wanted to clean the grime accumulated over centuries and let raag music shine in all its pristine glory.