The third edition of a book on music should be great news. This may have been so with Sur Sansaar, but publishing a book in Pakistan on a serious subject is no joke. All the expenses and costs have to be borne by the writer who then also has to make the effort to market the product for accessibility to the people at large.

Shahbaz Ali spent years doing research, and then collected enough capital to have his book published some years ago. He has been lucky that the first two editions of 500 copies each got sold out and he has gone through the same process of getting five hundred copies of his book published, again.

Perhaps, serious literature in Pakistan has a niche readership but it is not considered big enough to attract the attention of big publishing houses.

Shahbaz Ali is an athai, outsider in the sense that he does not belong to a family of hereditary musicians, and he got most of his music knowledge also from another athai, Qazi Zahoor ul Haq.

Shahbaz Ali often saw Qazi Zahoor ul Haq at music soirees but did not know who he was till he first met him through Anwar Khurshid, the sitar player. After doing his matriculation, Shahbaz courtesy Zahid Farani, another of Qazi’s shagird, formally became his disciple. For one year, he went regularly to the classes that he conducted as well as to his house for the purposes of learning music.

Shahbaz Ali has written at length on two personalities on whom not much can be found elsewhere, his ustad Qazi Zahoor ul Haq and Ustad Tawakal Hussain Khan. Qazi was born in 1909 in Rewari, Ambala Division and got his initial education in music from Ragonath Rao Ji, who taught at the Shankar Gandharva Vidyalaya. Rao was the cousin of the famous Krishnarao Pandit. Qazi became associated with India Film Company in 1935, composed music for Prem Yatra, Josh-e-Inteqaam and Neem Shah Dakoo under the name of Q.S. Zahoor.

In 1942, he became the music director at the All India Radio, arranged an orchestra and made music for many programmes. When he migrated to Pakistan, he started a music academy, Radiant Classical Music Society, at his house in 1950. Among his shagirds have been sitarnawaz Naseeruddin, jaltarangnawaz Abdul Majeed. Qazi, neynawaz Taj Muhammed and Ustad Mehfooz Khokhar.

Later, he started a programme on radio for the purpose of educating listeners on music. This radio programme from Rawalpindi Station continued for about five years and was a source of knowledge to all those interested in music. He also did a programme on television with Abdul Qadir Piyarung, and in that, he sang 72 raags with their arohi, amrohi, vadi samvadi, kheyal bandishes -- that is asthai and antara in accordance with the time of their performance.

Qazi Zahoor ul Haq also wrote two books on music, Rehnomai Mausiqi and Mualimul Naghmaat, both published by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts. The former was also translated by him into English with staff notation of hundred raags and a very informative and detailed note on the history and peculiarities of western and our music. But, it could not be published because there was no system to print the staff notation in the country. He could also not avail the offer from foreign embassies to have it printed abroad because he thought that the manuscript would get lost. He also taught music at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts for 10 years from 1979 to 1989.

Not much is available on the life and music of an enigmatic figure in our music, Ustad Tawwakul Hussain Khan either. He was said to have a very important presence, especially in the music scene of the Punjab in the first half of the 20th century. Shahbaz Ali gathered scraps of information from here, there and everywhere to build a credible sketch of a master who has gone virtually unknown. He was a maidaan ka gawaya, hot-tempered and volatile, always willing to engage in a musical competition with some great ustad. Since he refused to get recorded, no music of the Ustad has survived.

Ustad Tawwakul Hussain Khan was born in Jaddla, Jallandhar in 1902 to Ustad Maula Baksh. His nom de plume was Nirgan. His most famous shagird was Khurshid Anwar but he was also the ustad of Master Sohni Khan, of the Sohni Band fame and Hashmat Ali Khan.

He did not want himself to be recorded because he was against his music being sold at a very cheap price, that of an ordinary 78 rpm record; so other than those who heard or interacted with him and recalled tales of his musical prowess, no other evidence could be found to support his achievements.

Tawwakul Hussain Khan always sang with the harmonium and never with the tanpura so many doubted or questioned his credentials and not approving of it and did not accept him as an ustad. He is reported to have been a past master at singing the sargam. He died in Kot Chutta, Dera Ghazai Khan in 1958.

In the first edition, Shahbaz Ali had covered such greats as Bhai Lal Muhammed, Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan Ustad Barre Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Abdul Qadir Piyarung, Mian Nabi Buksh Kalrewale, Ustad Firoz Khan Nishiwale, Rafiq Ghaznavi, Qazi Zahurul Haq, Ustad Latafat Hussain Khan, Master Muhammed Sadiq Pindiwale, Ustad Ghulam Hussain Shaggan, Ustad Barkat Ali Khan, Mukhtaar Begum, Tufail Niazi, Noor Jahan, Ijaz Hussain Hazravi, Zahida Parveen, Fareeda Khanum Mehdi Hasan, Iqbal Bano and Ghulam Ali.

In the second edition, besides revising, and added to the list mentioned above, he has also included write-ups on Ustad Jhande Khan and Begum Akhter. The third edition has more information on these personalities.

Magazines like Naqoosh, Fanoon, Qand, and Saqafat, Adb-e-Lateef, Saqi and Sawera over the years have carried numerous articles on music but these are basically magazines that also gave space to writings on art like painting and music. Nearly all of them concentrated on the higher forms of music and the place of music in our society vis-à-vis our ideological moorings.

But, where the more popular forms or folk musical expression was concerned it was considered sufficient to let the musical expression be rendered with no effort made to evaluate these low forms of musical expression critically.

Sur Sansaar attempts to redress and creates some kind of balance between the ustads and singers practicing lighter and popular genres. By maintaining a fine balance, Shahbaz Ali has narrowed the gap.